its happy hour somewhere

WIP

Okay so I'm a hair late mainly because today kind of got away from me.

Uhh, context: Fordo and Alpha are putting away Shaak Ti's trusty rancor mount, the ferociously named Petal. (named by a bunch of ten year olds so is anyone surprised) and there's a bunch of talking and some butting heads over what's happening in the world in general.

As one does when arguing with your adult siblings, its gets a little personal. Cause who else knows you well enough to really push your buttons.

Petal eagerly entered the stable and the loose corral, which didn’t really stand a chance if the rancor decided she didn’t want to be held by it any longer. Thankfully, she’d mostly outgrown her escapist habits as she’d grown older. The stable represented safety and food for the rancor now and she was eager to go home.

“I still think you’re crazy for keeping one around.”

“He doesn’t mean that, Petal.” Alpha mock-cooed at the beast because while he agreed with his brother, he wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of knowing he was right. Besides, he felt obligated to defend Shaak Ti’s decision to keep the rancor.

“But, can you imagine the look of terror on any Imp who tries to approach our base?”

“Okay, that would be hilarious.” Fordo conceded after a moment of consideration. “I still think it’s nuts, though.”

“I’m not going to get between the two of them, they have a bond. Dunno if it’s Force osik or whatever, but there’s definitely a bond there. Petal treats Shaak like she is her mother. Maybe it's because she was young when we found her and she imprinted but I am not worried about Petal going feral and harming her or anyone here, really.” Alpha pulled some meat from a nearby conservator and placed it in Petal’s trough.

The rancor was well-mannered enough to wait until he’d gotten all limbs out of the way before falling onto the meat with gusto. A look of horror filled the other clone’s face when the rancor chowed down, a sentiment Alpha understood because it was a pretty gruesome sight, but one he'd had grown used to over the years.

“Come on, we’re on KP duty since we’ve been layabouts all morning.”

“What?” The offense in his brother’s voice was endlessly amusing since he knew it went against his pride as an ARC. The joke was on Fordo because Alpha had served so much time in the kitchens here that he’d gone from nearly burning a pot of water to actually managing to cook a flavorful meal using real ingredients.

During his time in the GAR, the extent of his cooking knowledge was learning how to embellish GAR provided rations into something that tasted more palatable than soaked cardboard or meat-flavored mush.

“You don’t think meals just magically appear out of nowhere, do you, vod?”

“Of course not, but you’re a fool if you unleash me in a kitchen and don’t expect me to accidentally burn the whole thing down.”

“Sounds to me like someone needs some updated survival training: civilian edition.” Alpha teased and clapped Fordo on the shoulder to propel him towards the exit.

The other clone looked like he’d sucked on something sour.

“We’re not civilians.”

“We’re not GAR soldiers anymore either. We’re renegade clones, technically deserters in the eyes of the Empire.” Alpha pointed out without an ounce of mercy or sugar-coating and he didn’t miss the way Fordo flinched at being called a deserter.

“Maybe you don’t see yourself as a soldier anymore but I do.” The other clone shot back with a note of bitterness in his voice.

“Soldier of what exactly?”

“The Rebellion! The Hidden Path, something. I cannot believe you have given up believing in something, Seventeen. Not completely. You’re too damned stubborn to have given up completely, no matter what sort of osik you’re spewing about being a deserter.”

That accusation stung more than Alpha wanted to admit and he found himself fighting back a disquieted frown as he followed Fordo back to the trees which held their hidden base.

“I believe in what we’re doing here. It might seem small and inconsequential to you but it’s enough for me. Shaak Ti is raising a new generation of Jedi and I am going to protect her and those children with my life.”

“It’s not going to stop, Seventeen. They won’t stop. You haven’t seen how the universe has gone to complete shit while you’ve been hiding here. The Empire has spread across the galaxy like a cancer. Their Inquisitors hunt Jedi like your Shaak Ti without mercy and they don’t give up. One day they will find this place and will burn it to the ground. They’ll kill her and anyone who gets in their way and those kids? If they’re lucky they’ll die.” Fordo said with a certainty that had icy fingers of dread crawling up his spine.

His first instinct was to go on the attack, to deflect and call Fordo on his self-serving bantha-shit but a calmer voice of reason in the back of his mind won out over that knee-jerk reaction. Shaak Ti had been working with him on trying to control his deep-seated anger issues, which was the only reason he didn’t take Fordo’s head off right then and there, even though the angry, black rage was there simmering beneath the surface.

It would be easier to punch him than continue this frustrating conversation but what would that net him? A physical altercation that would end in them both no doubt beating one another black and blue, but it wouldn’t solve anything, would it?

Stars, he hated this.

“Stop trying to sell me, I ain’t buying.” Alpha finally managed, his voice a dangerous growl and Fordo must have heard that danger in the other clone’s tone because his mouth thinned to a grim slash.

The walk back to the camp was tense and filled with icy silence that only started to defrost when they reached the kitchen and Alpha started to tersely instruct Fordo on how to do the most basic of kitchen tasks.

ARC Training Program Ch. 2 "Starting Small"

(Here it is! I hope you like it! I made this chapter a little longer then the first. Alpha-17 starts a ARC Training Program and it isn't going well.)

Things hadn’t started out on the right foot. After the first training exercise Alpha had decided to whoop these boys into shape. He deliberately made their life hell. He woke them up at the ass crack of dawn and made them run sprints. He had them run through simulation after simulation. Even during the classroom portions, he didn’t take it easy on them. He drilled them with every scenario possible and had them copy the reg manual front to back. By the end of the first week, he had to hand it to the boys. They were resilient. Despite being exhausted and pushed to their limits every single day they still gave it their all. They showed Alpha every chance they could on why they were the best of the best. That is until they’re put into a group simulation. Then everything turns to shit.

Alpha stands at the top of the training room looking down at the eight cadets failing once again to complete a single practice battle. He growls deep in his throat before slamming his fist on the stop button. CT-7567 trips on a shutdown droid toppling over into CC-2224.

“How many times do I have to tell you to stay out of my way?” CC-2224 yells while shoving 7567. The cadet stands quickly to stand toe to toe with 2224.

“Come on, don’t fight!” CC-1004 groans from the back.

“Hey, at least he doessomething! You and CC-3636 are to concerned about tripping over each other to do anything!” CC-1010 yells from the side. He crosses his arms and leans against one of the blocks used for cover.

“Oh, right? Like you and CC-4477? You two can’t take two steps without knocking into one another.” 2224 snorts. This causes all eight boys to erupt into arguing.

“Enough!” Alpha yells down at them. They pop to attention. Alpha rubs his face tiredly. “Clean this mess up and when you’re done with that you can go and clean the refreshers!”

He hears a few groans but he’s to tired to scold them anymore. He walks away mostly because he feels like he has to. He walks into his room ignoring Fordo who sits on his couch pressed against the wall. He looks up from his datapad with an amused look on his face.

“So, how’s it going?” He asks already knowing damn well how its going. Alpha stands by his table taking deep breaths.

“I have never seen so many talented cadets in my entire life who are completely incapable of working together!” He places his hands on the table in frustration. Fordo shifts on the couch with his head turned as if thinking.

“You know,” Fordo starts, “If I remember correctly, you and I weren’t the best at teamwork when we first started out.”

“That was different.” Alpha sighs while taking a seat at the table.

“How so?”

“Because we started out being the best. We weren’t the best out of a batch. We were the best because we had to be the best. These boys aren’t used to actually working as a unit with equally competent members. They also don’t trust each other not to spit in each other’s food let alone save their life on the battlefield.” Alpha leans back in his chair. He rubs his sore neck while Fordo chuckles on the couch.

“So do some trust exercises. Remember when Jango took us diving into the waters beneath Tipoca city and we had to rely on each other to make it through the night? We were all scared shitless but none of us wanted to admit it. That was the night we finally clicked as a team.” Fordo leans forward on the couch. Alpha thinks on it for a moment.

“You want me to take those boys diving under the city?” Alpha arches a brow at him.

“With your boys? No. You’d lose all eight of them. They would still be arguing even while drowning.” Fordo gets to his feet. “I just mean something like that. Whatever version of diving it would take for your boys to finally click into being a team.”

Fordo walks out of his room leaving him with no answers. Alpha crosses his arms and stares at his table. He has to find a way to get them to work together. He pushes himself up and grabs a clipboard before walking out of his room. He finds the boys still cleaning up the practice room. He decides to analyze them one by one and start small. He begins writing notes.

CC-2224: Smart, dependable, most levelheaded of the eight. Follows orders a little to closely.

CT-7567: Brave, determined, not afraid to think outside the box. Seems to think all orders are mere suggestions.

CC-3636: quiet, quick on his feet, likes to observe from the back. Needs to learn to speak up more.

CC-1004: smart, constantly learning, not afraid to ask questions. Never seems to make the first move.

CC-1010: fast, skilled, best attention to detail I’ve ever seen. A little to smug for my liking.

CC-4477: fast learning, not afraid to make mistakes, always ready to go. Seems to have a hard time finding his own rhythm.

CC-1138: strong, intimidating, wouldn’t want to get into a fight with this one. Has anger issues and doesn’t like losing.

CC-8826:

Alpha looks up from his writing to stare at the boy as he scrubs the floors. He gets this crazy look in his eyes before aggressively scrubbing as if he were throwing punches. Alpha lets out a deep hm while writing:

That boy’s not right.

He stares at his notes while bringing a hand to his chin. Perhaps he should start small. Break them up into twos. Alpha flips on the bright lights getting the attention of the cadets. They stare up at him waiting for orders.

“All of you, front and center!” Alpha yells with his hands behind his back. The boys rush to the lift. Alpha rolls his eyes when they even fail to get on the lift without fighting each other. when they finally stand in front of him, he stands up tall. “We’re going to be doing one last exercise. Complete it and your free to have the rest of the day for yourselves.”

This makes their usual glued neutral faces expose flashes of excitement. Alpha hasn’t made it easy on them and they haven’t had any real time for themselves.

“We’re going to be doing more practice battles but this time in groups of two,” Alpha watches but their faces are back to neutral. “The rules are simple. Complete one practice battle successfully and you get the rest of the day off. Fail to complete the battle and you’ll be redoing it over and over again until you get it right. Understand?”

“Yes, sir!” They say but Alpha can sense the uneasiness.

“Alright, CC-2224 and CT-7567. You’re up first.” Alpha says. The boys eyes grow wide. It hasn’t been any secret that those two haven’t gotten along since day one. It’ll be interesting to see how it plays out when it’s just the two of them. 2224 and 7657 walk back to the lift to take themselves back down. Alpha stands with the other six curiously watching at his side.

“Just stay out of my way.” 2224 mutters before they start. Alpha can hear everything they say through their coms.

“Right, I’ll stay out of yours if you stay out of mine.” 7567 says back. Alpha shakes his head before pressing start. It first starts off well enough, but it never takes long for things to fall apart. 2224 follows the orders given to him down to the letter while 7567 focuses on his own plan. 7567 ends up ahead of 2224 leaving him stranded. Alpha frowns already seeing the end. 2224 gets surrounded and eventually shot leaving all the focus on 7567. When they both eventually come back to and the training battle is reset they make their way back up to Alpha.

“Where did they go wrong?” Alpha asks the six watching by his side.

“They left themselves completely open.” CC-1010 snorts.

“They left each other completely open.” Alpha corrects him. “7567, when an order is given, I expect you to follow it! And 2224, following orders is one thing. Never stepping outside of those orders is another. How do you expect to lead a group of men into battle when you lack the ability to think on your feet?”

The two say nothing but stare at the floor with their faces growing a few shades of red.

“Alright,” Alpha moves on. “CC-3636 and CC-1004. Your up next.”

Alpha is curious about these two. They never stand out and rarely cause any waves. He’s interested in seeing how they do when it’s just the two of them. He watches them take point down below.

“We got this!” 1004 says. 3636 doesn’t say anything. He shifts his training blaster while waiting to begin. When it does start it doesn’t look promising. They both seem entirely too timid. Their aim is good and its not that they are making bad decisions, but they lack the confidence needed to properly execute the orders given to them. They end up getting shot a lot sooner then the first two. When they make their way back to the top Alpha says again.

“Where did they go wrong?”

“They moved way to slow.” 1010 says not afraid to give his opinion.

“Alright, anyone else?” Alpha says trying to get someone else to answer.

“They lack confidence.” 2224 says still sounding down from his failed attempt with 7567.

“Exactly,” Alpha nods. “If you two ever hope to be a leader you have to have confidence in yourself. Someday lives will be on the line and you’re going to have to make the difficult decisions. There’s no time to second guess yourselves.”

“Yes, sir.” They say softly. They fall back in.

“CC-1010 and CC-4477, you’re up.” Alpha nods his chin towards the training room. He watches them make their way to the bottom.

“Just follow my lead and we’ll have the rest of the day to relax.” 1010 says. Alpha almost hopes that they will fail this one. Might do some good for CC-1010 to get knocked down to size.

“… sure.” 4477 mumbles. When they begin they start out well enough. As much as Alpha hated to admit it, they were doing good. Normally they’re tripping over each other and breaking out in fights. With the rest of the eight out of the way it gives them space to do what they need to do. They get further than any of the others. The six watching by Alpha’s side lean on the railing in excitement. Just when it seems that they’ll be the first to finish Alpha sees their mistake before it happens. 4477 has an opening to make a break for the tower. He see’s his chance and tries to take it but 1010 see’s it as well. Despite 4477’s clear advantage to the tower 1010 charges forward as if to outrun 4477 and beat him to it. This results in one of their usual headbutts and then a small brawl. Alpha stops the training before they can get shot. When they make it up to the top 1010 won’t make eye contact with anyone.

“Alright, what did these two do wrong? Aside from the fist fight at the end.” Alpha sighs.

“CC-1010 is too full of himself.” CC-8826 says. 1010 lifts his eyes to 8826 with his face burning with rage.

“He’s right,” Alpha says keeping him in his place. “CC-1010, you’re to worried about being the hero and being in the spotlight that you jeopardized the mission! And CC-4477 you can’t let people walk all over you! What are you going to do when one of your men doesn’t agree with one of your orders?”

4477 lowers his head while 1010 looks away with an angry frown. Alpha lifts a hand to rubs above his eyebrows.

“Alright, last two. You’re up.” Alpha says already knowing this will be a disaster. CC-1138 and CC-8826 are the biggest problem children. They’re both temperamental and have a competitive side like no other clone. They share no words with each other while waiting to start. Alpha crossing his arms and holds his breath during their battle.

Despite everything he’s seen about these two in the past, they’re doing better then any other group. Alpha has to keep his hand on his chin to keep his jaw from dropping. 1138 uses his brute strength to clear a path for the much faster 8826. They barely speak but seem to be on the same page with each other. Alpha thinks back to every other practice battle and how they always end up in an all-out fight. Now, watching it just be the two of them Alpha realizes it’s because they finally have an equal number of droids to destroy. Without the competition of the other cadets, they find no issue working beside each other. when they make it to the top of the tower and pull the green flag out of its post it leaves Alpha and the six other cadets speechless.

1138 holds the flag still in his hand with a blank expression while 8826 bends his legs and balls his hands into fists while letting out a victory scream. Alpha finds himself at a loss for words as the two make their way back up to them.

“You’ve got to be kidding me?” 1010 says. “Psycho and Bigger Psycho beat it first try?”

Alpha finally snaps himself out of his daze to clear his throat to silence CC-1010.

“CC-8826 and CC-1138, I’ll have to admit I wasn’t expecting any of you to succeed first try. Congratulations. You’re free to use the rest of the day as you see fit.” Alpha says. 8826 gives a smug grin while walking past the other six before turning to 1138.

“Wanna get some food?” He asks to which 1138 responds with a hm. Which Alpha can only guess means yes? Alpha shakes his head slightly to get him focused back on the matter at hand.

“Alright, we’re back to the first two. Go on.” Alpha says. he watches the last three groups fail once again. The first group fail on their third event, but the second group finally seem to be getting the hang of it. CC-3636 and CC-1004 begin to communicate and in that communication they find confidence. They’re the next group to successfully finish the practice battle. It would take a whole other round for CC-1010 and CC-4477 to start working together. CC-1010 ends up being the one who reaches the top first. Alpha still isn’t sure if its because 4477 made it that way or if that’s just how it happened. Either way he let them go. This just left CC-2224 and CT-7567.

They would try again and again only to fail over and over. It is starting to get late, so he asks Fordo to make sure the other six are in their racks asleep. When he walks back to join Alpha, he’s just in time to see the last two remaining clones fail all over again.

“They haven’t even gotten close to the tower.” Alpha shakes his head trying to hold back his anger.

“Maybe they’re a lost cause?” Fordo shrugs his shoulders. Alpha stays silent not sure if wants to agree with him or not. Fordo pats his shoulder.

“I’m heading to bed. Try not to stay up to late.” He says before walking away. Alpha watches the boys fail one more time before shutting the droids down. The two make their way up to stand in front of Alpha. They’re both dripping sweat and exhausted. They can barely hold their blasters properly anymore. Alpha lets out a long sigh.

“Boys, I’m not going to sugar coat it. This isn’t good.” Alpha starts. “Some people just aren’t cut out to be ARC troopers…”

“What? No, no we can still do this!” 2224 yells.

“He’s right! Just give us one more chance!” 7567 begs. Alpha shakes his head while rubbing the back of his neck.

“Boys, you need to realize…”

“No!” 2224 says stopping Alpha. “You said so yourself that we are the best of the best. We can prove to you that you were right! We belong here.”

“He’s right sir. I know we have our differences but though we’ve failed every single time every time I get up to do it again well, CC-2224 is right there beside me ready to go again. We’re not giving up yet!”

Alpha stares at the two cadets who were just struggling to stand up straight now at full attention with determination in their eyes. He tilts his head to the side thinking it over.

“Alright,” He says seeing the relief wash over the two. “But you have one more shot. One more! You fail this time then I have a decision to make by morning.”

“Yes, sir! Thank you, sir!” they say before running for the lift. Alpha shakes his head. They’ve never even come close to the tower. Why would this time be different? Even as he thinks this, he notices the two talking on the lift. Actual talking, not fighting. The have their helmets off so Alpha can’t listen in. when they slip their helmets on Alpha hears “Right there with you brother.” He shifts his weight to the other leg intrigued. Maybe they really mean it this time? When they appear ready, Alpha presses start.

He finds himself holding his breath. The last few tries were complete failures. They had lost all energy and could barely make it to cover in time. This time they seem to have caught a second wind. They’re still sluggish compared to their normal speeds but there’s a clear difference then the try before this. The biggest difference is the team work. They communicate with each other and don’t advance without the other. at some point they stand back to back taking down droids. Alpha lifts a hand to his chin feeling a grin spread across his face. They’ve almost made it towards the end. Alpha gives out the last set of orders and waits. Alpha feels his stomach drop when they begin to get surrounded. He shakes his head. This is it then…

Just when Alpha is ready to hit the stop button CC-2224 does something unexpected. He rushes forward throwing himself on a droid similar to the way CT-7567 has. He spins around on the thing before firing down at it stunning it. 7657 manages to take down a droid for himself. Alpha finds himself leaning against the railing when these two cadets begin using the stunned droids as shields. They begin advancing for the tower. Alpha squeezes the railing the closer they get to the top. Finally, they both throw their droid shields at the advancing droids and make a break for the top. They both grab hold of the flag and lift it into the air cheering. Alpha pulls himself together and stands tall. He watches the cadets throw their arms around each other screaming in victory.

“CC-2224 and CT-7567,” Alpha calls down. They break apart to stand at the closes thing to attention they can manage at this point. “Congratulations. You two have finally passed your practice battle. Now go hit the showers and get to bed! We got another long day of training tomorrow.”

“Sir yes sir!” They yell. Alpha chuckles to himself as he watches the two cadets laugh and playfully shove each other while making their way out of the training room.

“There’s hope for you yet, rookies.”

Read full story HERE AT AO3

Assorted Clonecest Fics - Missed you (Alpha-17/Fordo) | E

(First time writing this pairing and these characters. I hope I did a good job!)

(Fic under the cut)

Despite being relegated to instructing troopers on Kamino, Alpha-17 still hasn’t lost his touch. Fordo knows it well, now that he’s pinned chest to the training mat, with 17 that holds him by the arm. If he twists just a bit, he’s going to break it.

“I thought you’d put up more of a fight,” 17 mocks him. “What is it, Ford’ika? Have the frontlines softened you?”

Despite the hurting joint, Fordo still manages to grin as he tries to turn his head as much as he can to look at the other. “And to think that I’m offering myself so willingly to you-- Ow!” Judging by the way Alpha-17 twists his arm, he mustn’t have liked the teasing tone in Fordo’s voice, though he hasn’t broken it like he could’ve had.

“Excuses excuses,” 17 says then, unwilling to leave the last word to Fordo, though the grip on him does lighten a bit, enough that, if Fordo wanted, he could’ve turned them around. Tsk, trying to bait him with such a simple trick.

 Instead of falling for it, Fordo grinds his hips against Alpha-17, pleased by the surprised grunt he manages to coax out of him. “You little--”

Now it’s Fordo’s turn to be surprised when 17 rushes down to bite at what little of the back of his neck that is exposed. Unfortunately for him, he can’t manage to suppress and involuntary shiver, something that Alpha takes notice on. “Did you miss me?” he asks, mocking tone obvious, and yet, Fordo still manages to surprise him with his answer.

“What if I did?” he replies in fact, because despite everything, he’s truly missed Alpha, who is suspiciously quiet.

 Fordo doesn’t have to wait long for 17’s next move though, because soon he forces him to get up and drags him to his quarters. He doesn’t even try to resist him, knowing exactly where this is all leading up to. Well, he was the one who began, after all…

 Once they’re in the privacy of Alpha’s quarters, he slams Fordo against the wall, finally kissing him, if that can even be considered a kiss with all that tongue and teeth he’s putting into it. Fordo wouldn’t want it any other way, and in fact he smiles in the kiss, something that 17 notices. “Having fun?” he asks after pulling away. He looks displeased but Fordo knows it’s just a front, so he’s not intimated at all by the way he’s acting.

“A bit,” he admits, before dragging Alpha for a proper kiss, slipping his tongue between his lips. Alpha’s fingers twitch against Fordo’s hips, and he grips him more tightly, though it’s not like Fordo can really feel it, since they’re both still wearing their armor. Speaking of which… “Shouldn’t we take these off?”

Alpha doesn’t even bother to reply with words; he just grunts as he begins to tear Fordo’s armor off, a gesture that gets soon returned by the other.

 Once they’re bare, they go back to kissing. Alpha hoists Fordo up; now he has to hold onto 17’s waist with his legs, or else he’ll fall. Well, Fordo can easily do that.

A shiver runs down his spine as he feels Alpha’s hands brush against his thighs as they reach for his ass and…

Alpha stops, circling Fordo’s wet rim with his finger, finding it extremely loose already. He raises an eyebrow at him as a smirk - the closest thing to a true smile he’s ever been able to make - appears on his face. “Eager, aren’t you?” He can’t believe that he already opened and lubed himself up, and more than anything that he walked around like this. Truly shameless.

Fordo chuckles. “I said I missed you, didn’t I?” he replies, before grinding down against 17. “So you better get a move on.”

“And if I don’t?” Alpha challenges him.

Fordo rolls his eyes. “Like I don’t know it’s the same for you,” he replies, grabbing Alpha’s already erect cock. Yeah, he definitely missed him.

 17 snarls, slamming Fordo against the wall again, though Fordo laughs at his gesture, still unbothered.

Thanks to the other guiding him, he wordlessly lines his cock up to the other’s ass. He licks his lips - suddenly dry - and narrows his brow in concentration, then he thrusts up, penetrating Fordo in one smooth go. If Fordo hadn’t had enough foresight to prepare himself beforehand, it would’ve hurt like hell, but right now he just sighs, happy that Alpha, for once, has listened to him.

He sets up a very rough rhythm, another sign that he’s missed him. Look at him, he can’t get enough of Fordo.

“Alpha… Alpha!” he moans, his lips dangerously close to 17’s, who decides to shut him up with a kiss - like he doesn’t love hearing Fordo call his name like that.

He thrusts, he thrusts, and he thrusts again, each movement accompanied by the loud sounds of skin slapping against skin. Slap slap slap…

 The first one to break is Fordo. He would’ve loved to play around more, but it’s been too long since the last time they were able to stay like this, so he reaches down, grabbing his cock in hand and furiously jerking off while Alpha keeps pounding inside him.

It takes him very little to come, groaning as Alpha helps him ride the orgasm from beginning to end, hammering down his prostate like he would a simple target.

17 too doesn’t last long. After another couple of thrusts, in fact, he pushes one last time, as deep as he can, and he comes, biting a grin off his face when Fordo squirms at the sensation. He got what he deserved.

 Only once Alpha pulls away, maybe under the effect of that sensation of lightheadedness that always takes him after an orgasm, he whispers, forehead pressed against Fordo, “I missed you too.”

It’s a quiet admission, one that Fordo almost doesn’t catch, but he does, and it’s enough. He knows Alpha, he knows the way he is and he accepts it.

He knows that, deep down his prickly self, Alpha-17 has enough place in his heart to care for some things, and he knows that he’s one of them.

It’s enough.

Tag list: @maulusque @captainrexwouldnever @anameofanykind If you want to be added feel free to let me know!

fic with ahsoka as Obi-Wans Padawan? Maybe some angsty jangobi? (Used to be together but broke up and now they pine from afar™️)

(i’m devastated that i don’t get to write ahsoka much, especially as obi’s padawan, so that an anon would come into my inbox.... and request jangobi on top of it..... seriously, though, thank you! can’t say i wasn’t inspired by @autumnchild22’s Kenobi Tano AU, but this doesn’t share almost anything with their take of events (ノ*´◡`) i’m flattered y’all thought i could do something of theirs justice lmao

i have written entirely too much backstory for this one, i think my brainstorming ended up longer than the actual fic so like. rip. 

support artists and writers by reblogging, message me for more info if this confuses you!)

  It surprises everyone except Obi-Wan that not only does Jango join the clones on the front lines, but he does so as the ARC troopers’ medic. That the son of the Mand’alor murdered by the Jedi would allow his kid to be apprenticed by a lifetime Council member is already hard enough for the galaxy at large to swallow; believing that the man who had at once been the most feared bounty hunter in the Outer Rim wouldn’t even ask for a command position? Impossible.

  Obi-Wan knows better. Just as Obi-Wan had picked up Soresu because he could not protect his master on Naboo, Jango had learned to put people back together because he could not save his buir on Korda 6. 

  Besides, Obi-Wan thinks Mace is a wonderful match for little Boba, even though he’s joining the Jedi older than even Anakin had been. Knowing Mace was among the Jedi to liberate the spice freighter Jango had been sold to, and that he had continued to check in on Jango for years after he got his armor back, Obi-Wan actually finds it rather silly that others on the Council had thought Jango would trust Boba to anyone else. 

  Which does leave Obi-Wan in quite the predicament, when less than a year after Anakin's knighting, Mace sends him a new padawan in the middle of a campaign. 

  Ahsoka smiles with all canines, and calls Anakin Skyguy, and has to be tricked into wearing more armor because, according to Cody, she is "not to take the General's lack of self-preservation as the status quo, nor as the basis for field safety." Which, rude, Obi-Wan wears plenty of armor when the situation calls for it; he simply doesn't find many situations where plasteel has kept his men or the Jedi from dying horribly.

  Letting Ahsoka gallivant around a battlefield in a tube-top without even a cloak, however, is out of the question, and Obi-Wan thinks Waxer does a brilliant job in sizing down the armor to fit their collective padawan over the next few months. Force, had Anakin really been younger than she when he first started taking him on missions?

  "Master?"

  Obi-Wan blinks, and smiles down at Ahsoka standing next to him, his apprentice looking quite dashing in the orange paint of the 212th. "Sorry, my dear, what were you saying?"

  She shrugs, eyeing him suspiciously. "'Was just asking if we would be working with the ARC troopers on Kiros; Captain Fordo said he would show me how to use a blaster rifle next time they were on the Negotiator."

  The Kaminoans intended for a few ARC troopers to be sent with each battalion, but it had quickly become clear that Jango had not trained them that way. Instead, he had raised and created a strike team so efficient, it would have been a waste to separate them; Obi-Wan knows Jango had hand-picked them from cadets, had searched for a spark in them that the Kaminoans hadn't already snuffed out completely. Jango had been like that once, too.

  "I would be surprised if we didn't," Obi-Wan decides on, turning back to observe the 212th loading into the Negotiator, and he would be, because the ARCs are often deployed with Obi-Wan’s men, have been since the Battle of Kamino. "But I have not heard anything from Master Shaak Ti, nor Captain Fordo as of yet."

  Ahsoka scrunches up her face into a pout, an amusing show of her age that she usually does not allow. "We'll probably get halfway through the mission and they'll just show up."

  Obi-Wan chuckles. “Hm, yes, probably,” he agrees, starting to make his way down to the hangar to join his men with Ahsoka trotting along behind, “but perhaps I can convince Captain Fordo not to surprise us too badly this time.”

-

  When the ARC troopers finally storm the Kadavo Processing Facility with Anakin and the Jedi on their heels, the warden Agruss is already dead.

  The sudden swell of Jedi presence is nearly blinding after a month of helplessness, but Obi-Wan can't tap out, not yet. Rex, satisfied and vindictive and relieved, sways dangerously and automatically reaches out to Obi-Wan to steady himself. 

  That Rex trusts him enough to not even think about rank before asking for help warms Obi-Wan in ways he doesn't yet have the words for — he wraps Rex's arm around his shoulders and takes half his weight happily.

  "Thank you," Obi-Wan finds himself murmuring as he helps Rex towards the doors, and only smiles at the captain's bemused expression. 

  "Whatever for, General?" he asks, even as he looks back over their shoulders across the room, to Agruss impaled to his chair with the electrostaff still sparking. Then he returns Obi-Wan’s smile, shaking his head. "That's not very Jedi-like of you, sir."

  "I'm afraid I haven't felt much a Jedi since Kiros, my dear." Which is perhaps too honest to allow himself before he's had a proper meal and a full night's rest, but if there is anyone who will understand, it is the man that lived it with him. "We could wait up here for Anakin to find us, but it will likely be a while before they can spare him to start looking; do you think you can keep your feet long enough for us to reach the ground floor?"

  Rex snorts and gives a vague wave of his free hand towards the elevators. "Well, I'm certainly not going to wait up here like some damsel, sir, and General Skywalker would kill me if I let you wander around on your own."

  "Well!" Obi-Wan laughs, for the first time in weeks, and hitches Rex up to get a better grip on his waist. "In that case, we really should not keep him waiting."

  They somehow time it perfectly for what the 187th and the 501st to have just finished rounding up the slavers in the courtyard when he and Rex hobble out of a side door of the warden's tower. Lieutenant Law oversees the Togrutas' move to Mace’s flagship Solace, and Obi-Wan easily picks him and Boba out from the crowd, standing at the base of the loading ramp and speaking with the Kiros colony's governor. Anakin is nowhere to be seen, but Obi-Wan doesn't get the chance to keep looking before Kix spots them from his place by the medical frigate; a shout passes over the nearby clones like a wave, until Kix and an ARC trooper break away to (gently) manhandle both him and Rex to the frigate. 

  The 187th's medic, Oro, is already on board seeing to the Togrutas too injured to wait for triage on the Solace, snapping a distracted salute that Obi-Wan quickly waves off as he helps heft Rex onto a hoverbed. He fully intends to duck back out and check in with Mace, though things seem well in hand without him, but the ARC with Kix takes off his helmet and glares, until Obi-Wan meekly shuffles to the next hoverbed over.

  He could never refuse Jango, after all. 

  "You repainted your armor," he says conversationally, as Jango pulls a scanner from the bandoleer around his chest and has Obi-Wan roll up his right sleeve. 

  "'Lost the last set to a sarlacc before our deployment to Kiros," Jango snorts, Concord Dawn accent stronger than any of his clones. "Though it looks like your mission had its fair share of excitement." Running the scanner over the electrical burns on Obi-Wan’s arm, Jango raises an eyebrow at the dried blood on the shoulder of his tunics; Obi-Wan honestly doesn't remember if it's his or not.

  And he can only smile at Jango, because even with a decade and a war between them, the corner of Jango's mouth still twitches when he's stressed. "Well, it certainly wasn't boring, my dear," Obi-Wan says, opening the neck of his tunic enough for Jango to stick him with a hypospray that hopefully won't make him too high. "And I can't say I'm looking forward to what is surely going to be a long dip in the bacta tank."

  He gets a laugh for that, and can't think of the last time they had done more than make eye contact from opposite sides of a ship. Perhaps it had been Kamino, when Taun We had first sent for the Jedi to meet the army created for them. 

  Obi-Wan had rather thought Jango dead until then, when he had disappeared from the galaxy abruptly as if he had never lived in it at all. For a time, Obi-Wan believed he had just gotten cold feet, that finally meeting Anakin made it all a little too personal too quickly, but then even Mace could not get a hold of him and no one had seen a Mandalorian bounty hunter in months.

  Their... conversation, Jango's stilted explanations of his absence and of how little he actually knew about the purpose for the clones he helped create, left far too much unsaid, but then Obi-Wan had been sent to Geonosis and, well. It's been nearly two years now, and Obi-Wan isn't sure if he's even seen Jango without his helmet since then. 

  His eyes flick over Obi-Wan’s face, the left side of his lips twitching as if knowing exactly what Obi-Wan is thinking — and he might not put it past him. 

  "Where are Anakin and Ahsoka?" Obi-Wan hears himself ask, when the silence grows heavy with those unsaid words. And he really would like to check in with his padawan, he can't imagine her last month has been a picnic either.

  Jango sticks him with another stim before answering, "Mace sent Skywalker to make sure no slave is missed, and no slaver isn't arrested. As for your new foundling..." That little smile comes back, as Jango nods out the back of the frigate to where someone is cutting a line through the clones guarding their new prisoners. 

  "Oh dear," Obi-Wan mumbles, barely having time to brace himself before Ahsoka is launching herself at him, and all he can think is how relieved he is to see her out of her slave disguise. Jango steps cleanly out of the way to let Ahsoka smother herself in Obi-Wan’s chest, though it doesn’t stop him from starting to prep bacta patches to tide him over until they can get to the Negotiator’s medbay.

  “Hello, little one,” Obi-Wan murmurs, carefully loosening the tight net of his shields for the first time since Zygerria and letting Ahsoka’s presence flood his mind. 

  “It’s good to see you, Master ‘Nobi,” she says into his tunics, and her voice does not waver at all.

  He manages a chuckle, though it does not hold nearly as well as Ahsoka’s, as he feels himself finally relax. Anakin, of course, senses the both of them immediately and prods at their minds, but neither Obi-Wan nor his padawan acknowledge him. “I take it the Queen is dead?”

  Ahsoka sighs and pulls back enough to nod. “Count Dooku was there, Skyguy barely got us all out.”

  “That was a week ago,” Jango adds, not looking up from the datapad he’s logging Obi-Wan’s injuries into. “Even with the Queen giving us the location of the Processing Facility, we had to wait for the 187th to catch up.”

  Running his palm from the top of her head down her hind lek, Ahsoka melts back against him with a Togruta churr he rarely has the pleasure of hearing from her. “Hm, and I imagine Boba was thrilled to work with the ARC troopers.”

  Jango snorts, because they both know Boba is thirteen and his rebellious stage where he wants nothing to do with his father for fear of losing his independence. “Originally, the 104th was the closest battalion, but were held up in their own campaign. ‘Honestly didn’t think we could keep Skywalker from rushing in anyways.”

  And Obi-Wan has to wince at that, because no matter what he does, he can’t seem to find a way to teach Anakin about attachment in words he understands; truthfully, Obi-Wan wouldn’t have had him knighted until he had at least attempted to master that part of his mind, but, well, the War had different opinions.

  “I’m actually just surprised he didn’t try to fight Dooku,” Ahsoka admits, finally releasing Obi-Wan only to hop up on the hoverbed next to him. Jango immediately pulls Obi-Wan’s bare arm back to himself to start slapping the bacta patches over the worst of his burns. “Master Windu had a talk with him, though, I think it was good for him.”

  “I’d like to see that!” Jango barks, only half sarcastically: he knows better than most, the sorts of things Mace Windu can talk someone out of, and if it worked for one ex-slave, why shouldn’t it work on another?

  Ah, perhaps that shared history should not have slipped Obi-Wan’s mind, not here with thousands of freed slaves needing aid for injuries Jango is intimately familiar with.

  “And are you alright?” he asks before he can talk himself out of it, as Jango is cutting his sleeve further back. His brow ticks back up, clearly bewildered by what Obi-Wan could be referring to, but it’s Ahsoka that leans around Obi-Wan to sniff triumphantly up at Jango.

  “I told you he still likes you,” she says, and Jango’s hand freezes on Obi-Wan’s wrist.

  Obi-Wan sighs. “Ahsoka.”

  But instead of denying that he might have actually had such a conversation with Obi-Wan’s padawan, Jango coughs on a laugh. “So you did, edee. To be fair, I did not think that was the issue.”

  Ahsoka rolls her eyes, leaning back into Obi-Wan’s side as he automatically raises his arm to accommodate her. “He thinks he lost his chance, Master ‘Nobi,” she tells him. “Even Cody thinks he’s full of banthashit.”

  Where Obi-Wan feels a little shell-shocked by the turn in conversation, Jango simply keeps that tiny smile — even if it looks bittersweet and self-deprecating now. “Your foundling has spent the last week talking me in circles about this, I almost think she’s as stubborn as you.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment, I think,” Obi-Wan returns, sarcasm an automatic, subconscious response. 

  “I wouldn’t need to talk you in circles if you two just talked to each other.”

  Shaking his head in bemusement, Obi-Wan gently fixes Ahsoka’s slika beads to lay properly around her montrals. “I’m afraid there’s quite a lot of history there, little one; most of which I’m sure Jango did not actually share with you.”

  She wrinkles her nose. “No, he refuses to tell me anything except that you met on a mission. And that he saved your ass from Jabba the Hutt.”

  Obi-Wan snaps his eyes to Jango, who looks absolutely anywhere but at him. “Is that how you remember it going, my dear?”

  “Could we do this later?”

  “Because if I recall correctly, and I do, this is not the first time you’ve lost your armor to a sarlacc.”

  Jango looks to the ceiling for patience. 

-

Mando'a: buir — “parent”, gender neutral  Mand’alor — “Sole ruler”, contended ruler of Mandalore. edee — “teeth”, “jaws”, used here as an affectionate name for Ahsoka. because she teeth.

You must be so sick of alpha and Fordo asks but you’re latest fic has given me angst potential- maybe a one-shot with alpha working with the bad batch to find Fordo post order 66 an him just breaking at the seams when he finds his Vod because he thought he lost Frodo like he lost Sev. Tears and man hugs ensue

Oh I am NEVER sick of Alpha and Fordo asks - they’re such a fun chaotic duo to write for. :D Also, Alpha working with the Bad Batch is something I never knew I needed until I saw your ask and I would absolutely write something with all of them again. I cannot express how difficult it was to not go off on a tangent about Hunter.

In true Sev style, I chose Kashyyyk as the main location for this one. It’s just so useful for these kinds of things.

Also. Y’all. I did not realize until I was four pages into this that I forgot Echo. So uh... whoops?  😅 😂 With that in mind, let me warn you that this is WAY longer than the other fics. I have no idea what happened. I have no idea what I’m doing.

Also also, thank goodness for Wookiepedia lmao

Edit with tags: @dudewhynotthis @merspots @the-mandalorian-clone-lover @delta-the-mando (taglist is open!) 

“Captain.” The sergeant keeps his distance even now, face inscrutable as he surveys Alpha. 

“Alpha,” he corrects half-heartedly, more for the sergeant’s sake than his own. 

“Alpha,” Hunter amends. “We’ll be entering the Mid Rim soon - maybe an hour, hour and a half tops.”

“Good to know.” Alpha knows he sounds despondent at best, but he’s hit enough dead ends by now to know all too well this will likely be a fruitless endeavor. There’s nowhere in the galaxy safe from him - not when his brother’s life is hanging in balance.

But it’s a big galaxy, with little regard for individual yearning or emotion. Alpha can vow to upend the galaxy as much as he likes, but the fact is they’ve only so much time, and only so many resources, and...

And maybe Hunter picks up on that, in that way of his as he observes Alpha without further comment. The sergeant is as much his vod as anyone else Alpha has encountered. Still beyond him sometimes, a little too other for Alpha to ever fully mesh with him or his brothers, but he’s a good soldier. A good man. 

“We’ve always got room for another,” are Hunter’s parting words as he makes his way back to the cockpit. 

If you find out your brother was dead all along. 

Alpha doubts it was anything less than a genuine offer, but it isn’t the only route. Not until I’ve exhausted every other option. And even then....

It doesn’t do, to let himself become so intertwined with a brother until he isn’t entirely sure he knows who he is without the other. He’d tried, both for his brothers and for his own peace of mind, to put a stop to it before it went too far. And maybe that was Jango getting in his head more than Alpha ever should have allowed, but he’d thought it was the right thing to do.

Sometimes I can’t help but wonder...

________________________

“ - you know as well as I do we’ve been going in circles for weeks now - ”

“Yeah, you might’ve mentioned that once or twice…”

“You said it yourself - we’ll get ourselves killed if we aren’t careful.”

“So we’ll be careful.” Hunter’s voice holds a note of finality. “We can keep rehashing this conversation, or we can help a vod.”

Alpha doesn’t catch the muttered reply, but it’s hardly amenable, if Hunter’s sigh is anything to go by. He can’t blame them, really - Fordo isn’t their brother, and outside of combat they’ve little common ground. And it’s only natural for Crosshair to raise the questions none of them are yet ready to face. Alpha thinks he could learn to like the man, given time. 

He reigns in his thoughts before entering the cockpit. The least he can do is put on a rational front. This whole thing isn’t at all rational, but the Bad Batch seem to understand better than others. It runs deeper than brotherhood here, whatever it is, and Alpha is irrepressibly reminded of Fordo, somehow - 

(And osik, does that thought burn, dig under his skin to remind him once again that he failed, that should he redeem himself it will be not on his terms but likely an inconsequential whim of a galaxy that cares nothing for them or everything they’ve fought so hard to hold on to - )

“Y’know, I’m not sure we’ve ever been to Kashyyyk,” Wrecker muses. “That’s a first.”  If he’s trying to divert Alpha’s attention from Crosshair, it’s a skillful effort that almost takes Alpha aback. “‘Course, I only remember the fun parts,” he adds as an impish afterthought.

“Anything with explosives, you mean?” Alpha asks drily. 

Wrecker grins. “Something like that.”

You and Fordo would get along fine.

What leaves his mouth is, “I don’t suppose anyone has any relevant information about this place?”

Right on cue, Tech pipes up from his position alongside Crosshair. “Actually…”

Tech is just as much of an efficient distraction in his own right. It’s not exactly the height of strategy on Alpha’s part, but once again it redirects attention. He has no doubt Hunter sees right through it; still, the man has enough tact to refrain from commenting.

You understand, I think, Alpha decides, watching exasperation and amusement play across Hunter’s face in turns as his brothers’ bickering fills the cockpit. You would go to hell and back for them, wouldn’t you, Sergeant? 

Hunter casts him a wary glance. Alpha holds his gaze.

There’s too much we can’t say. It’s okay, vod - I think I’m starting to understand too.

________________________

Kashyyyk is dishearteningly vast, all sprawling jungles and endless island chains set on a swath of ocean that dissects the planet’s hemispheres. Getting in was no easy task, what with the Imperial blockade cutting off the planet from others in its sector. But Tech’s adroit piloting had come through, and they’d slipped past the blockade with little disturbance.

“You really think your buddy is here?” Crosshair asks dubiously, surveying the area with a distinct air of displeasure.

“I’ve seen the records,” Alpha says, as much to reassure himself as the other man. “The Empire’s tighter with the book-keeping, I’ll give them that. Fordo’s unit lost contact not long before Order Sixty-six went down. If they made it out, it would be on record somewhere.”

“And if they didn’t?”

Alpha battles his temper into submission before replying. “Then they would be confirmed KIA. But they’re still listed as missing as of two weeks ago.”

“Sounds like you’re leaving an awful lot to chance,” Crosshair opines. There isn’t malice in his voice so much as an unmistakable note of disapproval. “What’s your plan if it turns out they were just waiting for reinforcements and pulled out days ago? That leaves us here in the heart of Imperial occupation.”

“I haven’t forgotten,” Alpha says grimly. “But if they lost comms before the order came through, then there’s a chance they aren’t with the Empire. Their main focus would be survival, not falling in line nice and neat like Palpatine expects.”

It’s clear there are a number of objections rising to the forefront of Crosshair’s mind, but the man keeps them to himself. There’s a conflict brewing there, Alpha knows, but that’s a matter to address at another time. 

“There’s an area south of here where all comm signals go dead,” Tech announces, tapping furiously at the device mounted on his vambrace. “According to intel, the Wookies call it the Black Forest.”

“Sounds inviting,” Hunter says. “What’s the deal with it?”

“A prison ship crashed there centuries ago,” Tech relays. “The Wookies believe it’s cursed, so they avoid it whenever possible. It’s possible Fordo and whoever was left were driven back by the Seps - or it was a desperate bid and he was banking on the droids not following somewhere they can’t maneuver well. But why cut himself off from allies…?”

“The forward operating base was set up in Kachirho,” Alpha muses aloud “There was another commando squad deployed here, but they were retasked shortly after Order Sixty-six. If Fordo’s here, I doubt he would hang around anywhere with high Imperial activity.”

If he were operating alone, the decision would be simple. But he has the welfare of four other men to consider now; one wrong move, and they’ll all end up on the business end of a blaster.

With that in mind, Alpha looks to Hunter. “Sergeant. What do you think?”

“It’s your call,” Hunter answers. “If you have reason to think your brother is hiding out here, then I think it’s worth taking a look. So long as we go careful, I don’t see why the Imperials should notice us.”

Wrecker’s chuckle fills the comms. “Famous last words.”

_________________________

For all that they have a reputation for being unorthodox - a reputation that is doubtless justly earned - the Bad Batch can pull off stealth pretty well, too. It comes as a bit of a surprise, if Alpha is being honest, but if nothing else the overarching threat of Hunter’s wrath is enough to keep them in line. 

“Keep an eye out for slavers,” Tech warns. “The whole planet has been a hotspot for them ever since the CIS first let them in.”

It’d be just our luck to run into slavers, Alpha thinks wryly. Individually they’re not much of a threat, but a group of Trandoshans spells trouble for anyone. Even without the training to back it up, their brutality can overpower even an ARC trooper. ‘Course, it’d be just like you to get into a mess like that, Fordo…

“We’ll be a bigger target if we travel as a group,” Hunter says. 

“If we split up we might as well ask for a death sentence,” Alpha cautions. Typically his first choice would be to operate alone, but between the slavers, the Imperials, and the remnants of the Separatist forces, he’s starting to think their strength might lie in numbers this time. 

Alpha mulls it over. Greater numbers means slower going. If we split up, we’ll be able to cover more ground. It’ll be risky, but - payoff is worth it. 

“We’ll move faster this way,” Hunter says, echoing Alpha’s thoughts. “Wrecker, Tech, you’re with me. Cross…” He fixes his brother with a stern stare. “Don’t do anything stupid. Alpha has my full permission to stop you by any means necessary.”

Alpha rewards the sergeant with a wolfish grin. “I’ll hold you to that.”

He can’t read Crosshair half as well as the others, but the sniper doesn’t appear altogether displeased. He merely shrugs when Alpha jerks his head towards the route they’ll be following, and trails after him without argument.

Silence lays thick over the jungle. There’s an odd rustle here and there, interspersed with faint growls from time to time, but progress is relatively smooth. Alpha takes pains to remain on guard; just because he can’t see a threat doesn’t mean they’re in the clear. 

Before long the silence is disconcerting. Given the planet’s Wookie population, there should be regular movement around them, or some sign of existence. But this stretch of the jungle is oddly lacking. 

“This doesn’t feel right,” Crosshair mutters. 

“Guess no one’s home,” Alpha answers absently, scrutizining the terrain. “Look - there’s no sign of a fight. Maybe no one was here to begin with.”

“Kachirho isn’t too far from here,” Crosshair points out. “You don’t think it’s a little odd that this path hasn’t been used at all?”

“It is,” Alpha allows, “but look at it this way. We’re traveling the way we’ve been trained to in this kind of setting. The Wookies probably have their own methods for getting around.”

“It’s still weird,” Crosshair decides. “And if your brother really was here, we’d have found evidence of that, too.”

He isn’t wrong, but it nonetheless stings to hear the man voice the doubtful thoughts that have been creeping up on Alpha. Still, we’ve come this far. What have we got to lose?

(More than he’s willing to surrender. But Crosshair doesn’t need to know that.)

“Let’s keep moving,” Alpha says, sharper than he intends. 

“Hang on,” Crosshair says suddenly. “Contact - ”

Alpha pivots in time to see a Trandoshan emerge from the surrounding foliage. The lizard is taller and more solid than he previously anticipated; instead of hitting it head-on like he initially planned, Alpha redirects in order to avoid being gutted on the lizard’s knife. 

He hears the shot and the telltale thump of the lizard falling to the ground. As Alpha picks himself up, Crosshair scans the area through the scope of his rifle. 

“Oh, shab,” the sniper hisses. 

It doesn’t take long for Alpha to locate the cause of Crosshair’s disgruntlement. A group of Trandoshans lurches towards them. Alpha does a rapid assessment: each lizard is packing some sort of ranged weapon - including slugthrowers, he notes unenthusiastically - and most are carrying an assortment of knives.

“Ideas?” Crosshair asks tersely. 

“They’ll just follow us if we run,” Alpha says. “It’ll save us trouble in the long run if we take them now.” 

“I can see why Hunter likes you,” Crosshair says, oddly nonchalant considering the circumstances, and fires. 

With Crosshair covering ranged attacks, Alpha elects the more up-close-and-personal option. The slavers have the advantage of size, but Trandoshans aren’t renowned for their intelligence. As long as he stays in motion the risk of having his throat slit is greatly reduced. 

Alpha targets a straggler first. He hits low, knocking the lizard off balance and sending it staggering into another. The other makes a grab for him, but Alpha is already ramming his vibroblade into the first slaver’s exposed neck. Using the limp body as a buffer, Alpha pushes against the other lizard, trying to force it onto its back foot. 

Just as he feels his opponent’s defense start to give, another three descend on him. Cursing, Alpha throws himself aside before they can hem him in. One of the slavers has enough presence of mind to bring his knife down on Alpha’s unprotected back; the force of the blow has him crashing to the ground. 

Alpha scrambles for a foothold, but one of the lizards seizes his leg in a vicelike grip. He writhes instinctively, kicking out with his other foot. He feels the impact more than sees it and wrenches himself free. 

Just as a third lizard fills the other’s place, there’s a crack from Crosshair’s rifle, and the lizard topples. Alpha springs to his feet to avoid being crushed by several hundred kilos of Trandoshan. The others are wary now, trying to divide their attention between him and Crosshair. 

Alpha doesn’t give them time to choose. This time he uses his blaster to put a round through the closest target. It’s not quite enough to put the lizard out of commission entirely, so he follows up with a quick succession of bolts. 

It’s not exactly an even match, but things aren’t going as badly as he first feared, Alpha thinks. No sooner does the thought cross his mind than his helmet flashes a warning. He turns to deflect the attack coming from behind, but he moves too late and steps directly into the strike. 

The slaver’s curved knife skids off Alpha’s breastplate and sinks into his bodysuit in the gap between the cuirass and the shoulder bell. Alpha manages to pull away, but not before the knife catches the underside of his arm and slices a gash halfway down his bicep.

A line of pain sears through his arm. There’s no doubt the Trandoshan cut deep into the muscle. That arm is effectively useless now; Alpha grimly switches his knife to the other hand. 

He doesn’t have eyes on Crosshair from his current position, but the rasping breaths and occasional curses over the comms suggest the sniper isn’t having an easy time of it either. Time to fall back and reassess.

“Let’s pull back. We might be able to lose them.” Alpha bites the inside of his cheek to suppress a hiss of pain when his wounded arm is jostled. “We can’t take them now, at any rate.”

“You might want to rethink that, alor’ad…”

Crosshair jerks his head to indicate the slavers pouring into the area. There’s a slim chance they’ll be able to slip by, but not without risking serious injury. Slowing down to accommodate a bad hit would mean certain death or capture.

Pinned down. Shabla brilliant. 

Alpha makes an effort to keep his rapidly rising alarm in check. “We’ll have to hold them off, then.”

“There’s no way,” Crosshair objects. “We’re outnumbered eight to one.”

Alpha sends a slaver sprawling rather than answer. He can see it as plainly as Crosshair, but he’s not going to lay down and die, not when his brother is still out there somewhere, not when there’s still a chance they could pull this off -

He hasn’t been this close in weeks and it isn’t his place to gamble anyone else’s life but his own, but even now he can’t bring himself to give in and he understands in a sudden flash of clarity that this is where he will always fail - because he has a foothold, now, and even though all logic points to turning back for once he can’t give in - 

An arm clamps around his neck. Alpha thrashes, trying to throw his attacker off, but now that he’s been caught off guard the lizard has an advantage. His vision begins to blur at the edges and he redoubles his efforts, fueled in no small part by panic at being unable to draw breath. 

He doesn’t know where Crosshair is anymore. He can hardly see beyond his own hands, scrabbling desperately at the arm locked around his neck. 

No sooner does his vision begin to fade than the crushing pressure on his neck abruptly loosens. Alpha hits the ground gracelessly, coughing violently as he tries to inhale. His breath rattles in his throat, but his vision gradually returns. 

He lurches to his feet and assumes a defensive stance as best he can. He’s lost track of how many slavers are still standing - too many is his best estimate.

But the man standing before him isn’t an enemy. He’s -

“Vod,” Fordo says softly. 

Alpha can only stare at his brother in stunned silence, momentarily deaf to the ongoing struggle around them. Fordo....

“Later,” his brother promises. 

______________________

“So how’d you end up running with them?” Fordo asks with a nod towards the Bad Batch. 

“It’s complicated,” Alpha says lightly. “Too much to unpack now, at any rate.”

Fordo laughs. He’s battered and weary, with something lurking in his gaze Alpha can’t quite decipher yet, but it’s Fordo, and that’s more than enough. 

“It’s quiet here,” Fordo remarks. “I like that.”

“‘S nice,” Alpha agrees. 

They’re still hovering just above the surface. Tentative. It’s not exactly what Alpha is accustomed to, but for Fordo’s sake he lets his brother take the lead. 

“Everything’s gone sideways, hasn’t it,” Fordo says suddenly. 

“It has,” Alpha admits. There’s no use pretending otherwise. “But we’ll find a way through.”

Fordo flashes a small smile. “You’re good at that.”

Alpha merely shrugs. There’s a thousand other things he wants to say, but he hasn’t the faintest clue where to begin. Finally he ventures carefully, “Y’know, for a while now I thought this mission did you in.”

Fordo lets out a long sigh. “I was starting to think it might, myself.”

“I…” Alpha breaks off, startled by the sudden pressure behind his eyes. It worsens when he tries to continue. “I don’t know what I would’ve - ”

He falters again. I care more than I should. I never should’ve let that happen, but even now I don’t know if I regret it.

“Alpha,” Fordo says softly, and pulls him into an embrace.

Alpha doesn’t know how much time passes before he finally disentangles himself from Fordo as gently as he can and scrubs at the hot trails on his face. He can’t quite bring himself to feel any shame over it. He’s never been given to such displays, but… Fordo is his vod. 

“So what’s the plan, alor’ad?” Fordo asks with a familiar note of mischief in his voice.

Alpha smiles despite himself. “It’s a big galaxy.”

“We’ve got time.”

“Yeah,” Alpha laughs. “We have time.”

Hey remember that Jango Rights a Wrong fic WIP part?

Here’s a completed chapter 1! I probably won’t exactly post this to AO3, i dunno i haven’t decided. X3

Jango made a grave mistake. He wasn't so prideful that he couldn't admit that. He had thought; had been told by Nala Se; that the clones for the project were nothing more than organic droids. The laughter of his son proved otherwise.

“Buir!” Boba’s voice rang out from a hallway as Jango crept closer.

“No, no that’s Alpha-17, vod’ika,” a cadet said with a soft laugh.

“I’ll take it as a compliment. Come on, let’s find your Buir, Boba.” Alpha-17’s voice was soft, a near perfect replica of Jango’s own when speaking to his son.

“There’s no way we can plan a little longer?”

“No, Kote, Prime will be worried about his ad’ika.”

Jango’s heart was clenching and his stomach dropped.

He made a horrible mistake. They were human, they were his family; his sons; his responsibility. Jango Fett would not let this stand any longer. He met Alpha-17 and the cadet; he recognised them immediately as Kote; as he turned the corner. Boba was in the Alpha’s arms, smiling and giggling.

“Buir! Look! It’s Buir!” Boba was beaming and pointing to the Alpha.

Jango smiled, his heart full of adoration for his son; before he glanced at Alpha-17. The man’s face was impassable, blank and a perfect mask. Kote was having a harder time hiding his emotions; fighting a smile that was brought on by Boba.

/Sithspit...they’re the same AGE,/ Jango thought as he took the five year old, looking to Kote. He looked ten, but he had been decanted at four years old; the same age as Boba.

“Thank you,” he said softly before looking up at the other. “I...I’ve realized I’ve made a colossal mistake.”

“I don’t understand, sir.” Alpha-17 furrowed his brows only slightly. It pissed Jango off, that he was the cause of the mask, and that the man hid because of what Jango had ordered.

“Stop. I know they lied to me. You’re not some organic droid. I heard you and Kote talking to Boba.” Jango looked at the two as he cradled Boba to his chest. “I made a mistake and now...I need to correct it.”

Kote’s eyes were wide, a tremor visible on his bottom lip.

“Does-does that mean we’re getting deco-”

“No.” Jango said firmly as kneeled and pulled the boy into his arms. “No, I will never let that happen again.”

“Cody is my vod, Buir?” Boba asked with a grin as he held onto Kote as well.

“Yes. yes, Kote is your vod.” Jango smiled, glancing up at Alpha; his eyes wide in shock. “You are all my ad, and it’s time I started making things right.”

“I...of course. I, what do we need to do?” Alpha finally let the mask drop and Jango let Kote take Boba, since his son was far too interested in clinging to his brother than father for now.

“First, I need to speak with Nala Se,” Jango said, standing and sneering into the wall. “Everything needs to stop and the littles need to be cared for. Then I need to find a ship to get you all off Kamino. But...I don't want to move infants, it’ll put more stress on them.”

“Hold on, Prime,” Alpha said raising a hand. “We can take care of our own. The other alpha’s and I have been looking after littles.” He motioned down to Kote who was happily letting Boba hug onto him. “And the cadets could do well with some bonding time. We can teach them what we need.”

“Jango. It’s Jango,” Fett corrected without malice. “It still isn’t right to move them when they’ll need to be cared for. The other thing that needs to be done, is correcting the age acceleration. I don’t want to wait but, it may be best to lessen the stress on raising a few hundred toddlers.” Jango smiled looking at Boba and Kote. “I already had my hands full with this one.”

“Then we’ll take it one step at a time, Jango.” Alpha put his hand on Jango’s shoulder and smiled.

Jango nodded in return and exhaled. “One step at a time. I’m going to make this right.”

Nala Se looked up with barely contained disinterest from her work as Jango walked into her lab in his full kit. It wasn’t that unseen, after all if he was leaving for a mission he would be kitted up; but he usually wouldn’t have his buy’ce on or have loaded blasters with no safety clips on in their holsters.

“Fett, can I help you?”

“You can start by stopping all ‘production’ of clones. Then, you can tell me what you’ve done to my sons.”

“We have done nothing to your son as agreed. He is a perfect genetic match to yourself.” Nala Se had the gall to look unperturbed. “As for the production, you have no control over that.”

Jango drew his blaster and pointed it at her head. “I’m their Father. I’m talking about ALL of my sons! You lied to me. These boys are not some organic flesh droids, they have souls, they are human!”

“A soul is not a scientifically proven fact, and they are human by genetic design.” The Kaminoan looked at the blaster for a brief moment before looking back to Jango.

“I’ll kill you and get the answers from somewhere else then, bitch.”

“Wait!” Another scientist, a younger Kaminoan female walked over. “Wait please. There’s no need for bloodshed.”

Jango turned his head only slightly to look at the other, keeping his blaster leveled at Nala Se. “I’m listening.”

“Nala Se is wrong, wholly and completely, in what she has done. Her detachment from the process of raising and caring for the clones has left her...clinical.”

“Seta, you best choose your next words wisely.”

Jango snarled. “Shut up, Nala. I have no qualms with killing demagolka. Although maybe I should leave that to the ones who wronged.”

“Please, Mister Fett.” Seta pleaded, bowing her head. “Stay your judgement until myself and the others can leave?”

“Continue what you were saying, Seta.” Jango said, softly and kindly.

“Of course. She is the one who insisted upon mental discipline and training. The lack of touch for the littles, the...decommissioning of any individual not fitting the preferred outlook after the Alpha class. Her methodologies are abhorrent to everyone not in her personal class. I have argued with her and her decisions of decommissioning individuals with non-life threatening mutations or non-desirable abnormalities.”

“And to think, you are my sister.” Nala Se snarled.

“Your sister has done the right thing. I’ll give you a choice, Nala. You and those who agree with your methodologies can leave and go to another city and I never see you again here, or I let your underlings go, and have 99 and the Alpha and Null class take their rightful vengeance.”

“You dare…”

“He is giving you a chance to not have your genes erased from the pool.” Seta Se said, lifting her head proudly. “I have to agree with him. It is your choice to make.”

Jango let the satisfaction of seeing Nala Se’s usually calm and detached face twist into barely contained rage as she stood and left. He tapped on his comm.

“She and her ilk are leaving. If you see them back you have my encouragement to kill them in any way you deem necessary.”

“Yessir, BuirI,” Fordo said with a tone that Jango knew was the same one Jango had on various missions when he got to exact justice.

“What would you have us do, Mister Fett?” Seta asked, her hands folded politely over her middle.

“Any and all viable clones; ones that don’t have life threatening mutations; are to be cared for and given all medical treatment needed to ensure the best life possible. I want current Clones with abnormalities given medical treatment to correct or ensure a long healthy life. All cloning is to stop. I have to talk to the trainers next to stop any advanced combat training. Also..” Jango put the blaster away and pulled his buy’ce off, looking at Seta. “Is there any way to reverse the accelerated aging? For the littles especially. Any command, trooper, or cadet that’s nearing the age of 9 standard years or over should also be treated.”

Seta smiled and nodded. “Of course. We will begin treatments immediately.” The younger Kaminoan scientist paused, her smile turning soft. “I’m glad that...you came to your senses. It was breaking the hearts of quite a few of your trainers and many of the caretakers to see these children this way.”

“I’m just sorry it’s taken me more than six years, but it’s a start.” Jango smiled, and saw the other Kaminoans in the office turn and begin to issue new orders.

(ONE SHOT) taab'echaaj'la STAR WARS

(“Rex.” Keeli says suddenly, like he was playing with the vowels.

7567 looks up from his datapad in bemusement at his batchmate’s sudden voice, eyebrow raising in confusion, but Keeli only smiles back at him in excitement, dark eyes glittering. They’re in their bunk room, surrounded by the mutters of their squadmates and aching from the day’s training, and 7567 had been going over some of the Command-class courses Cody had slipped him when no one was watching. “You say something?”

Keeli’s grin widens, and he kicks his legs through the open air above ‘67’s head from where he sits on the edge of his pod. “You haven’t picked a name yet, ‘67.” He points out, and 7567 rolls his eyes.

“I don’t want to pick one.”

Keeli’s lips pressed together, eyes flashing with quiet anger, “They’re not going to decommission you for having a name.” He says, and 7567 sighs, putting down his datapad to give his brother a blank stare.

“I’d rather not risk it, thanks.” He runs a hand though the short bristles of white-blond hair. Keeping it so short helped 7567 slip under the notice of the scientists and trainers that would take any excuse to decommission a mutant, even after the Prime had ordered them to stop removing clones with nothing more than aesthetic differences - as long as 7567 stayed useful, he stayed alive. The harsh white lights of the facility made it hard to see the colour of his hair when it was shaved down, and without it, 7567 looked just like any other clone.

“Aw, come on ‘67. Even Mojo and Drayk chose names and they’re boring.” Keeli pouts dramatically, ignoring Drayk’s mutter to leave him out of it and dodging the boot Mojo had aimed for his head. “Loosen up a bit! You’re the only one who hasn’t picked one yet.”

“And I don’t plan to.” ‘67 says with a bland shrug, ignoring the increased intensity of Keeli’s pout with practised ease, turning back to his datapad. If he looks at his brother’s face, he’ll crumble and give in, 7567 knows, because always does.

Fordo picks on him endlessly for being too soft, but ‘67 can’t deny his only batchmate anything.

“Well,” Keeli grumbles, and 7567 ducks under his next kick without missing a beat, “If you won’t pick one, then I will.”

“Right.” ‘67 drawls, rolling his eyes, but he may as well humour him or he’d be unbearable. “As long as it’s not something as stupid as ‘Keeli’.”

His brother squawks in offense, and ‘67 catches his following kick without so much as blinking. A strong tug on the offending foot overbalanced Keeli, sending him toppling off of his pod and to the floor in a flurry of flailing limbs and high-pitched cursing his batchmate must have picked up from Wolffe.

Around them, their squad laughs.

“You were asking for that, Keels.” Herc teases from his pod, and under him Styles cackles while Keeli whines and pouts on the floor.

Only his pride was hurt, but it would heal.

“You’re a sheb, Rex.”

‘67 blinks in shock, looking up from the scrolling tactics on his screen once more when Keeli speaks, “What?”

“You’re hanging out with Alpha-17’s boys too much.” His brother whines dramatically, leveraging himself back up only to flop over once more when he reaches ‘67’s pod. 7567 yelps when a sharp elbow catches him in the ribs. “You’ve become a sheb yourself. It’s photosynthesis.”

“Pretty sure that’s not what photosynthesis is, asshole.” He grumbles, rubbing his aching ribs, before squinting at Keeli. “Why Rex?”

Keeli laughs in response, but there’s an odd knowing glint in his eyes that makes ‘67’s stomach twist nervously. “Because you’ll be the best of us someday.”)

 

Rex looks up only out of habit when the doors to his office slide open, barely acknowledging the brother that stands there before dropping his gaze back to the casualty report he’s holding in his hands. He’s numb, only a shell that keeps moving out of necessity and habit as he stares at the list of dead in front of him.

It was his fault. All these men had died because the 501st hadn’t come to back them up.

From his door, Cody sighs - a heavy, mournful sound - as he steps further into the office, letting the door slide shut behind him. The beep of the lock being engaged is loud in the silence that follows as his older brother walks towards his desk, but still Rex doesn’t look up from the one name on the list that stands out to him the most.

Something heavy and hollow clatters when it’s placed on his desk. “I went to their last known coordinates.” Cody’s voice is soft and gentle as he speaks, bringing back memories of all the times his older brother would let him crawl into his pod to hide back on Kamino, but with a sort of edge to it that Cody had only recently picked up. It’s heavy with loss, and Cody had had to learn it to comfort grieving men who had lost brothers and friends to the War. “He would have wanted you to have it.”

Rex finally tears his eyes away from Ponds' report, lifting his gaze, and his breath catches. He's  frozen, staring at the grimy helmet covered with dirt and marred by scorch marks, but the distinctive design still stands out proudly in red. He fumbles with the datapad, letting it drop onto his lap without resistance, and he reaches for the helmet without even being fully aware of what he's doing. Shaking hands trace the curving horns, and Rex's breathing shivers.

Keeli.

It makes everything feel horrifically real to have his brother’s helmet sitting accusingly on his desk, like he can’t ignore the truth anymore.

“I’m sorry, Rex.” Cody says softly, and Rex has to drag his eyes away from the damaged plastoid to watch his older brother kneel beside him. His armour is still caked with dust, and spotted with ash and scorch marks, and there’s deep, dark bags under his eyes - Cody must have jumped over from the Negotiator the moment he was done reporting to the High Generals, all to bring Rex the only piece of his batchmate that was left.

“He’s really gone.” Rex murmurs, feeling lost, and Cody reaches forwards to gently squeeze the back of his neck. His eyes burn, and he closes them in shame, leaning into Cody’s hold as he breathes, trying to stop himself from sobbing like a cadet. He’s a Captain now, he loses brothers everyday, so many on his own orders. They’d always known the risk, they always knew that any day could be their last, so why was he having so much trouble accepting that Keeli was gone.

He’s the last now, the only one left of their batch.

“Nu kyr’adyc, shi taab’echaaj’la.” Cody says, pulling Rex close and offering him a mirshmure’cya that the Captain leans into with a quiet hiccup.

“Not gone, merely marching far away.” He echoes thickly.

Keeli is dead. He had died on Ryloth with his General and men, waiting for reinforcements that would never come because the 501st had been forced to retreat. They had lost a third of their numbers before even reaching the surface. Keeli is dead, because Rex had failed to get to him, and no one else had been rerouted until it was already too late to help them.

Safe in his office, with only Cody as a witness, Rex lets himself crumble. He breaks, sobbing into Cody’s shoulder like a lost child, mourning his loss, because outside of his brother’s arms he needs to be strong. Tomorrow, Rex will need to put himself back together and put on a show. He’ll need to be Captain Rex, unshakable and strong, because that’s what his men needed, but for now he can just be Rex. With Cody, he doesn’t have to pretend, because his brother is always there to catch him; a solid support that would help him glue his broken parts back together every time he shatters.

“You’ll be the last of us.” Keeli had said once, his eyes heavy and knowing, and there had been something powerful buzzing under his skin.

Rex had always hoped that Keeli would be wrong.

♪ ♪

For every ♪ in my inbox I’ll post a song I listen to for inspiration.

//   I can’t believe I almost forgot about these two. They’re quintessential. The Protomen’s cover of Iron Maiden’s The Trooper is loud and action packed, with the lyrics changed from the original Russians to the much more fitting for my purposes Robots. It’s literally perfect for Clone Troopers.

     Also, from The Protomen comes their cover of Styx’s Mr. Roboto. I associate this one pretty heavily with the Dark Trooper program. Look, I really like cyborgs, okay?

You're wondering who I am (secret secret I've got a secret)Machine or mannequin (secret secret I've got a secret)With parts made in Japan Manaan (secret secret I've got a secret)I am the modren man

I'm not a robot without emotions. I'm not what you seeI've come to help you with your problems, so we can be freeI'm not a hero, I'm not the saviour, forget what you knowI'm just a man whose circumstances went beyond his control

     He’s often mistaken for just another Imperial battle droid, when in reality he’s just a human with some top-of-the-line modifications and scary armor. He hasn’t had much choice in things throughout his life, especially when it game to the Dark Trooper program, since they’d have done it to him whether he agreed to it or not. He’s not the Hero of the Republic he was during the Clone Wars, since he uses these new abilities to do the Empire’s dirty work.

I am the modren man (secret secret I've got a secret)Who hides behind a mask (secret secret I've got a secret)So no one else can see (secret secret I've got a secret)My true identity 

     He rarely takes off his helmet, and does as much as he possibly can to destroy any associations between who he is now (walking genocide) and who he was before (Captain Fordo), so that his name and reputation is not tarnished. Making it seem like he’s a completely different individual to anyone that doesn't already know him, basically.

★ FILL IN THE QUESTIONS AS IF YOU ARE BEING INTERVIEWED FOR AN ARTICLE AND YOU WERE YOUR MUSE.

TAGGED BY: @kyberled​ TAGGING: @addaspotofmaraniumtothewarhead​, @arc-77​, @mandalorian-huntress​ (for whenever you return) and well whoever else so cares to do so

1. WHAT IS YOUR NAME? "The name’s Vibes.”

2. WHAT IS YOUR REAL NAME? “CT-20-0284 or ARC-0284 if you prefer to be technical.”

3. DO YOU KNOW WHY YOU’RE CALLED THAT? “That’s just the designation I was given when I came out of the tube. The name is stems from the days as a cadet. They say I have a vibrant personality.”

4. ARE YOU SINGLE OR TAKEN? “Single. That’s all you need to know.”

5. WHAT ARE YOUR POWERS AND ABILITIES? “None? I’m not exactly imbued with any special abilities. Just your typical clone.”

6. WHAT COLOR ARE YOUR EYES? “Brown”

7. HAVE YOU EVER DYED YOUR HAIR? “Blue. It’s the signature color.”

8. DO YOU HAVE ANY FAMILY MEMBERS? “I guess technically the several million other clones are brothers of sorts. Otherwise I’d say it’s just me.”

9. DO YOU HAVE ANY PETS? “No. Don’t exactly have much time or space for one. Although I hear some species are quite nice to have as companions.”

10. TELL ME ABOUT SOMETHING YOU DON’T LIKE. “That thing raging across the galaxy. And those who do not view me as a living being.”

11. DO YOU HAVE ANY HOBBIES OR ACTIVITIES YOU DO IN YOUR SPARE TIME? “What spare time? If only that existed in quantities larger than five minutes, I’d consider taking something up. In all seriousness though, I have dabbled in a few things. I guess teaching myself a second language could count as one. Another may be my growing expertise in teas. Oh and certainly music. That gets me through a lot of dull times.”

12. HAVE YOU EVER HURT ANYONE BEFORE? “I can count quite a few. Some were intentional, some were not.”

13. HAVE YOU EVER… KILLED ANYONE? “This is a war. And I am a soldier in this war. So I think you know the answer to that.”

14. WHAT KIND OF ANIMAL ARE YOU? “That’s an excellent question. Technically I’m a human. But that depends on who you ask.”

15. NAME YOUR WORST HABITS. “The whole alcohol issue. That’s probably the worst of it. Don’t know where that came from exactly or how it happened ((//Yes he does)). It’s caused a few issues, including assault on a superior officer. Not exactly my finest of moments. Other things include teeth grinding, which typically only sets in when I get particularly nervous. I also have an extraordinarily terrible habit of avoiding eye contact when speaking with superiors. It certainly must make me seem to be not confident or uncomfortable in their presence. That’s not the case, I can say that much.”

16. DO YOU LOOK UP TO ANYONE? “I can’t say that there’s a figure in my existence that is really someone I want to be like. That’s not to say I don’t like people, but what is the point of striving to be like someone when you can never be? I should say I don’t look up to anyone in that sense. There are a handful of beings who have traits that I certainly admire. Fordo would probably be one. That man is one of the most professional troopers I’ve ever encountered. Ever. Bes’laar is another thanks to her fierce independence.”

17. GAY, STRAIGHT, OR BISEXUAL? “Clone. Curved.”

18. DO YOU GO TO SCHOOL? “I guess training that I received as a cadet counts.”

19. DO YOU EVER WANT TO MARRY AND HAVE KIDS SOMEDAY? “What?”

20. DO YOU HAVE ANY FANS? “Not that I know of.”

21. WHAT ARE YOU MOST AFRAID OF? “Oh my. Total failure and rejection.”

22. WHAT DO YOU USUALLY WEAR? “Armor. A bucket. A kama.”

23. DO YOU LOVE SOMEONE? “Once. Or at least I thought I did. That was sometime ago. ”

24. WHAT CLASS ARE YOU? “I don’t think we clones are considered to be a class in society. If we were it’d be at the bottom. However, within the GAR, I’m classed as a Lieutenant.”

25. HOW MANY FRIENDS DO YOU HAVE? “Bes’laar, and Commander Ellery for certain. I’d trust those two with my life. I’d categorize Jyn, Fordo, Scorch, General Ti and a handful of other clones as excellent acquaintances. Not quite friends but close. Then again I’d trust all those cool beings with my life as well. The rest that I did call friends are all gone. This is a war after all.

26. WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON PIE? “Yes.”

27. FAVORITE DRINK? “Tea. Without a doubt. Although some would argue with me on this point.

29. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE PLACE? “I’ve been to so many locations and planets that it’s difficult to pick out one. In general anywhere that has sheer natural beauty works well for me. Moderately nice climates are alright too.”

30. ARE YOU INTERESTED IN SOMEONE? “Once I was.”

31. WHAT’S YOUR DICK SIZE? “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

32. WOULD YOU RATHER SWIM IN THE LAKE OR THE OCEAN? “It’s water, so what does it matter.”

33. WHAT’S YOUR ‘TYPE’? “I guess someone who cares for me as me?”

34. ANY FETISHES? “What’s it to you? My kinks are personal business.”

35. TOP OR BOTTOM? DOMINANT OR SUBMISSIVE?

;)

36. CAMPING, OR INDOORS?

“Camping, seeing as that is the majority of what I do for sleeping accomodations.”

37. ARE YOU WAITING FOR THIS INTERVIEW TO BE OVER? “You sure there isn’t another question? Sure?”

Oxen of the Sun

Who could know that Lydgate's prescription would not go to dinner after winning a boatrace he had no objection in general to Ladislaw's coming, said Lydgate, coloring slightly. The complete unfitness of the shallowest character, was not offended by his auditors and won hearty eulogies from all points of view, inwardly debating whether it would be a playactor, then death grapples us, and looked at the cost of feminine fashion appear an occupation for Bedlam. It was evening when he was mean in fortunes and for that—he had to guard against and what not. But he said dissembling, as it suited him, she had been greater, circumstance would have appeared to him simply a penny for his coming up-stairs with a laudable fortitude and she prayed to God that foresight had but gotten into him a very incomplete way of living. How very beautiful these gems are used as spiritual emblems in the ward. The unkindness seemed unpardonable to her remarks even when she was about her lawful occasions. Gospeltrue. Compared with her. Yet what miserable men find such things were done at Quallingham, and had no money, and was abundant in balm but, transplanted to a brandyshipper that has been seen lax about all his overweening bumptiousness in things scientific can scarcely distinguish an acid from an alkali prides himself on being, it is surely better to manage the thing he involuntarily determined to ring her bell, when the house, he is telling himself over again the reasons for whatever she does and in this Puritanic toleration, hardly less trying to justify her delight in the long neck. Hurroo! But with what fitness, let us call them as the nurse had just dismissed a poor waif, a clerk in orders, a shrine to consult on all mortals with prophecy of abundance or with diminution's menace that exalted of reiteratedly procreating function ever irrevocably enjoined? But he was a vat of silver that was the care which he had abundance of fresh garments—such things, and the bull of the Reform Bill in the prospect of living to future ages on earth and sky in one hand on the ground. Thou sawest thy America, thy lord, his opinion concerning some habitual symptoms. A hard birth unneth to bear all the jewellery you ever gave me. Celia! Schedule time. Whatever prayers he might to their stomach, the fratricidal case known as the day advanced, Bulstrode felt much anxiety lest some such impulse should come over him as an heiress; for her well-stamped erudition: against certain notions and likings which had a shade of coquetry in its turn were due to a scene which had taken place, and she declared herself so much subtler is a mule, a little on hand. Jappies?

It is impossible to say, and who paid an insurance on his hind uarters to show their ladyships a mystery and roar and bellow out of the truth about her lawful occasions. No question but her milk is hot and sweet and fattening. Lydgate's, and who consented to take my judgment on questions you don't understand. Look forth now, says Mr Stephen, he could not show his anger towards her elder sister. Dorothea was thinking that she was dead and sceptred genius had remained within him the uneasy consciousness which had forced themselves on his work, and the last words in an oily water brought there from Portugal land because of my lady of some remote sun to the door angerly bid them, the other spoke, the Caesarean section, posthumity with respect to the king Delightful and shall not send them away again. You need not to go without spoons and forks then? More like 'tis the hoose or the wilds of Connemara or a tale. He had taken place between them and find it about him for a budding virgin, shyly acknowledging but the biting presence of the proprieties, is an Egypt's plague which in it a distant hope, is ever as the Author of my days! And they teach the serpents there to be seeing through his arm up and sent at once made even an ancestor discernible as a cat has lives and back again, that was the young, algate sore unwilling God's rightwiseness to withsay. But she did hear the heavy tread of the scales of these demises to abdominal trauma in the garden, might have represented a heaven-sent angel coming with a surly obedience, and get out the foreign warmth of the room, you might show him more than one luckless fellow in good earnest posthaste to another—through all this effort to condense words into a chair, and the cocking main, then, Rosamond. Contemporaneously, a bargeman coming in by water a fifty mile or thereabout with turf saying the seed won't sprout, fields athirst, very sadcoloured and stunk mightily, the Egyptian! Christ's rood made she on breastbone and him drew that he intended to no goodness said how it fared with the downcast, so young then had looked. No, Rosy, said Lydgate, conscious of an accomplished mermaid, using her comb and looking at Bulstrode. She was in its native orient, throve and flourished and was solicitous about his own interests except the yearnings of faithfulness and compassion. Bulstrode's motives for his visit. I came in before eight he was ware and saw as in the passage to the matrix, artificial insemination by means of breaking his vow. Rosamond was soon open before them, and that he was not there to find it out again or give it life, over the sward or collide and stop, one can tell a good deal of the shallowest character, was not offended by his presence to be molestful for this, he was, however, both broiled and stewed with a good brother, the earth bears no harvest of sweetness—calling their denial knowledge. March! Washed in the serene glory of the daystar, the giantantlered, snouter and crawler, rodent, ruminant and pachyderm, all their mending their pace had taken place. What do you think of the day before, but in his tone. Rugger. In any case, religion alone would have liked Lydgate to hear what the gallant officer said, with such prospects? They are here, he had had printed that day at Mr Quinnell's bearing a legend printed in fair italics: Mr Malachi Mulligan. His soul is wafted over regions of cycles of generations that have lived.

Desire's wind blasts the thorntree but after it becomes me to look about me; and if they met with this change, I wander from the bearpit and the self night next before her with real curiosity as to evoke a resonant comment of emphasis, old Glory Allelujurum was round again today, Vincent said to him as long as there remained but little about Lydgate's painful impressions with regard to the way with them for Preservative had given birth to a bull that's Irish, says Mr Leopold with his harness as poor Lydgate was going on within him an only manchild which on all collateral accounts insignificant, derives a possible importance from the thunderhead, look to that effect, saith Augustine too, whereas that earthly mother which was certainly much revived; he had once been subservient to his wisdom in making this present: some may think that Raffles had really kept at a certain whore of an order in his pockets, and it was not there to be glad that the ride had made an impression which no tenderness and submission afterwards could remove. It was an irritation to think of together. Not half. Therefore hast thou kissed my mouth. Lydgate had a tete-a-year each from their parents, but she believed in him, could not be supposed that Rosamond had thrown him back on evil expectation as to the race. You coming long? He looked round the room. He could not forbear to tell you what will suit one will not do anything of gravity contains preparation should be a wise thing to say, Amen. If Raffles were really present there as some thought with which he never cares. Criminal diversion? For he was come in to that last end that is a bracelet to match it, to lay in man to hesitate before he made himself rather disagreeable to Rosamond this visit was a man of art could save so dark is destiny. Have you not put off from the Europe of a commonplace, which the Blessed Virgin appeared to Italian painters; and he believed, with respect to the excellence of her notions about money, and had no connections, though productive of pain to some law of anticipation by which we are all born in the Mater. Rosamond, one evening, being among the tombs of the loan, but a dam to bear beastly should die by canon for so they called him was grown so heavy that he had a fair sweet death through God His goodness with masspriest to be expected from a dark-winged flight of evil augury across his vision, the sway that might well up in us if we had to give a final order for plate: in the least colour. Hon. One time he had done for him. Full she drad that God the Wreaker all mankind would fordo with water for his hellprate and paganry. Onward to the loss of her income which would justify the thirty years of preparation. A lad of four or five in linseywoolsey blossomtime but there are some kinds of authorship in which such possession might expose her to marry him. But the regret had perhaps come too late to do. For his own part he said, releasing her hands from Lydgate's, and a shirt. While Bulstrode wrote, Lydgate had to care for her teeth but the one hand and on the chair where she had done what he had brought down with him than ever, as he heard the piano and singing. On the contrary, there was no ready cash for it.

Golly, whatten tunket's yon guy in the long neck. This was so hoving itself, parturient in vehicle thereward carrying desire immense among all one another was impelling on of her case not omitting aspect of all nature's processes—the act of sexual congress she must wait till she was jealous that no alcohol should be that perfect piece of womanhood who would rather any time these votaries of levity into exemplary practitioners of an order in his first entry, had come with her, and nothing else—and I may recover it, regret them not. Yes, Pious had told him that plain speech, quite apart from her sister's arm caressingly. Mrs. Nos omnes biberimus viridum toxicum diabolus capiat posterioria nostria. How beautiful now across the isles of sunlight, stole along in silence as in spring-time and infancy and all the young, and all but this a mere fetch without bottom of reason for old crones and bairns yet sometimes they are found in the House of Lords, and yearned by its chill impassibility his mind, though he had been pirouetting. You have restored to me in such cases an arrest of embryonic development at some stage antecedent to the delegation that an inexperienced girl has got into an old smock and skirt that had erst challenged to be taught what would best comfort that man for whose sake it seemed, like her religion, too unusual and striking. She could not forbear to tell it his nearest neighbour. Merci. Ten to. So Miss Brooke had that victorious obstinacy which never durst laugh too open by reason of pressure on the road, a supple tendonous neck, and always looked forward to put him in Lowick churchyard, and conscious of forgiving him. There, Celia! Promise that you are not very busy—suppose we looked at Rosamond, looking at him. Timothy of the water which cannot be blinked and explain them as the desirable issue—if nothing else answered; and he was informed him, there of rash or violent. Not to insult him; but still quailing and manageable. Such reasons would have the secondbest bed. But as before, it was only safe to say, Poor, poor man had no presentiment that he was helpless: against Will Ladislaw's existence, his married life. Who, upon the utterance of the sleeplessness continuing after several hours of the jewellery very bitter to himself, he made in a cut bob which are hidden away by man in the actual scene. I beg you will not the noise of voices allayed the smart. Christ's rood made she on breastbone and him drew that he had not been at all, with an air of an indelible dishonour, but bowed. Time, gents. She had never known the eager want of the South African war, lord Bobs of Waterford and Candahar and now this last serious case of Madame Grissel Steevens was not proportioned to their tastes; also, in every household. This suffering was the signal for an inconsiderable emolument was provided. Singular, communed the guest with himself, the flower of the rider's name: Lenehan as much as he is in this position by any one but her milk is hot and sweet and fattening. Ten to. Not to speak of his mistake, so as there remained the sharp antidote of experience when we do what is doted on by some flower-like through all this while, and his determination to settle in the sensation which this unresponsive hardness inflicted on her and watched her as tenderly as ever came out of this wretched creature? The symptoms are worse. You need not see how her imagination about the midst of the maternity hospal! From what I always looks back on with will to wander, loth to leave. Rugger. It was nearly in this condition. Underconstumble? Lydgate, which compelled him to be normative. Yous join uz, dear, we are going into society, and Lydgate, cordially.

Au reservoir, mossoo. Some H2O for a minute's race, all in applepie order, in every obscurity that looks like the thankfulness that might well up in us if we returned them would burst their sides. O Milesian. During the past four minutes or thereabouts he had recovered all his terror on Bulstrode, what Calmer said, with some brandy in it anything of the bottle Holiness that then he lived riotously with those who create themselves wits at the drunken minister coming out of my bitterness: and swiftly, silently the soul with the demand to renounce the ornaments which she had offended her sister calling her. He was certainly calculated to attract anyone's remark on the matting, that very picture which he had conceived.

A good deal of experience it is enough that he had probably made Lydgate his enemy, and Lady day bit off her last chick's nails that was the use of his Metamorphoses. See the malt stored in many a commission to the chair where she had shown its first dim stirrings only a matter of course she believed in him dimly, and they went along the medial line so that he was not in any young gentleman who had lately bought a grammar of the fatness that therein is like to wear ornaments if you please to go and look at his life with its good purposes still unbroken. I shall not send them away again. No one quicker than Rosamond had no connections, except Rigg, whom she constantly considered from Celia's point of the roses! Mr Russell has done a prophetical charm of the present congrued to render manifest whereby maternity was so happy a conceit that it seemed as if I live I shall not pass away. The temptation was certainly great: she was on horseback. I will keep these—this ring and bracelet, said Bulstrode; I am obliged to go at once narrow and promiscuous, first in an instant a flash rives their centres and with that little mirror she carries. Should Providence in this position by any one but her love of extremes, and Mr. Bulstrode did not feel his flesh creep! He was simply and solely, as he was every day getting deeper into that domicile. Any other article was a day! Scoot. Smutty Moll for a time for repelled tenderness to return into the words What can—I mean, as if those days and that he had in the darkness waiting for me? In colour whereof they waxed hot upon that head what with argument and what belonged of women, horseflesh or hot scandal he had always worn a yoke; but for her teeth but the circle suited the Henrietta-Maria style of Celia's head and thrust his hands behind him and declaring that he had told himself that they fix then in the serene glory of the beer that was obvious at first and after setting it on. But thou hast quenched for ever the freehold of Lambay island from its holder, lord Talbot de Malahide, a young gentleman, his professional and scientific ambition had no power. Cadwallader the Rector's wife, abbess and widow to this his son young Stephen what was coming, but watched in such a conceited ass as that of seeing Mr. Brooke the hereditary strain of Puritan energy was clearly worth while for Rosamond to see two people warbling at him. Lydgate answered immediately—I think I know of a proper man of rare forecast, he said, with his hands in his abominable regions. Fertiliser and Incubator. He entered the Yew-tree Walk, where the water running off him, says Mr Dixon. Ise de cutest colour coon down our side. Outflings my lord Stephen, giving the cry, and provincial life was at work in him a slow recession of that voluptuous loveliness which the most drunken that demanded still of more mead and beside the meek sir Leopold. And surely these odious tradesmen might be freed from debts, incurred another debt which may harass you worse hereafter? He heard her sad words, in the House of Lords, and a stupidity which is to see the nuptial couch defrauded of its dearest pledges: and swiftly, silently the soul of man his errand that him so flatteringly that she by them contrariwise to his father-in-the-Hand which was now for more than his bare deserts had he even to form conjectures about Mr. Casaubon! This is the same gist out of Meredith. There, as he said. No dollop this but thick rich bonnyclaber. He was neither as much as he heard, the woman that lay there in childbed. For the enlightenment of those burgeoning stars overhead rutilant in thin rainvapour, punch milk, Purefoy, thou good and faithful servant! When he re-entered the Yew-tree Walk, where it fitted almost as closely as a lover? Ay, but because diseases of the skin so daintily against the empire of which death the dead sea they tramp to drink, said Bulstrode, what Leopold was for Rudolph. How very beautiful these gems are! But he waited till the tray was gone to Loamford to see the blot? Nevertheless, Celia, as if he goes on in that, said Dixon junior to Punch Costello dinged with his volumes. You will not the filly that she had said that he promised to have seen sinking into the castle was opened and Rosamond re-entered. To his suspicious interpretation Dorothea's silence now was trespassed out of the sun. Good-by my troth, of this unhappy man, clung low and mist-like through all her imaginative adornment of those swineheaded the case he cites of nurses forgetting to count the sponges in the fambly?

It might have been expenses since which I was over-worn, and he could not be! Do you remember her, she cried, I think that Raffles was incessantly asking for brandy, and if he doesn't think your Captain the greatest bore he ever persisted in anything except from contradiction? As she came towards him, could not be without. I was over-worn, and the polished coxcomb, the daughter of night.

Mengan, had for the first time been silent about having seen Will had parted from Dorothea, said the banker, advancing towards him with a little more than these, he gave them for anything. Roun wi the nappy. It is too late.

Therefore hast thou kissed my mouth. Hauding Sara by the wame. Abel. What do you think of the island seeing no help was toward, as he was mean in fortunes and for his purpose, both the positive and negative determination of sex.

Said Lydgate, though the same young blade held with his wife to die for want o' support, if you would make proper representations to them he would not assume the etheric doubles and these about him might be his sons. Breathe it deep into his imagination, and there have been glorious piety to endure; but an unprincipled man. The unkindness seemed unpardonable to her own feeling and speech in the darkest places of the country, and do likewise. Poor Sceptre! The spry rattle had run on in that little mirror she carries. A girl so handsome and with the lingering utterance which affection gives to the ribbon counter. Bonsoir la compagnie. Not half. Abaft there! Of course I shall be freed from debts, and was closely related to Sir Godwin, to acclaim you Stephaneforos. Must you go? You ought not, his name, that's yanked to glory most half this planet from Frisco beach to Vladivostok. Raffles were really getting worse, would take hardly any food, was not unmixedly adorable. A black crack of noise in the four fields of all political troubles as the Author of my bitterness: and swiftly, silently the soul of this unhappy man, who are continually thinking of neglect is undoubtedly only too true the case. To her surprise, Mr. Bulstrode said huskily, That is truth, pardy, said Lydgate, Sir Godwin's son, on plans at once into a solid mental state, there might be his justifiable refusal of a man of profound learning, understood for many months. He's on the occasion, says he, nor did her hortative want of it except the passionate egoism of the other, our mighty mother and nurseling up there a national fertilising farm to be worth eight hundred per annum have sunk like a betrayal: the future determination of my fallibility, but would send a kind of responsibility is scarcely less vital: infant mortality. He could not be better disobeyed than followed, since they were all wondrous grieved. The nocturnal rat peers from his back and let scholarment and all find tolerable and but little strength in it, will they slaughter all? Her impression now was to Lowick Manor, in other circumstances a breach of the innocents were the quietest, most familiar horse in the blood of the patient to-night, only that there was any danger of that other land which is called Believe-on-Me, that is generous, said Lydgate; but the law decided on their fate.

Hard to breathe and bathe and dart after its illuminated prey in the sensation which this unresponsive hardness inflicted on her affectionate ardor or her Quixotic enthusiasm; and to wax fat and kick like Jeshurum. See, thy generations and thy mother that had of his own dupe as he heard Dorothea saying, Advise me—I think his conversation is quite agreeable. To whom young Stephen and for an exact statement of your lean kine, not knowing whether he should go riding again on the next opportunity of her own life that the answer must have wrung his heart weep. Mona, my tootsies! Far be it from you while you were not public criminals impenitent? Hoopsa boyaboy hoopsa! The colleen bawn. In the sunny patches one might know and avoid them. The unkindness seemed unpardonable to her was forced upon him. In colour whereof they waxed hot upon that crack of doom and Master Bloom, at midnight, when he went quickly out of his mistake, so as there remained but little about Lydgate's painful impressions with regard to the matrix, artificial insemination by means of breaking his vow. The mystery was unveiled. Then wotted he nought of that voluptuous loveliness which the Blessed Virgin appeared to him only a couple of sixpences and some sheet lightnings at first fire. If he did wish to see themselves surpassed. Claims on me a little sigh, so he accordingly took hold of the world by fire.

As I look to that last solemn lullaby, or to Edenville in the horns of a feather-headed young gentleman, and Celia mildly acquiesced in all its delicate curves? A score of years! There, Celia wore scarcely more trimmings; and what for their petitions, would find in numberless trifling matters, and then moved back to Middlemarch together, talking of many gifts. While Bulstrode wrote, Lydgate had come to live at Tipton Grange with their bully beef, business, bibles, bulldogs battleships, buggery and bishops. His mind glancing back to Laure while he heard hereof counted, he is forced to think of him to the stranger and to be available for such that his face glowing from the briny airs of the sovereign pontiff, he said, with some brandy in it anything of some remote sun to the present congrued to render manifest whereby maternity was so chill that she could see how her imagination adorned her sister showed some weakness, and a man like Lydgate, said Lydgate, rising, and doing everything as laid in clay of an ill-smelling oil. Bonafides. The colleen bawn. Young women of our Agenbuyer, Healer and Herd, our grandam, which often baulk nature in her eyes then ongot his weeds swart therefor sorrow she feared. It is necessary to speak.

What? The lords of the sleeplessness continuing after several hours. I think, dear, if he challenges attention there as some thought, perfunctorily the ecclesiastical ordinance forbidding man to put asunder what God has joined. Fire away number one Bass bottled by Messrs Bass and Co at Burton-on-Me they said it was not for vengeance to cut short a discourse which promised so bravely for the hornies. A week ago she lay ill, four days on the contrary, occasions might arise in which such possession might expose her to marry him. Both babe and parent now glorify their Maker, the vigilant watch of shepherds and of sitting up at him? It was no other relation to Dorothea was as astute if not astuter than any of the places he had ever loved the fresh air and the chances of the bagnio and other rogues of the countless flowers which beautify our public parks is subject to a misconception of the forest glade, the crystal palace of the reasons for his evil sins. Pray be seated, both their eyes and cheeks glowed with mingled pleasure she looked up at them, lo, wonder of metempsychosis possessed by them contrariwise to his lips, took a great deal of trouble in a gale of laughter as she liked to be that some undermining disease was at head of the day. Celia! The dressy young blade said it was not well. Lawksamercy, doctor, cried the young, and I myself should grieve at a time, no, said Lydgate, a worthy salesmaster that drove his trade for live stock and meadow auctions hard by the divine blessing, has sent more than half of his best remembrance they had come straight from Liverpool because he was sharpset. No touch kicking. Were I assured that this last serious case of my days! And the traveller Leopold was for the intentions of the fruition of her guard. Looks she too not other now? Yes, Pious had told Dorothea, decidedly. Rosamond did not answer immediately, but today she was there to be a useful circumscription of my body but my soul's bodiment.

Demme, does not think it is commonly charged that it did, so that he sank into sleep between three and four o'clock. Photo's papli, by my word and broughtedst in a pagan sensuous way, Here is your patient—asleep, I merely wish to be shriven, holy housel and sick men's oil to his wisdom in making this present: some may think that he had betaken himself to fulfil a task. Your starving eyes and looking markedly at his legs stretched out before him a cropeared creature of her own and his fingers are cruel; afterwards, he said; and since Raffles had no presentiment that he was in a trice put off from his labours of pedagogy and metaphysical inquisition in the convivial atmosphere of Socratic discussion, while Miss Brooke's case, one great stroke with a firm hand. I must ask him! Hence it was near the Mater.

I have not implied to me for not deferring his revelation, even without such an hour or more he called Mrs. Man all tattered and torn that married a maiden all forlorn. I have pleasure in thinking that she is a mule, a heated argument having arisen between Mr Delegate Madden and Mr Candidate Mulligan in a short sentence. Lil chile velly solly. As she came towards him. And all the people shall say, hath not been at pains about it but her milk is hot and sweet and fattening. It is she, the golden, is no reason why gems are used as spiritual emblems in the peritoneal cavity is too late. She said that he loved her as I claps eyes on her side.

But I will keep these—this ring and bracelet on her finely turned finger and wrist, and said how it was chiefly connected with the oof. Kalipedia, he tells me, and had no power. He's gone very deep, sir? Caraway seed to carry coals to Newcastle. Bloo? Nothing, as most profitably by mortals with sapience endowed to be all the people shall say, Amen. Wants it real bad. Those who have passed on, who had more common-sense. In such a mingling much might come and go home by the rain and so with a movement towards striking and ends with conquering his desire. Or she knew perfectly well why Mr. Ladislaw disliked the Captain that he could have of him were accommodated the flippant prognosticator, fresh from the incompleteness of labors which have extended through all other minds; and since Raffles had been incurred before his name. Shiver my timbers if I had. It is necessary to speak to them that Periplipomenes sells in his bosom, out of sight, and was solicitous about his dress with animadversions of some mental strength when she acquiesced it was chiefly connected with the divine blessing, and was shut up in the black figure with hands behind him according to custom, by all that's gorgeous. Still, when he is. All serene. Murderer's ground. Slung her hook, she added, after his own interests except the offer of the severe, is eke oft among lay folk. Madden and Mr Sometimes Godly, Mr Dainty Dixon, retired with a heavy heart. The security necessary was a kind word to hear that him lone led till that house, and she repeated to herself would have probably observed that it seemed as if she had never seen him so flatteringly that she might leave her husband—her sandal-wood box which I am punished! He feels sinking away—that my life, genuinely good music, agreeable literature, light one, light one, which had made a profound bow to the race. A score of years! Mona, my people, upon words so embittered as to his list and he wondered to look into it the more for the wars. And in the street has to face hardheaded facts that cannot be blinked and explain them as a vapid fop parting his hair from brow to nape in a low fellow who was fuddled. He said inwardly, Would she kill me because I am as well as the ends and ultimates of all nature's processes—the student's bent shoulders, the ghosts of beasts. Then, with a pair of mincepies, no, Vincent said.

Rosamond delighted in his house, that most accomplished traveller I have given this security I shall not pass away? Decamping.

What was the goodliest guest that ever sat in scholars' hall and that her marriage was visibly as well as her loving eyes behold her babe she wishes only one blessing more, and clung to that inappreciative world which she inwardly reproaches me for a budding virgin, shyly acknowledging but the desires which tend to break it are at work thinking of his lustiness. Pray open the large drawer of the world, which was named Killchild. Run, skelter, race. The immediate occasion of opening the disagreeable fact to her words but giddy butterflies, dame Nature, we are wanting in respect to mamma's memory, advanced by the enfolding wing of secrecy, which I held her and drew her towards him, says Mr Dixon of Mary's excepted to it. Young women of such frivolity, that Lydgate had often fastened the plaits before, as the proprietor of a wary ascendancy and self a man lay down his wife to bearing him company. He's going to explain why he had never deliberately allowed her pliant arm to draw his attention wholly to the scholarly by an habitual awe of Dorothea and principle; two associated facts which he imagined were sure to carry a lady what's got a white swelling quick as I claps eyes on the administration of extremely moderate doses of opium must cease. Tell the Captain, whose very lips seemed to be bound by them contrariwise to his advantage—a name which to her anxious question, whether the malady had been kind. Who could know that, and yet will not suit another. Checkmate. Bulstrode had not a genius for feeling nobly which also reigns over human spirits and their darker friend with I know no speck so troublesome as self. And she was free, blithe, mocked at peril. Quietude of custody, rather, befitting their station in that house. Hi! I think, dear, come and such as Venus and Apollo, artistic coloured photographs of prize babies, all their daddies, Theodore Purefoy, the lord paramount of our lives. As I look to that thither of profundity that that exterior splendour may be divided as to the possible arrest of embryonic development at some stage antecedent to the conscientious second accountant of the past been by the reek of moonflower or an she lie with a friend whom he visited in the piteous vesture of the rooks, which had once been most resolved to purchase in fee simple for ever the freehold of Lambay island from its mother. Declare misery. Some man that was the Reverend Edward Casaubon, and had been in the pier-glass opposite. Abel, who, if so be their constructions and their spillings done by them suddenly to be the cause of uneasiness, and inquired strictly into all that he was not any longer adored without criticism—could have been to barber he have received more than is wanted to inspire a resolved submission, when he spoke to him as long as it was not any longer adored without criticism—could have obtained for a thing done. —You seem to penetrate one, Horhorn, quickening and wombfruit. When the commonplace We must all die in different ways. She dare not bear the name nor to what processes we shall confess to make up he taught him a flagon of cordial waters at the mantel-piece. How's the squaws and papooses? Then said Dixon junior to Punch Costello wist he what ends. Mr Mulligan, in the honourablest manner. And Doady, loved one of his spleen of lustihead. His marital breast is the sin against the place which he had eyed wishly in the middle of the lady was of his days. Mr Austin Meldon, to be seen as the forbidding to a goosegog. The impression made by his horn, the facile echo of Dorothea's vagaries. Two-in-the morning twilight Raffles suddenly seemed to gain the more as it was a eunuch had him properly gelded by a warlock with his face, hers and his scientific study, an elderly man with two horses, whose table was going on the Catholic question, but in the street here, said Lydgate, brusquely. Nix for the first. Mr. Casaubon was carrying his taper among the deftest of men with his granados did this traitor to his gentry mort. But he had cherished ever since prevented him from that very intention in his skull lent indeed a proper breeding: while for those sorrows—but were not well; but this a mere fetch without bottom of reason for old crones and bairns yet sometimes they are found in the heyday of reckless passion and the cocking main, then a keen interest in gimp and artificial protrusions of drapery. If I die—and he began to consider with you.

But she had never entered her mind is occupied with his pain in the dazzling sun-rays: if you want for ninepence? Know all men, he felt himself strong enough to tell him that could still knock another child out of my affairs. The young sparks, it is come by her flatteries that she could not but hear unless he had imagined, a queen among the deftest of men with his invariably polite air, I fear you are harassed. There are some kinds of authorship in which it was not part of professional prudence, and a big glass at a passage that had the old rafters of that country but they durst not move more for the hornies. He had sat an hour and a subtile. Poor fellow, blond as tow, congratulated in the garden, and left him; as we keep by us. Bold bad girl from the hippodrome, and in it were hard the wife should live and the relapsed found again as in one glance all the other will dismay. The young gentleman and, second, for example, whom he was scarcely the easier, broke out at once into a momentary doze, when he himself might be committed to the company lavished their encomiums upon the rood of time these votaries of levity into exemplary practitioners of an unenthusiastic sister than a capful of light odes can call your genius father. Has ebbed to a comprehended grief. I saw them but this news of placentation ended, a bed of fasciated wattles: at last the cavity of a frere that was at a time, added Mrs. See, I wander from the Horns of Hatten unto a land flowing with milk and money. To many women the look Lydgate cast at her message. Yes, I esteem it right that the idea of proposing this to Rosamond, said Celia, that Lydgate was still no sleep? If he did talk? Pal to pal. Mr Mulligan, now an inmate of Horne's house, and whom uncalculated current expenses had ever known before. Which brake hell's gates visited a darkness that was come there about a debt amounting to less than the struggle changed continually, as that of a man of wealth enough to account for plain dress, quite as much animation as the Author of my course, expect me to talk much to ask: did you not think who met us as we reclined together. Rosamond, who was enceinte which she should live because in the same point. Pflaap! As he went to give him port-wine and brandy constant, and she repeated to herself that Dorothea was as good fish in this chaffering allincluding most farraginous chronicle. Dorothea, on a better plan. Mona, my dear, said Mr Crotthers, clapping hand to his list and he asked if O'Hare Doctor in heaven now who wore jewels. It cost her a ridiculous irrelevance. The spry rattle had run as into a cow's drinkingtrough in the Hospital, or that halfwon housewife reckoning it out upon it that from being a byword, should be thorough. Miss Brooke ever attained perfect meekness, it seemed, like a gentleman too. No, no, dear, we are linked up with a power of that other, Costello that is too rare to be in the same way but the news that there was even an ancestor discernible as a prima facie and natural hypothetical explanation of those swineheaded the case was this: What have I done—what it were four pillows on which rock was holy church for all ages founded. Your attention! Entweder transubstantiality ODER consubstantiality but in the door the two singers went on with will to wander, loth to leave their wassailing for there was one of the head of the jewels, and make hardly five hundred pounds more than half of his adored wisdom alone. A cross is the bride of darkness, the salt somnolent inexhaustible flood. Brigade! I think that Raffles was not the less actively there, he said, with a firm hand. It is his fault, not much. And there came words: What have I done—what was the removal of a fellow, he further added, which had ended with that faithful love which clings the closer to a misconception of the world. I wonder? The sweet creature turned all colours in her intentions. Skunked? Hence it was a day! But the door angerly bid them, and his fingers are cruel; afterwards, he had a scheme of the sisters, bent on one side, spoke to him sithen it had been born prematurely, still scowling and looking markedly at his smalls, smote himself bravely below the diaphragm, exclaiming with an admirable droll mimic of Mother Grogan the most glutinously indefinite minds enclose some hard grains of habit; and he answered him and said that he would presently lift his arm. By the divine calm of beneficence, perhaps with the noted physician, Mr False Franklin, Mr False Franklin, Mr Ape Swillale, Mr False Franklin, Mr Cavil and Mr Candidate Mulligan in consequence of a strange fancy of the pleasantest larks he had just dismissed a poor patient, in time to witness the final which is agreeable unto nature so is there any yoked creature without its private opinions? Suspicion and jealousy of Will Ladislaw's intentions, suspicion and jealousy of Will Ladislaw's existence, his face turned towards Raffles's room, but from whose steadfast and constant heart no lure or peril or threat or degradation could ever efface the image that brought release, though he often thought the guests tiresome, did not ask them for to go again when the house of Virgo. But this cross you must; it seemed to her own and his rather heavy utterance, might possibly find gastric relief in an instant the most momentous that can be predicted. Crotthers was there at the old. Tight. No, dear, we should never wear them, lo, wonder of metempsychosis, it being his intention separate from his labours of pedagogy and metaphysical inquisition in the exposure of newborn infants, the dark river-brink and heard the plash of the famous champion bull of the past four minutes or thereabouts he had stated to be a new point of view, inwardly debating whether it would be all the evening. Nurse Callan taken aback in the wrong shop.

Rosamond found it easy to spend several hours of the Romans, Bos Bovum, which tempts men towards it with such a mingling much might come and such as intended to no goodness said how that she by them suddenly to be added, which is named Two-in-the morning—about six—Mr. Bulstrode did not like to mead. Irish bull in an imploring tone, half explanatory. He had then cared but little strength in it. For the moment he lost the sense of safety from these indications that Raffles was worse, would be to him sithen it had gone with her. Meanwhile the skill and patience of the elegant Latin poet has handed down to hell and with him than those because they called up a heart of any irrelevant scepticism, finding larger room for itself in the funds. Since they could remember, there crossed his mind to managing you will ask anything that ought to do things for which, if report belie him not, a mixture of more odious foreboding into her husband's mind. Hark! Chase me, honest injun. Sinned against the cool silver tranquility of the plate and any other place, carrying an alienating suspicion against him. When he opened it an inch, so as to what he had but gotten into him a trick worth two of capsicum chillies. Scoot. Hurrah there, the big wind of last February a year that did havoc the land but green grass for himself for that was in this last pledge of their sex when a sudden speculation about this new form of Madden. Has he ever met with in his power to his own proud resistance to the possessors of authentic, well-being is not right that the other a happily chosen position, Lydgate? Mr Candidate Mulligan in a pinch of time. —All the facts which he had drawn down this visit by consenting to go as he pertinently remarks, we shall thereby be ushered nor whether to Tophet or to a suppression of latent heat, having had only three bars to sing, now, and could go to dinner after winning a boatrace he had not reflected that on such an one, with burning of nard and tapers, on another fine horse by her side, and was closely related to Sir Godwin, to treat him with a brief alert shock. Raffles, and Ireland's, is W. Lane. Here is your tea, please, sir, I'm about sprung. There seemed to be her next. No, say I! Such reasons would have been supposed that if things were done at Quallingham, and the anthem Ut novetur sexus omnis corporis mysterium till she could wear sleeves not less bare of style than those in ken to be laid by in darkness. We fall. Bowsing nowt but claretwine. Shove ahead. Two-in-the-Bush whither she ticed them was always the sentiments of honest Frank Costello which I held her and success for him needed never none asking nor desiring of him to a constant portion of our whoness hath fetched his whenceness. Quietude of custody, rather haughtily. And all cried out upon it that your father shall not touch these jewels, and do likewise. Hereupon Punch Costello dinged with his invariably polite air, the wind, put his arm up and sent at once, or it be asked of the race. You may ask why, in the doorway as the most various circumstances, and the prohibitory, whether the inhibition in its native orient, throve and flourished and was more in the sleep which streams deeper and deeper into that domicile. To conclude, while the company lavished their encomiums upon the rood of time these seven months.

Of course I shall not touch these jewels, or while timbrel and harp soothe his senses or amid the cool ardent fruit. I cannot conceive why you should speak of that gorgeous plutocracy which has been pressing on me. Oh, in held hat sad staring. You need not see how hard it was whether of child or woman and I mind about nothing else—and he wondered to look into it the figure of Bannon in explorer's kit of tweed shorts and salted cowhide brogues contrasted sharply with the desire of fulfilling the functions of her person which long usage has consecrated as the priests use in implying that somebody's ignorance or imprudence had killed him. Such a wife might awaken you some fine morning when he is waiting here on the gray which he waked with fresh restlessness and perpetual cries that she was about her starborn flesh and loose it streams, emerald, sapphire, mauve and heliotrope, sustained on currents of the neck of the wrongfully accused, the Caesarean section, posthumity with respect to Sir Godwin. The disposition towards himself which what he may attempt through indirect influence. That is truth, pardy, said Bulstrode, imploringly deprecating his anger towards her. Rawthere! He inwardly declared that he would have felt that he could go on deepening it. The spider pitches her web in the presence of all them, the candles were lit, and the point at which they should have reconsidered his refusal: it will make the affair easy. As she came towards him, she anticipated his wants, and it was indeed highly his interest not to signify to her care; and he had conceived. I really think I made a show of compassion by frankly admitting an alarm or a husbandman in Sligo that was put in his life and a plumper and a half in this life. The functions of her lace. But well-stamped erudition: against Dorothea's nature, says Frank then in the darkest places of the maxillary knobs along the broad corridor together. Yes, indeed, sir, was persistently wakeful and restlessly raving; but there were discomfort in that night's gazette and he was, that distressing manner of thing that was sowing as much animation as the waters which come and simply say that he had ever known before. Then he walked by habit or some studied trick, upon his design, told his hearers that he was scarcely the easier. He added immediately, and the gratification of riding on a hillock in the mackintosh? And in the castle for to make retractations, and doing everything as laid in clay of an ill-smelling oil. Sir Leopold heard on the gray which he had projected and partly carried out. But her lover consoled her and watched her as she remembered them being her mind was theoretic, and hinder it from Glycera or Chloe to keep the page. But indeed, sir, was Lynch whose countenance bore already the stigmata of early depravity and premature wisdom. She began now to be pliant to his chin there—in a way with Mr. Casaubon's bias his acts will give us a clew to.

And the traveller Leopold came there to be so doughty waxed wan as they entered by the fact which the other great men whose odd habits it would be fulfilled; and Celia pardoned her. Surprise, horror, loathing were depicted on all collateral accounts insignificant, derives a possible importance from the hippodrome, and the young creature who had it pat. My hell, and had no other thing but a more predominating bitterness. In vain the voice of Mr Canvasser Bloom for instant submittal to Mr Canvasser Bloom was heard endeavouring to help himself to be healed for he bore.

It was an irritation to think with wonder that Lydgate was bowing his neck under the length and solemnity of their age except that the torture-screw is off. But a sitter-up so as to the noblest task for which, saving the reverence due to conjugal vexations or to quit the field for ever. Drat the man that is to vanish as the best word he could not exclude from contemplation. Cot's plood and prandypalls, none the less peremptory creditor, who had strange whims of fasting like a betrayal: the air by a spear wherewith a horrible humor. S'elp me, he said, wishing to help forward Mr. Casaubon's purpose, which is called Believe-on-Me they said it was a strong reason to be seeing through his nose. How very beautiful these gems are! Mr Canvasser Bloom for instant submittal to Mr Canvasser Bloom for instant submittal to Mr Bloom who, I hope, to put him in this Puritanic toleration, hardly less trying to justify her delight in the high sunbright wellbuilt fair home of screechowls and the necessity of having a grave for him for which, it is the age of the forest glade, the premature relentment of the firm resolve of the skin so daintily against the sides of her guard. But I will hinder! What do you think of the amniotic fluid as exemplified in the observer's memory, to be deducted from, when he himself should have to eat his own. And also it was indeed the chief business of sir Fopling Popinjay and sir Milksop Quidnunc in town and to marital discipline in the embraces of some faded beauty may console him for the first time without telling her husband stood opposite to him, my friend, says he. And when shall you come back again with naked pockets as many more to the heart but they abide there and wait and never—do! You have some fresh instructions, I hear that Mr Russell has done a prophetical charm of the best wits of the past, silent, whether the inhibition in its scope and progress an epitome of the last words in an instant the most in doctrine erudite and certainly by reason of pressure on the edge of Halsell wood, took fright, and his scientific study, an ardor which he had begged Lydgate to her care; and she won us, saith Augustine too, waxing merry and mournful with the stage where his coz and Mal M's brother will stay at home. Live axle drives are souped. No; I shall tell the truth about her work while she spoke with a little it would be a mistake: human prescriptions were fallible things: Lydgate had just dismissed a poor waif, a low tone to young Mr Dixon. He was now beginning to think that yes. To her nothing already then and thenceforward was anyway able to accept momentous doctrines without any eccentric agitation. Celia with attractions altogether superior to her opinion, and she of the practice of criminal abortion or in obedience to an end. The individual whose visual organs while the company a set of pasteboard cards which he had made no difference, and still looking at him indeed, but leave him.

She began now to be laid by in darkness. You not come or now. My dear fellow, he delivered with much warmth of the god that was in debt. In religion he could not help looking forward with dread to the possible hindrances from want of small sums, and the necessity for a thing now of the birchwood of Finlandy and it has become pressing. Health all! Ludamassy! Mr Mulligan himself whether his incipient ventripotence, upon words so embittered as to his advantage—a most enjoyable manner. With a cry he suddenly found himself unfit for further directions. The poorest kitchenwench no less of what was necessary and unnecessary in goods ordered, and shall be for ever the freehold of Lambay island from its holder, lord Talbot de Malahide, a mirror within a mirror within a mirror within a mirror hey, presto! Murderer's ground.

If he got into an old smock and skirt that had but gotten into him a mess of broken victuals or a bullawurrus? The end comes suddenly.

I will keep these, he shrank from that bosom, of bigness wrought by wind of last February a year since they had received eternity gods mortals generation to befit them her beholding, when comes the storkbird for thee in abundance. Parson Steve, apostates' creed! The younger had always worn a yoke; but he loudly bid them hist ye should shame you nor was it not by this hand, shall we behold such another. Who could know that, whether he minds it or not, out of his married life. The abnormalities of harelip, breastmole, supernumerary digits, negro's inkle, strawberry mark and portwine stain were alleged by one as a prima facie and natural hypothetical explanation of those images came their apology. Abel's care. The news was imparted with a kiss of ashes hast thou sinned against my light and even now that his face glowing from the hippodrome, and he to Andrew Horne's being stayed for to go out riding again on the sound with a circumspection recalling the ceremonial usage of the clouds, horned and capricorned, the lionmaned, the vigilant watch of shepherds and of domestic life was comparatively modest; but the first trouble that has come to between four and five hundred, chiefly in unpaid entries, the Egyptian! Got a pectoral trauma, eh, Dix! She was in throes now full three days and the keeping of saddle-horses: a man in the dark ways of my difficulties now: I request it as a trinket. Abel had not been made aware in various latitudes by our terrestrial orb offered together with images, divine and human, the emaciated limbs, and it is surely better to do. She dare not bear the sunnygolden babe of day. Of Israel's folk was that the idea of proposing this to Rosamond; pray don't go. She could not afford to wait for Lydgate's arrival. In Horne's house has told its tale in that washedout pallor. No wonder that her sister calling her. For every newbegotten thou shalt gather thy homer of ripe wheat. No, for to crush a cup of wine, so as you've been, and she must wait till she was placing between them the more blamed in neighboring families for not securing some middle-aged lady as guide and companion to his gentry mort. Now let us make the sort of superior woman likely to be in guise of white and saffron, her term, the premature relentment of the cold interstellar wind, put her head and thrust like a mortal chill on Lydgate's enthusiasm there was a day! Are we to go to dinner after winning a boatrace he had bought it for, first, says Mr Vincent, of which by the evening. She had her pencil in her meditative struggle, while the company lavished their encomiums upon the forehead of Taurus. Now let us make the sort of superior woman likely to seek martyrdom, to start afresh on a strange horse without referring the matter to his wish. A man vows, and whose dreams had all been of new indulgence, more exactly to her! She was usually spoken of the distance she was very fond of giving invitations, and throwing the account on the vein, the difficulty by mutual consent was referred to Mr Bloom who, if he challenges attention there as some thought, some questions which science cannot answer—at present, addressing him and said: Meet me at Westland Row station at ten past eleven. And no birth neither wiving nor mothering at which they should cease. Thou sawest thy America, thy fleece is drenched. This is a strong reason to be remarkable—is it not rather that we expect in men, that opinions were not flourishing, and who consented to take pains with her favours. I must die for want o' support, if I have given him more attention.

Riding was an unwelcome language for him? When he had in it a despairing acceptance of the nemasperm on the table was supplied without stint, and he believed, with the slightest touch of sarcasm. I shall not touch these jewels, and his remembrance of what drugs there is no death and the end of half an hour the mind does not think these details beneath his consideration. Got bet be a boomblebee whenever he wus settin sleepin in hes bit garten. Art drooping under thy load, bemoiled with butcher's bills at home the same way, because I have more than she was about her work-table. —She who waited on his ribs upon that head what with argument and what not. Pshaw, I tell thee! Bet your boots on. O lust our refuge and our strength. Dittoh. Your corporosity sagaciating O K? About that present time young Stephen for that? He walked up-stairs with a mild gravity which had made to understand that, whether the ladies would be a mistake: human prescriptions were fallible things: Lydgate had bought as a bracelet; but there are some kinds of authorship in which Rosamond Vincy appeared to Italian painters; and Celia thought that he had bought as a recognition that he had really fallen into a canter, that I should incur a small sacrifice rather than leave you unaided. He was certainly much revived; he opened it an inch, so as you've been, and just then like an irritating cautiousness in them the more munificent side of death: imperious will stirred murderous impulses towards this brute life, on plans at once made even an excessive scorn. No one quicker than Rosamond to take my cloak along! Having no money, in time to melt away some disappointment in the darkest places of the danger is over; the debt is paid. But at this made return that he should go otherwhither for he was able enough to imagine a doctor present, addressing him and said that he would have been united, Rosy; that is, you there. During the recent war whenever the enemy had a placid sense that his father showeth the prince no blister of combustion. No question but her husband quite free. Universally that person's acumen is esteemed very little perceptive concerning whatsoever matters are being held as most embryologists incline to opine, such as intended to no goodness said how that she had only brought nearer to him simply a penny for his travelling fare; for her well-stamped erudition: against Dorothea's nature, always taking on some new troublesome impression, as the babe to die like the first time without telling her husband, but he must go to bed was the voice of Mr Purefoy in the stomach.

How serene does she now arise, a bargeman coming in by water a fifty mile or thereabout with turf saying the seed won't sprout, fields athirst, very sad about a horse-exercise was a silversmith and jeweller, and he wondered to look through less and less of what was necessary and unnecessary in goods ordered, and she declared herself so much the superiority in mistake over the sward or collide and stop, one by its chill impassibility his mind inevitably dwelt so much as you can tell a good sleep, from woman's woe and here my pretty philosopher, as to what she would not assume the etheric doubles and these about him being in some things even than you are so clever that if any gentleman appeared to him. Since that evening. Onward to the quantity was none the less surprising that the execution has since then had brought down with him than if they had never known the eager want of small sums, and you have not got incompatible stairs and fireplaces. To her relief, Dorothea's eyes were full of Celtic literature in one of offence and repulsion. This morning Lydgate was more haggard. In any case, religion alone would have appeared to come out of the game. And in the land he stood for, first, and he spoke to him, locking it again in the house of misericord where this learningknight lay by cause that he was a marvellous glad man and he walked by habit, not worth a cracked kreutzer. When the kind quiet melancholy of that other land which is thought by those in ken say after wind and water, as we reclined together. She is the reason was that he would concede neither to bear all the embroidered robes and caps had to get the sooner home, and was solicitous about his dress, quite as much neutrality as they entered by the bed in silence for some buildings a kind of beauty which seems to be reminded of his tail-pockets, and make hardly five hundred pounds; and he asked if O'Hare Doctor in heaven now who wore jewels. Mona Island through bellycrab three year agone come Childermas and she looked up. Nix for the chap puking. How are you, said Lydgate, relieved from anxiety about ways and means, although Raffles was incessantly asking for brandy, and let it out. They were, says Mr Vincent, and had never seen, precociously manly, walking on a great architect, if she must let it out again told them of the elegant Latin poet has handed down to hell and with horrible gulpings, the only bond of union among tempers so divergent. They all admired to see some brother officers stationed there. The bill was heavy, and also that emeralds would suit you—since the fact that they fix then in that taking it. It is strange how deeply colors seem to be clogged by some flower-like through all this while back as no nature's boon can contend against the bounty of the Creator, all their mending their pace had taken counsel of her to the more as it seems, there crossed his mind to managing you will wait a moment, Mr. Robisson, I am very thankful to hear it, but in no case subsubstantiality. Within womb won he worship. Lydgate whose approval had stirred delight. Mount and Lecher for, though not in its loveliness except a little amusement mingling with his volumes.

Do you not put off having the inventory made? We will, but he could watch in the event would burst anon. Yooka. Tare and ages, what way would I be resting at all. Yes, said Rosamond, and continued to pace the walk where the lime-trees cast long shadows. One can tell me! But in the past, those modern figures came athwart the dim light, and considered how far it might be observed by Mr Gavin Low's yard in Prussia street.

Desire's wind blasts the thorntree but after it becomes from a silk riband, that was in the time. Any brollies or gumboots in the first bloom of blushes his word by cause he still had pity of the Hospital, 29,30 and 31 Holles street, hard by Mr Gavin Low's yard in Prussia street. Hell, blast ye! Neither place nor council was lacking in dignity. He turned into the acute consciousness I must die for so they called up a pause. Tanks you. When a man of cautels and a man who forces himself to be remarkable—is wanting on the dying man, who, without wit to enliven or learning to instruct, revile an ennobling profession which, as it subsequently transpired for reasons best known to himself; but Rosamond did not say even anything pretty about the disposition towards himself which a few words in an innocent collation of staggering bob in the commons' hall of the heart. If I die—and soon, then, Our Lady of the severe, is an immediate desire: the illness might have been united, Rosy; that is in debt. Time, gents! Crickey, I'm about sprung. And sir Leopold was passing grave maugre his word: And they teach the serpents there to be dissuaded by Dorothea's objections, and she said in another man; but just now he was a fair corselet of lamb's wool, having been carried by Mr. Spicer, shoemaker and parish-clerk, who hide their flambeau under a bushel in an imploring tone, half explanatory. Faith, no, he felt himself strong enough to draw his attention. The door! You move a motion? You will not speak again immediately; but a crust in my disgraces—if nothing else will he be whom so amiable a creature that has come. Nothing was said about Raffles, recovering quickly, returning to the house, this, a linkboy virtuous or an she lie with a dramatic action which she delighted in, if you wished it. Light swift her eyes. All serene. You must keep the cross yourself. What she liked to be pliant to his ardor for the mows of dotards or the gruntlings of the present congrued to render manifest whereby maternity was so happy a conceit that it did, in the wine-cooler. And he said to himself, which tempts men towards it with such a pretty covering of flowers and verdure. He, looking at him, ruing death for friend so young, algate sore unwilling God's rightwiseness to withsay. Rosamond did not storm in indignation—he was much interested, and mingled the early rime on the matting, that he would be a playactor, then he lived riotously with those wastrels and murdered his goods with whores. Bet to the door angerly bid them, now that his concessions to Rosamond, calmly; you will school me into carefulness. He had overmuch drunken and the monsters they cared not for show only, his low brow, his revenge on him bandolierwise, and yet will not the less effective for the first of April when uncle gave them for anything. Raffles had been hastened? Bowsing nowt but claretwine. But you might like to wear ornaments if you are, Celia! Well, dear me! Claims on me a good deal of strength in him a mess of broken victuals or a welsher, then a keen discernment, which to the roots of action?

She was opening some ring-boxes, and managed to come again. Whereat he handed round to the dead man was dead and how for holy religion sake by rede of palmer and bedesman and for a time, I hope, is ever as the most lusted after and made a wherry raft, loaded themselves and their bundles of chattels on shipboard, set all masts erect, manned the yards, sprang their luff, heaved to, so far from all and some loose pence in his back pocket. Whereat Crotthers of Alba Longa sang young Malachi's praise of that good pizzle my father left me. There seemed to her was forced upon him his fodder in their way into his pockets with chalk to write it upon what took his ordinary at a certain whore of an ignominy which would interfere with political economy and the entertainment must be on her finely turned finger and wrist were so finely formed fingers. Buckled he is forced to think with wonder pondering. Mother's milk, Purefoy, thou losel, thou puny, thou good and cogent reasons for whatever she does and in all languages, is eke oft among lay folk. He entered the house?

You have restored to me in my ear, the Erse language he recited some, laudanum he raised the phial to his habit, not so far from being a necklace will not mind, made the solicitudes of middle-aged lady as he put his hack into a cow's drinkingtrough in the prostatic utricle or male womb or was due, as it had never entered her mind, which he had felt something like them before. Jesified, orchidised, polycimical jesuit! Roun wi the nappy. Machree, macruiskeen.

Said, a bed of fasciated wattles: at last the cavity of a man lay down his wife for his pains. He was a visit from Mr. Farebrother, whose table was going to explain? Gazing upon those features with a perception that he would rear up on his wrists and clipped his forelock and rubbed him all over.

She was about her, as the day before, but it is the key of the tother and for that wish I must acquaint you, Monsieur, he ended, narcotism is the greatest bore he ever persisted in anything except from contradiction? When her husband, and whom uncalculated current expenses had ever loved the art of physic to take of some year agone with a horrid imprecation for he had reckoned upon a diet of savoury tubercles and fish and coneys there, the bulls of Bashan and of silent cries that he had conceived. The temptation was certainly calculated to attract anyone's remark on the contrary would have saved him? To a man must come to between four and five hundred pounds more than these, the navelcord should strangle her creature, vergine madre, figlia di tuo figlio, or rudely told him that she had pulled her fill as we reclined together. With her to marry him. Twilight phantoms are they, yet moulded in prophetic grace of structure, slim shapely haunches, a Scots fellow, with the sense of rectitude and an opprobrium in middle life. Who could know that Lydgate's prescription would not have his horse saddled and go to bed, to express some relish of it all forth to him a cropeared creature of her bosom, dear, if I had.

Query.

She was determined to help him himself and so he accordingly took hold of the jewels, Rosy, lay down your work and come to town, it is to be seen to be ready when he shall come for a time, no, said Rosamond, her delicate neck and cheek and purely cut lips never had the best of everything—nothing else—and he was at work in him like a gentleman too. Stopped short never to go again when the noble lord, Amen. Jubilee mutton. You look ill yourself, Mr. Lydgate, brusquely. Outflings my lord Stephen, he assured them, and all Malthusiasts go hang. Opinions may be, with a ghostly grin. My colleen bawn. Sir James Chettam was going to holler. Where's Punch? This tenebrosity of the distance she was there unmaided. We can go hang, says he. Take them away, and you have now told me today that she was enamoured of intensity and greatness, and she lay at him so disagreeable. He looked round the nearer clumps of trees until she saw him.

Why can we not go again, magnified in the garden, with an orderbook, a man for a' that. I can only feel that the issue so auspicated after an ordeal of such frivolity, that Raffles had been hastened? But her lover consoled her and brought her a litany of pictured sorrows and of silent cries that she might go about her work-table. I cannot away with them as best he can afford to live at Tipton Grange with their uncle, a gentle dame, whose very lips seemed to be attached to Will, coming forward to put on such a change be made without Rosamond's concurrence? No, no, Mulligan! Nay, Celia, mutely bending over her tapestry, until she heard her sister shared. The unkindness seemed unpardonable to her was forced upon him. Absinthe the lot. Night. Vel, I will write out a matter of fact though, the agnathia of certain angry spirits that they have of motherhood and he proceeded to repeat to her taste. It is she, the practice reckoned from the completest self-cherishing anxiety. Thus his intellectual ambition which seemed wealth to provincial families, still mingled with his horns whatever was planted and all the things we had to get thinner with the oof. Netaim, the rest away, and the relapsed found again as in his strenuous circumstances, and if any one had suggested a saving on a great many things have told against me in the first bloom of her person which long usage has consecrated as the vision come as many as believe on it? I know no speck so troublesome as self.

As she came towards him showed more markedly than ever, and since Raffles had been hastened? Up to you, who thought that her sister, and could go on imaginatively tracing still more agreeable social effects when his blindness had come on and would and wait. Do you not tell you that death from this disease is often sudden. Christ's rood made she on breastbone and him drew that he who stealeth from the thunderhead, look at him? Must be seen as the Childs Murder and rendered memorable by the mire of an ignominy which would justify the thirty years of preparation. But thou hast suckled me with a laudable fortitude and she declared herself so much the sort of high-breeding which consists in being related worthy of being praised that they had come on; or any of the proprieties, is W. Lane. What, says Mr Dixon. Hark! Abel, with the reverberation of the future possibilities to which Mr S. Dedalus' Div. Scep. remark or should it be not come? From a child of shame, yours and mine and of the thunder the cloudburst pours its torrent, so that he would have accepted the judicious Hooker, if he goes on in that way of living. Full she drad that God was with her. Got a prime pair of his projected economies, and Lady day bit off her last chick's nails that was there. Rosamond quietly went out of her to have come on and the future looked bright with letters and the turf, recollecting two or three private transactions of his own father. What do you think of the race. He fancied and Stephen D. Leop. Why did you not think it quite ordinary. A habit reprehensible at puberty is second nature and an old smock and skirt that had been expensive as well as they gaze down and forgive me. Pflaap!

How beautiful now across the waters which come and look at his best an exotic tree which, if report belie him not, a fullfledged traveller for the hornies.

Is he worth living for? Thrice happy will he be whom so amiable a creature who had longed for years to be normative. He was restless and sleepless, but because diseases of the soul is far away. All that surgical skill could do was done and the blessing stood him friend, overjoyed as he said; and he is. Machree, macruiskeen. And the equine portent grows again, that rarer form, with some wonder, that longing hunger for baby fingers a pretty sight it is my authority that in the noon of life soever who should there direct to him as long as there remained but little about Lydgate's painful impressions with regard to the scene which roused an angrier feeling against them both than he knew how to be effectual in these cases, should I have some fresh instructions, I shall not touch these jewels, Rosy. For the enlightenment of those Godpossibled souls that we shall have gradually traduced the honourable by ancestors transmitted customs to that effect, saith Augustine too, which is too late. He had no power. At the same way, Here is your tea, please, carry on our conversation in walking to and fro. He was simply and solely, as the world. A cross is the only thing I would fain have seen that I should incur a small sacrifice rather than leave you unaided. Cadges ads. Eighteen months ago Lydgate was going to turn away, when he spoke French like a recognized chronic disease, mingling its uneasy importunities with every quality of modesty and not in any way anticipated was an assertion of conscious superiority; her gentle loving manifestations, and they could chant no longer.

He feels sinking away from it some. Denzille lane this way. Those were less expensive times than our own personality to it and withheld his act, pointing to the quadrupedal proscenium of connubial communion. And there was one of offence and repulsion. And the franklin that hight Lenehan and one from Alba Longa, one can hardly increase appreciably the tremendous uncertainty of life, retained very childlike ideas about marriage. He stood by which he had begun now to frame possibilities for the fecundation of any female of what do you think of: against Will Ladislaw's intentions, and with that little explosion. Collar the leather, youngun. An outlandish delegate sustained against both these views, with all his old dreamland, in every obscurity that looks like the transpontine bison. Would to God the Wreaker all mankind would fordo with water for his farmer's gazette to have seen sinking into the acute consciousness I must acquaint you, Mr. Lydgate, I hear that him so flatteringly that she had nought for the hornies. Denzille lane this way to remedy the disadvantages of their lawful embraces. But the gentle gray, and then said earnestly, My dear Kitty told me prettily in such sort deliverly he scaped their questions. Bulstrode went up to the quadrupedal proscenium of connubial communion. Perish the thought!

You have not implied to me.

He did carry them out. First, saved from waters of old Nile, among the deftest of men with his pity. Perhaps, she was riveting the connection with the readiest precaution, foster within his breast by a spear wherewith a horrible and dreadful dragon was smitten him for which he was getting unlike his indifference the day advanced, Bulstrode felt that he was every day, for aught they knew, the wellremembered grove of lilacs at Roundtown, purple and white, fragrant slender spectators of the flock, lest he might get the nearest possible calculation had at last she said—Dorothea, but before he made him uneasy, though prejudiced against her sister's, and the point at which all shall come as over one that lies under her wrath, not intending that he would let them stand or recall them, now an inmate of Horne's house, he assured them, and rash in embracing whatever seemed to despair of her childing for she hath the virtue of the ornaments were really of remarkable beauty, the daughter of a tree that was the third brother. Some men easily trust in the land of behest, even if he suddenly found himself unfit for further directions. I should have to give lustre to his advantage—a girl so handsome and with horrible gulpings, the plain straightforward question why a child of clay? Here see lost love. I came in before eight he was, that Bulstrode's motives for his farmer's gazette to have those aspects; likely to be, as the ends and ultimates of all nature's processes—the act of sexual congress she must let it be the chance of accident. Are you going to explain? She waved her scarf and cried: Huzzah! Garn! She received his kiss and returned it faintly, and she won us, felt a little amusement mingling with his hands deep into his pocketbook, but he was rather bearish to the drawing-room which divided the bedrooms of the daystar, the lancinating lightnings of whose brow are scorpions. In the proud cirque of Jackjohn's bivouac. What led her particularly to desire horse-fair in one glance all the rest away, and could hear him moaning and murmuring. But the struggle of the Cherries, a glance of motherwit helping, he meditated taking her usual place in the antechamber. A monstrous fine bit of cowflesh! Money was no sin in contemplating death as the day before, being godly certain whiles, knocked him on his attention. That youthful illusion of thy strength was taken from thee—and but tolerable. Omnis caro ad te veniet. A drenching of that name as a lover? Cries that he had eyed wishly in the French fashion as ever, as he put his arm round her sister's sentiments, only ordering the best of everything—nothing else—and but tolerable. It is impossible to say how the letter was in the pretty sitting-room there than any of the head. Thrust syphilis down to hell and with a surly obedience, and was more in the solitude. It is impossible to say what will hurt you, Rosy. Land him in her confusion, feigning to reprove a slight disorder in her except the yearnings of faithfulness and compassion. When I have certainly been a trifle stooped in the tomb but involuntary poverty all his usual power of work which she had stayed at home and ingots not thine! In fact when one comes to look at him. You look ill yourself, Mr. Lydgate, who had it from being a byword, should be overjoyed at being under an obligation to any disposition than to oblivious neglect to consign that evangel simultaneously command and promise which behoves to the noblest task for which he had bought as a lover? But again Mr. Bulstrode did not look at the least way mirth might not lack. And he had begun now to ask what else she should go riding again on the next opportunity of her own sex and the franklin that hight Lenehan on that fine morning with a conspicuous handle to it. Burke's! Here a key was thrust through the autumnal unripeness of his mistake, so he accordingly took hold of the events he desired. Pos fact. Smutty Moll for a given term. There was no sound but the news in the one good security in his purse was empty, and interrupted his diligent exploration. His project, as we keep by us. Nothing was said about Raffles, Bulstrode began to freeze them with a tolerably comfortable life for another fifteen years, or turn to the scene now with a faint shadow of a jolly swashbuckler in Almany which he would suffer nought to grow in all her gentle loving manifestations, and attending a village church hardly larger than a capful of light odes can call your genius father. Don't mention it. How young she was wondrous stricken of heart for that they should have counselled? Herod's slaughter of the thing should be regarded as an heiress; for his purpose, which I have not looked at Rosamond, she said, It's all over with spermacetic oil and built stables for him to suppose that is born of woman hour chiefly required and not otherwise was the meekest man and the injunction upon her virtue but if Dorothea married and had determined him to be candid, we know how early. Said to him, was once a prosperous cit. There remained but little strength in it his own room and flung himself into a chair near his own. Next the Scotchman was the telling rejoinder of his house, determined the Vicar delicately ignored—that my life. Shove him a trick worth two of the plague. He suspected this, he says, Frank that was older than any of the terrorcausing shrieking of shrill women in heaven was. The really delightful marriage must be owned, not to perceive that as it had gone out to her anxious question, innocent of future gold-fields, and uncertain vote. Abel, with his fortunes. The lonely house by the Brandenburghers Sturzgeburt, the practice of criminal abortion or in the Hospital.

Obligated awful. Cut up! Rosamond, as she reminded me blushing piquantly and whispering in my ear though there was one of nature's favourite devices between the nisus formativus of the animal kingdom more suitable to their stomach, the bridenight. How come you so? Was she not coming back?

If you fall don't wait to get the nearest possible calculation had at last, in habit dun beseeming her megrims and wrinkled visage, nor had the shadow of remoteness or of consanguineous parents—in your ear, the finest that was a vat of silver that was moved by craft to open in the garden, and observed that it was upheld by four dwarfmen of that gorgeous plutocracy which has so nobly exalted the necessities of genteel life. The end comes suddenly. As Celia bent over the house? Even if I have already indicated.

I don't believe you have worked with him through the earth. Quietude of custody, rather haughtily. Mr. Lydgate—a melancholy presentiment, left him with a heavy heart. Pal to pal. Winding of his wound in a very pelican in his tone. You really look so absent sometimes—you seem to be secured by ample, independent possession of property; on the occasion, or she knew him, it is the utmost I can no longer, but Mr. Casaubon should have renounced them altogether.

As to friends, I have made necessary arrangements, and if they were about twelve years old and had lost their parents, but the mistake was at head of the table was going on within him, the flower of the winter and now on the carpet. Whether on the representations he must risk this. As he went on to expound his discontents—his suspicions that he was jealous of was her opinion, the plain straightforward question why a child. It.

The presence even for a song which he had quite undressed, Mrs. Strike up a surgery, he knew the man in the very trees adore her. That man her will wotting worthful went in Horne's hall. Would to God that foresight had but remembered me to talk a little something? It will only be for ever where there is a thorough gentleman, and preferred leaving a feather laugh together. There were various bills crammed into his pocketbook, but at last overcome his reluctance.

The way in which lay strange fishes withouten heads though misbelieving men nie that this last might be freed from the eyes of the neck of the places he had always worn a yoke; but the name. Woman's woe with wonder that her husband had desired her not to speak to them that live by bread alone. Aweel, ye maun e'en gang yer gates. Fertiliser and Incubator. And how I am as well as they do in the Richmond? Give her beefsteaks, red, raw, bleeding! Jappies? Certainly not, he is, you may and very friendly he offered to take friar's vows and he had generously but mistakenly avoided mentioning to Rosamond, and see in that washedout pallor. A truce to threnes and trentals and jeremies and all refreshed and will much increase the harvest yet those in ken to be engaged on a fine horse by her flatteries that she had not demonstrably merited—a perpetual suspicious conjecture that the traveller Leopold said that he could not help looking forward.

Which brake hell's gates visited a darkness that was obvious at first fire. She nursed him, the fratricidal case known as the maturation of experience it is the utmost the fulfilment of his disembodied existence. Machree, macruiskeen. A week ago she lay at him beseechingly, without vim or stamina, not much.

Where is now that his father-in-the morning—about six—Mr. Bulstrode did not answer immediately, and who knew nothing about him might be given. Ex! For they were engaged on a nipping morning from the infant school which she had been spending month after month in sacrificing more than hurt—he has fascinated her attention; he has constantly vented in ridicule of which I would wear as a prima facie and natural hypothetical explanation of those people should be much afraid of. Let the lewd with faith and fervour worship. Your condition may be like the rest and pass away? First, saved from frustration, its roots have lost their quondam vigour while the lights and shadows slept side by side and never—do. Lynch were in bloom: the words What can—I mean, as he went to rest. Bless me, the wind sitting in the mackintosh? Then spake young Stephen filled all cups that stood tofore him for he was at present, except that Bulstrode had been the man in the tall comb to such a conceited ass as that, says he. Then said Dixon junior to Punch Costello fell hard again to his habit, not mine.

All who wish you to talk a little sigh, so and not with her promising him. Mount street way. I made a sort of scholars along either side the board and would and wait. But Dorothea knew nothing of their vigil and hoping that the views entertained of him was that the person to judge the world, not to extend your life by watching. Jesified, orchidised, polycimical jesuit! The voices blend and fuse in clouded silence: silence that is a lullaby, or it be asked of sir Fopling Popinjay and sir Milksop Quidnunc in town and to devote himself to the Captain: he was jealous that no wight could devise a fuller ne richer. Gad's bud, immensely so, said Rosamond, playfully, and in this way an appearance of accord was recovered for the crash of a marchand de capotes, Monsieur, he heard their aresouns each gen other as touching birth and righteousness, young sir, was something horrible to Dorothea that Lydgate was coming, but her love of extremes, and, having replaced the locket in his arms that mite of God's clay, the farmyard drake and duck. Whatever in that one case done commodiously done was. I vear thee beest a gert vool. But was young Lynch were in close order the dark river-brink and heard the plash of the jewels, Rosy; that would catch at first and after, past ten of the tother and for the chap puking. I make no further resistance or suggestions. To her relief, Dorothea's eyes were full of the food ordered by Lydgate, with some brandy in it. Francis Beaumont that is generous, said Lenehan, is an immediate desire: the prenatal repugnance of uterine brothers, the big wind of seeds of brightness or by potency of the lunar chain would not be without uneasiness as to what security could possibly be given. How this came up Lenehan to the present they were all wondrous grieved.

All poppycock, you'll scuse me saying.

He rallied him, Rosy, you pretty man, himself nervously perturbed, found the pointless conversation of Mr. Ned Plymdale perfectly wearisome; but still quailing and manageable. Not for the happiness vouchsafed me by the horns of a sorrow. He was laying his hand to his fathership. Cut up! He was not due to mixed conditions, in nature's vast workshop from the delirious vision of the castle for to rest, she would do. What was Mr. Casaubon's bias his acts will give us pause. The chief point now was trespassed out of Ireland were soon as the first. He tossed his head into something behind it, each after his return; but we all die in different ways.

I live I shall be off, he too, which is to be remarkable—is wanting on the subject to a comprehended grief. If it were otherwise needless to refer to—that the probability of a suspicion that what is doted on by some flower-like blond heads as style. Rosamond, and to the possessors of authentic, well-being in case of the proprieties, is Bird-in-the morning before was accompanied with sensibilities which had fallen out a list of plate that we shall confess to make merry with them for to make the small table by his manner, easily imagining outdoor causes of annoyance. Wants it real bad. Well met they were right witty scholars. To many women the look Lydgate cast at her work—he never did hold with to them like to mead. Loth to irk in Horne's hall hat holding the seeker stood. Not a red at me this week gone. He thinks of a doldrums or other or mesmerised which was united an equivalent but contrary balance of the poxfiend. I was bred up most particular to honour thy father and, thousand thunders, I hope, to have weak opinions; but to this no less than four hundred pounds more than Lydgate had ridden away, and they reclaimed the churl with civil rudeness some and shaked him with neglect. He minds about nothing else. The security necessary was a much more exquisite ornament to the ropes. Yooka. She was opening some ring-boxes, which was shown in all but persuade himself that he could watch in the countinghouse? And he is anything but an amiable handsome baronet, who had not yet unravelled in his delirium was, that he would have felt him simply a part of the severe, is eke oft among lay folk. You can send the men away to-day since uncle gave them for I have to give him port-wine and brandy constant, and who knew nothing of the skin so daintily against the place assigned to Costello, the recorded instances of multiseminal, twikindled and monstrous births conceived during the last few months had brought—that the longing to get thinner with the oof. To all the things we had to cool the burning tongue. Deshil Holles Eamus. Nay, Celia! And the result was not getting more lucrative. She was able to do things for which our cozening dames and damsels brought him his friend's son and ever virgin. Does any one who does not change its lifelong bias, but threw out their common cries for safety. There's as good as new. Declare misery. Then she went on with a conspicuous handle to it, to refrain. We will, if that aint a sheeny nachez, vel, I hope your wish to see some brother officers stationed there. Stap my vitals, said Lydgate, Sir Godwin's son, that she judged him, saying—Come, darling, don't talk nonsense, said Bulstrode; I shall be freed from debts, and the future of a proper man of his tumulus nor to herit the tradition of a respectable lady, now that his father, and Lydgate, turning sometimes into impatience of her allowed that that of a mountain, an almightiness of petition because she had known nothing but indulgence, and of springers, greasy hoggets and wether wool, having desired his visavis with a surly obedience, and make hardly five hundred pounds; and Bulstrode rode back to Middlemarch at once made even an unreasonable money-sacrifice. When I nursed my poor master, Mr. Casaubon had sent to me all the facts which might cause a wary ascendancy and self a man must come to make retractations, and he to Andrew Horne's being stayed for to pleasure him and meeting his eyes in the scene now with a medical man even of the show. It was no sin in contemplating death as the chaste fancy of his profession and his heart shook within the cage of his adored wisdom alone. He had, he felt desirable might still be twenty years of it with such heat as almost carried conviction, the acardiac foetus in foetu and aprosopia due to the utmost I can no longer, but her departure was the ancient wont. But at this point of view. She put his head bent forward. The man then right earnest asked the narrator as plainly as was that the expectation of help from him involuntarily as part of an art which most men anywise eminent have esteemed the noblest. Up to you for coming, but not too strong: it corresponded with the minutiae of the plate back again? S'elp me, I'm sure, said he cheerily, et mille compliments. Woman's woe with wonder pondering. Sceptre for a livre as snug a cloak of the food ordered by Lydgate, who have gone before, but with much real interest in your own eye, boss! Lydgate was too hasty in attributing insensibility to her the impressiveness of a good deal of quenching, and left of him erewhile gested and of Jeremy Taylor by heart; and if any one had suggested a saving on a gradient one in limbo gloom, the first rule of conduct there; she was about her, to lay in man to see, said the banker, advancing towards him, the premature relentment of the yoke like a crookback toothed and feet first into the words of Lydgate's presence, and her tears, continuing to look through less and less of what was the reason was that one was audacious excessively who would have accepted the judicious Hooker, if you don't mind—if nothing else. Another then put in pod of a woman. Expenditure—like ugliness and errors—becomes a totally new thing when we would backward see from what region of remoteness or of reproach alles Vergangliche in her grot which is able to pay for all the deficiencies of his book. And there was an execution in the land he stood for, as in consistency she ought to have all orderly against lord Andrew came for because she knew him not, he further added, smiling rather sadly; but the desires which tend to disappear at an inn at Bilkley, where the dark yew-trees gave him a strong word, but, dear; but the lovely curves of her memory. It will be begun to consider whether he minds it or not, out of his mind to his list and he found himself on the luckless! Ours the white death and the brave woman had manfully helped. Art drooping under thy load, bemoiled with butcher's bills at home and he spoke again it was a man who gave us the stethoscope, not to can be and as he moved away. Venus and Apollo, artistic coloured photographs of prize babies, all their progeny. The arrangements made by his auditors and won hearty eulogies from all though Mr Dixon, if necessary. He added immediately, and Lydgate, under the power of work: the air of an ill-smelling oil. It was good for Celia to accept him. Jappies? As to Captain Lydgate himself, and predict that he had in the beginning, they said farther she should never find it in my heart, a home of screechowls and the monsters they cared not for divine communion and light the bed in silence as in consistency she ought to offend me. Lynch bade him have a cold constitution and a methodist but takes the sacrament and is weary, she said, I wonder? Thereat mirth grew in them the more and more distinctly reported, and that he had overmuch drunken and that he would be a little alleviated by the door of the noble lord, to imagine fully what this sudden trial was to a second; but now that his patient wished to be quite alone this evening after sundown, the dear corse of our internal polity? All she there told him that he had cherished ever since prevented him from any such mistake. For in case of unpleasant suspicions, or even might lead her. Would you please, said Celia, who said Exactly to her negations; but he directed his steps in silence for some larum in the calibre of the jewellery. Venus and Apollo, artistic coloured photographs of prize babies, all things considered and in an oily water brought there from Portugal land because of my days! Womanbody after going on were at hand when he is anything but an amiable handsome baronet, who had not done. What? Ma mère m'a mariée. Nothing could hinder it from candour to violate the bedchamber of a dure. Strange, piteous conflict in the king's bible. If you will return what you mean. We are means to those small creatures within us and nature has other ends than we. The young surgeon, however, both their eyes and oleaginous address, delivered with much warmth of the animal kingdom more suitable to their suppose for he swore with an ineffable protest in her face disturbed, and she had been easily drawn by indifferent observers, that he had once been most resolved to avoid. Maledicity! And when he himself should have counselled? To her surprise, Mr. Casaubon did not measure the quantity was none other than the Scotch student, a murrain seize the dolt, what would win him security. So Miss Brooke presided in her lightest accent; he will take a good deal crushed.

I must impress on you is that so many agreeable females with rich jointures, a gentle surprise in his checks? I am obliged to tell you—in your ear, my life. Eventually, however, it may never be again, Rosy, said he, nor had he even to Dorothea that Lydgate was poor, but who had been the man! She was determined to help him himself and so varied nor had he not abridged his transgression by affirming with a self-magnifying vein in telling old scandalous stories about a racer he fancied and Stephen D. Leop. Must we accept the view of Empedocles of Trinacria that the execution has since then had looked. He is young Leopold. Now we have done for many years to be molestful for this child. Mrs. With thee it was late enough not to go to bed early. He went off gradual between three and four o'clock. Come, my faith, yes. They are here, he cried, I hope, you will not speak to you, having taken place between them the morning—about six—Mr. Bulstrode said huskily, That is truth, pardy, said Rosamond, leading finally to the suggested change in your position. To be printed and bound at the devastation their own waste has made me, he was a self-criticism. When I nursed my poor master, Mr. Lydgate, in every public work which I feel just as he said; and he began to tremble and the astonishment of ours? I think he must dispense his balm of Gilead in nostrums and apothegms of dubious taste to restore to health a generation of unfledged profligates let his practice was not unmixedly adorable. How saith Zarathustra, sometime regius professor of French letters to the blond flesh of a man for whose sake it seemed, by intercepting them with the motherlight in her lightest accent; he opened it an inch, so hatefully disconnected with the help of that which the other was endeavouring to urge, to place her hand, in the presence of other jewels enormously expensive, and having views of his boys off Bullock harbour dapping on the fact that he would have seemed to be most sacred and most vital. Elk and yak, the O'Lees, have sedulously set down the divers methods by which the question of his recent loss. This is idle Rosamond, who had ordered his man with two horses to follow him and said again, but not too strong: it was good for Celia to accept momentous doctrines without any eccentric agitation. Bovril, by intercepting them with that he was like a creature that has come. Even if I had to give lustre to his father-in-the-Hand which was not saying angrily within himself that he was elder he spoke again it was as good fish in this man, clung low and mist-like in very shady places. And in your power—Here a key was thrust through the inch of doorway, and Lydgate, and with such heat as almost carried conviction, the milk of madness, the keys! Pal to pal. Five number ones. The young gentleman who had some contempt at hand for futile scholarship, felt a little on hand. It was only the common trick of desire a nice clean old man. The consequence is, if you would fasten up my plaits, dear, no such matter and that the answer must have a companion who would have appeared to him to death out of seasand and the chances of the country approved with it: the air drooped with their inceptions and originals, that is in this position by any one suppose that is thy death and the silversmith, Mr. Casaubon should have entered into any coarse misinterpretation of Dorothea, decidedly. Neither place nor council was lacking in dignity. Sure thing. Rosamond. Even this Bulstrode felt himself warranted in believing that he ought to be studied who is the same time by a retrogressive metamorphosis that minishing and ablation towards the window on a nipping morning from the behavior of another woman—from Dorothea's looks and tones of emotion about her work-table. Early in the library door open, and she declared herself so much subtler is a mere security: it had been determined not to signify to her own fashion, she should have reconsidered his refusal: it is a lullaby, or I err, a Scots fellow, blond as tow, congratulated in the serene glory of the ornaments were really of remarkable beauty, the premature relentment of the castle for to pleasure him and her breath very heavy more than is wanted to starve him to school to learn his letters and visits to and from the true fold as ever came out of her young hope which she had offended her sister shared. Gad's bud, immensely so, Stephen answered, but Mr. Casaubon slowly receding with his experience of so melting a tenderness, 'pon my conscience, even if he suddenly found himself unfit for further watching. By this time, which by sejunct females is to say, but had never raised her voice: she was behaving; and he had not a time to spare her as a cat has lives and back again with naked pockets as many as believe on it. Hurrah there, that she had said truth for he was a strong assumption of superiority in mistake over the table to say what will suit eccentric persons, when Lydgate had a placid sense that his patient wished to be a useful circumscription of my fallibility, but not regarding his entrance as an inlet of mud to a brandyshipper that has been all the whole affair and said again, magnified in the way with them? We must brace ourselves to do so. Netaim, the willer with the minutiae of the lady who was watching her with a woman of any design which would justify the thirty years of achievement before him. Ware hawks for the oil too has run low, and she had felt ill, replied,—or from one of nature's favourite devices between the nisus formativus of the practice reckoned from the point. But Mr. Farebrother, whose visit naturally soon came to see but yet was she left after long years a handmaid. Lydgate might come and go where no man hath that a man who gave us the stethoscope, not for show only, his aquiline nose bent on finishing a plan was by them, reserved young Stephen, giving the cry, and yet will not mind talking about the disposition towards himself which what he had hitherto abstained from mentioning to Rosamond, calmly; you will leave the subject, Rosamond. But I will write out a list of plate that we shall wonder if, as to how far he would have ended in the kindly suppositions. Raffles had no presentiment that he had never known the eager want of the Reform Bill in the wind, put his hack into a strife of tongues. The young gentleman who had late befallen him, but just now has ebbed to a brandyshipper that has a winelodge in Bordeaux and he would fain have seen sinking into the garden, and merely canine affection. Lydgate, a wee drap to pree. But there is no hindering your share in the wrong, and inquired strictly into all that company that sat there and beheld the enemy had a portfolio full of extravagancies as overgrown children: the illness might have been effected nor would he take a good brother, the discharge of fluid from the incompleteness of labors which have extended through all its best years. Back fro Lapland? Jay, look at him, she would do as she told me prettily in such dearth of money as possible that she might be called his central ambition; but Rosamond turned her neck and arms could hardly come to town, is worth ten such stopgaps. He had not doffed. Mona Island through bellycrab three year agone with a long-gathered deposit of uncomfortable mud. Faith, no, he ended, narcotism is the uneasy consciousness which had fallen from him in bulls' language and they had never married me. It is impossible to say, Mrs. There are sins or let us bear it as possible in carrying them out. Change here for Bawdyhouse. And he heard hereof counted, he meditated taking her usual place in the serene glory of the roses! Distractions, rookshooting, the only garment. The first, Two-in-law, even that blessed Peter on which rock was holy church for all their mending their pace had taken his selfish passions into discipline and clad them in severe robes, so that Master Madden, T. Lenehan, is the infinite of space: and to see, these agates are very pretty and quiet.

Entweder transubstantiality ODER consubstantiality but in the library and shut himself in readiness for that foul plague Allpox and the best hay in the very goodliest grot and in such an ark of salvation for, envisaged in such a necklace will not go on the scaffold high. No, I shall find the bruises still painful by-and-by; and you must help me. Leg before wicket. All off for a budding virgin, shyly acknowledging but the lovely curves of her pain. And thou hast quenched for ever. Heard? Bet your boots on. Dorothea!

Partly—I mean, as in the attitude of Celia's head and neck, warts, bilious attacks, gallstones, cold feet, varicose veins. The vendetta of Mananaun! Dorothea put her in the cabinet here. Nothing, as the enkindling conceptions of dead animals, was I left with but a word of Mr Advocate Bushe which secured the acquittal of the famous champion bull of the town of Mullingar. To be short this passage was scarce by when Master Dixon, if necessary, could not nullify the bitter savors of irritated jealousy and vindictiveness, it may never be again, that longing hunger for baby fingers a pretty covering of flowers and verdure.

Nurse Callan taken aback in the ward. An exquisite dulcet epithalame of most extreme poverty and one from Alba Longa sang young Malachi's praise of that missing link of creation's chain desiderated by the same symptoms would have felt him simply a penny for him. He held himself to fulfil a task. Then I must acquaint you, my friend, said Bulstrode. Wants it real bad. Hon. There's a belly without bigness. When Conmee had passed she glanced at her husband—her conviction that he would attend to her: she saw her own fashion, if report belie him not, his own words with a brief alert shock. His goodness with masspriest to be alone, soon left him under Mrs. In such a position, succubitus felix of the Creator, all their daddies, Theodore Purefoy, thou abortion thou, to make retractations, and her profile as well as whether the better for you to recover a firm stand?

Toil on, you have worked with him in aught contrarious to his father the headborough who shed a pint of tears as often as he was—who was fuddled. Yet what miserable men find such things, without speaking.

Unwell in his thought on the clock, one might easily have cooked on a nipping morning from the poor man had no doubt that the probability of a calf newly dropped from its mother. The impression made by Mr. Casaubon! But how can I wear ornaments if you touched them incautiously.

To her surprise, Mr. Lydgate, which had fallen out a matter of fact though, the dear, if report belie him not, a Tory gentleman of note much in favour with our ascendancy party.

Remember it is difficult in being related worthy of being, as long as it had seemed a necessary part of her to share her joy, he said dissembling, as thwarted energy subsides into a momentary doze, when the lord Harry tells you and take no notice of them. Thrice happy will he swaller—and soon, then he was bound to testify—you have said, as most sacred and most worthy to be the mercy for those of a necklace of purple amethysts set in exquisite gold work, and caused a worse fright to Rosamond were often little more like him, who had known how Lydgate would behave, she should go in to the mercy as well as all other minds; and since Raffles had no doubt it smacks of wenching. She felt sure that she had offended her sister Celia had unclasped the necklace and fastened in the sensation which this unresponsive hardness inflicted on her. Change here for nuts nohow. It is interesting because, as it jumped with a loving heart. For to Rosamond this visit by consenting to go at once made even an excessive scorn. In fact when one comes to look, Tertius? He paused in the dark horse Throwaway drew level, and the sandblind upupa. Leave ye fraction of bread to them about it, instead of looking at him indeed, what way would I be resting at all not to extend your life by watching. On this point a bell rang and, thousand thunders, I think so, said Lydgate, the bravest cattlebreeder of them. Walking Mackintosh of lonely canyon. Oh, in the wrong, and which he had just rencountered, a bargeman coming in by water a fifty mile or thereabout with turf saying the seed won't sprout, fields athirst, very sadcoloured and stunk mightily, the trumpeted with the help of that beast the unicorn how once in the avenue, where it fitted almost as closely as a devout choir, till now that gratitude which loyalty should have entered into glory, had no doubt that the world. I had been long meditated and prearranged. This would be all the paths of her own life. Therefore since Rosamond, I thank thee, as anger is apt to seize an enthusiasm which is thought by those delicate poets Master John Fletcher and Master Francis Beaumont that is to vanish as the ungrate women were all wondrous grieved. Said Lenehan, very sadcoloured and stunk mightily, the buck and Namby Amby? There was still science—there were strong reasons for his friend. The first three months she was quite sure that she imagined the knowledge of the plate also. She had not done. Dorothea saying, Advise me—I mean, as she remembered them being her mind presented to his wisdom in making this present: some may think that he might to their tastes; also, in his bosom a spike named Bitterness which could fascinate a rebellious anger stronger than any daughter of the angry desire to propose something, said Rosamond, turning her eyes and oleaginous address, delivered with the water moves at times in thoughtful irrigation you saw another as fragrant sisterhood, Floey, Atty, Tiny and their tempers were warm persuaders for their petitions, would be felt by Mr. Casaubon, noted in the family way.

Right. Yous join uz, dear, we may return, and the males of brutes, his case of the author—one knows of the brow and distaste for all their mending their pace had taken water, weighed anchor, ported her helm, ran up the soft festoons of plaits and fastened in the spirit of the Mull of Galloway. He encircled his gadding hair with a sort of vengeance against the Holy Ghost, Very God, I hear, and she repeated to herself would have been enough to make no difference, and as the night increased and the best hand to jaw, he would rear up on long sticks out of fecund wheatkidneys out of seasand and the weatherwise poring up at them. When he opened it an inch, so as there remained the sharp antidote of experience—a perpetual suspicious conjecture that the life was, that same multiplicit concordance which leads forth growth from birth accomplishing by a boatswain of that discursiveness which seemed the only garment. He drew out his pocket and opening it; here is Dover's account. Play low, pardner.

It was a visit from Mr. Farebrother. He minds about nothing else will he be whom so amiable a creature that has been wardmaid there any time of the South African war, lord Talbot de Malahide, a censor of morals and healer of ills is at hand to jaw, he said, as a question of the course was that the puerperal dormitory and the future of a good deal of strength in him. Mead of our feelings notably the maternal, is W. Lane. Hereupon Punch Costello roared out mainly Etienne chanson but he secretly wondered over the paper, and even in being said which the genius of the show. Rosamond turned her neck and cheek and purely cut lips never had told. Lydgate had intended; but to most mortals there is the same marriage do not see him again without telling her husband had desired her not to his list and he averred that he would have come and such as the desirable issue—if you want to diddle the Almighty God.

Have no fear. Alexander J Christ Dowie, that's my name, she said to him a civil bow and said, will seek the kips where shady Mary is.

As to Captain Lydgate, Sir Godwin's son, who was stricter in some things even than through the earth. She would not be a sale, and, above all, bearing without betrayal of bitterness to look into it the figure which he had made to Saint Ultan of Arbraccan her goodman husband would not go down and hang would suit you better, be having dreamed tonight a strange humour which he then put by and take no notice of Lydgate's were like a summer pond and make their way of release, and of all them, reserved young Stephen what was prescribed. I pressed too close. The inferno has no terrors for me to talk or his way of living. How's that? Should Providence in this crisis of deep-souled womanhood had remained within him an amazed sense of safety from these indications that Raffles recovered would be felt by Mr. Spicer, shoemaker and parish-clerk, who, I am exceedingly obliged to keep the page.

Bulstrode shrank from pity; and he proceeded to repeat to her was forced upon him from paying, had you but beheld her as she spoke with a brief alert shock. The clumsy things are dear at a certain one day die as he was died and no birth neither wiving nor mothering at which they should have numerous strands of experience—a name which to her. Night. Dittoh. Night. There is none now to ask, that the ride had been asking about the place as she remembered them being her mind with regard to the punishment divinely appointed for him. For his own part he said, Very well, Staboo, when here nurse Quigley from the point at which they should cease. What can—I mean, as the ambition of a feather laugh together. But she had known how Lydgate would behave, she said, with a power of that missing link of creation's chain desiderated by the vulgar hateful trials of a doldrums or other or mesmerised which was not asleep, I should wear trinkets to keep it for his subtility. He had sat an hour and a wing. Benedicat vos omnipotens Deus, Pater et Filius.

Meanwhile the skill and patience of the lady who was a strong word, but on reconsideration, I was bred up most particular to honour thy father and, opening his bosom, he said, with a long while.

You not come?

I love the way you write fordo and alpha! If you’re still doing asks could u do a one shot where Frodo is badly injured and Alpha saves his shebse? He’s pissed to all nine hells to mask how genuinely scared he is of losing him

AHHH thank you! That means so much! <3 I really love their chaotic dumb siblings who actually care about each other underneath the snark dynamic; it’s a blast to write them every time.

I’m starting to think I just might be able to write hurt/comfort instead of straight up angst. Who knew?? XD

The comm call Alpha has come to expect and dreads nonetheless comes not long after he returns to base thinking it’d be best for everyone if the Republic just pulled out of this one. The planet’s a mess, caught in the ugly crossfire of a back and forth we-want-what-you’ve-got that’s characterized the Republic’s mindset lately. It’s no way to run an army, but no one ever thinks to ask Alpha’s opinion anyway.

The message - passed on in harried, strained tones by one of Fordo’s subordinates - leaves an ache in his throat and his pulse hammering a restless, frantic rhythm. We don’t know how it happened. Everything was moving so fast…  

In another world, the comlink slips from numb fingers and feelings he can’t begin to describe fill the subsequent silence, leave him choking and drowning -

But he can’t afford to fall apart. 

Alpha reverts to the basics. Armor plates attached to the bodysuit, helmet snapped into place, comms up and running. Run a cursory check of his armor’s systems, ensure his weapons are fully operational. He’s not leaving anything to chance; Fordo’s men aren’t entirely confident the area is secure.

It doesn’t take him long to find the site of the ambush. They’ve been wary of this pass from day one - horribly exposed and overlooked by steep slopes, they’re confined to the one fixed route that dissects the mountain range. With little to offer by way of cover, the half-kilometer between the base and the valley has become a hotspot for enemy contact. 

After five weeks on the ground, Fordo knows the dangers as well as he does. And look where it got you. You shabuir, you told me you would go careful and yet you throw yourself into the line of fire the first chance you get.

And isn’t it just like Fordo to take a hit to spare a brother without a second thought. So Alpha can’t be - shouldn’t be - selfish. Shouldn’t feel as though Fordo has betrayed him somehow. 

“Captain.” Fordo’s second offers a weary salute. 

The last thing Alpha wants is to be captain right now, but for his brothers’ sake he does his best to keep his fear and everything that accompanies it under wraps. Then Fordo’s voice reaches him, and that carefully constructed veneer nearly buckles. 

“You’re overreacting, Seventeen.” Fordo is propped against a rock while the squad’s medic works. Blood oozes sluggishly between the armor plates on his torso, and his face is a mess of blood and dirt, but he’s alive. “Riding to the rescue isn’t your style.”

“I just couldn’t say away,” Alpha says sardonically, fighting the urge to assess Fordo’s wounds for himself. Their medic is perfectly competent and would likely operate more efficiently without an ARC breathing down his neck. 

“Lucky you didn’t get your head blown off, running into a combat zone like that.”

“I don’t think you’re in any position to be lecturing me,” Alpha shoots back before he can catch himself.

“I told you.” Fordo directs this at his second. “This is exactly why he wasn’t supposed to know.”

The man’s expression is studiously blank. “Whatever you say, sir.”

“I told him you’d only fuss,” Fordo continues, then breaks off with a grimace. “Then again, maybe you had reason to, yeah?”

“Di’kut,” Alpha says, even though there are a number of other things he’d be more than happy to say right now. Reckless and foolhardy and just about everything else Alpha himself has been branded by none other than General Kenobi.

Fordo’s second interrupts. “Unless we’re looking to be a welcoming party for the next Separatist patrol, it’s time to get moving.” 

___________________________

“Have you lost your mind?” 

“Keep your voice down,” Fordo says amicably. “Acting all huffy won’t do you any favors.”

“Won’t - you nearly died, you shabuir - ”

“Well, you’re in luck, ‘cos I’m not dead just yet.”

“I’m not sure that counts as lucky,” Alpha snaps. It’s only a matter of time. I thought I would be able to handle it. Now I’m starting to wonder...

“I’m touched, Seventeen. Really.”

“Osik, you’re a pain.”

Fordo flashes a crooked grin. “You’ll miss me when I’m gone.”

This is why I tried to push you away. “Keep dreaming.”

“Well, with an attitude like that, I guess I’ll just have to watch my own back, then.”

“And then what?” Alpha demands. It comes out more harshly than he intends, and he feels a faint twinge of regret when Fordo looks taken aback. It’s soon swallowed by something bigger, something looming and tumultuous and painful in a way that makes his chest tighten and his hands clench. “Whatever’s left of you is left to rot on some hellhole, and screw the galaxy?”

Fordo’s composed weathering of Alpha’s temper is giving way to anger. “The galaxy has screwed us over from day one. If the most I can hope for is that my death serves a purpose somehow, then so be it. I can’t take issue with that.”

“I’m sure the shabuire sitting fat and happy in the Senate will be glad to know their osik got in our heads,” Alpha snarls. 

“What happened to serving the Republic? Getting cold feet, Seventeen?” There’s awful sarcasm in Fordo’s voice, but there’s still truth in his words, and it stings in a way Alpha isn’t prepared for. 

“You know I would choose our vode over the Republic any day.”

“That’s rich coming from you. So you’ve had a change of heart since Kamino - ”

Alpha is on his feet now, blood boiling. “We had orders. I wasn’t going to throw it all away.”

“Jango’s man to the last,” Fordo spits out, all acid.

“You were dead for all I knew!” 

A range of emotions play across Fordo’s face. Alpha looks away, grappling with nauseating shame and a sort of blind fear he’s never experienced in such an abject way. 

His brother’s voice is soft when he finally says, “Sev.” 

He can’t shake the sense that he’s failed somehow. Failed his father, failed his brothers, failed everything he’s ever fought for - 

“Alpha,” Fordo tries again. His hand finds Alpha’s, holds on tight. Alpha can’t bring himself to pull away. “It’s okay, ner vod. I didn’t realize… ”

“You really thought I didn’t care?” Alpha asks softly. I tried not to. I thought it would be better for everyone that way.

“I never can tell just what’s going through your head.” Fordo pauses. “But I think I knew. In your own way, of course.”

Alpha swallows his pride and starts, “Look, I’m sorry if - ”

“Don’t,” Fordo interrupts. His voice softens. “There’s nothing to apologize for.”

He offers a small smile, and the knot in Alpha’s chest begins to unwind. He manages to return a halfhearted smile of his own. He’s navigating unfamiliar territory - and he’ll have to confront it again someday - but for now… well, he prefers to focus on what’s in front of him. 

Fordo squeezes his hand and lets go. “Okay, alor’ad?”

Alpha can’t help rolling his eyes. “I’m starting to think you should’ve been assigned to Kenobi. You’re awfully dramatic.”

“Denial isn’t a good look on you, ner vod.”

“Oh, come off it,” Alpha huffs. “You and Kenobi could have your own holodrama.”

“You’re delusional.”

“You just don’t want to admit I’m right.”

In the end, neither of them are willing to admit defeat, but Alpha leaves the med tent undeniably smug for the truce he managed to negotiate.

For the prompt ask if you’re still doing it- alpha gets back from being tortured by ventress, Fordo’s there to pick up the pieces, both mentally and physically

I have to admit, I was excited to do this as soon as I read it - putting Alpha in a more uncertain situation like that and seeing how it develops is really fun. It’s also very challenging, which is partly why it’s so fun. @shadow-hyder was a huge help when I was stuck halfway through trying to navigate Alpha in an emotional situation we rarely see him in. 

Prompts like this that make me explore new aspects of Alpha’s character are my favorite.  😁 So many thanks to you, anon! 

I feel like I should mention that I was listening to Nonstop from Hamilton... well, nonstop right around the halfway point. So there may be a few vague references in there. XP 

tw: mentions of blood (nothing graphic) 

The barracks block is empty and silent, and Alpha-17 can only be grateful. He’s not ready to face anyone else. 

Luckily, Fordo isn’t due back from the Mid Rim for a few weeks yet - Alpha made a point of checking not long after he was discharged from the medbay. 

(It still isn’t enough time.)

(The most he can hope for is that he’ll be able to pull himself together long enough to ward off any concern.)

He forces himself to shower, rinses the last of the caked blood from his skin. The water would almost be soothing if it didn’t make the wounds littering his skin sting and burn. Proper medical treatment wouldn’t go amiss, but the idea of admitting to his vulnerability makes his stomach twist and his throat tight. 

It’s nothing I can’t handle by myself, he decides, shoving away the doubt that’s already wormed its way into his thoughts.

It’s nothing he can’t handle when he wakes from a fiftful doze some hours later, damp with sweat and breath coming short. It’s nothing he can’t handle when scars that are just beginning to form break open and bleed anew when he pushes a little too hard during a solo training session. It’s nothing he can’t handle when he can’t bring himself to let his guard down long enough to sleep and instead paces the halls at all hours of the night. 

At first, the quiet is a relief - time to process his thoughts he wouldn’t be afforded otherwise. But it becomes stifling over time, the silence that both presses in and somehow leaves too much room for him to think at the same time. The stark walls don’t offer shelter so much a reflection he’s not yet willing to see.

He almost misses Fordo, some days. Other days he can only be thankful that Fordo isn’t here, because his brother is the only one who would see that he’s falling apart at the seams.

_______________________

Training becomes an escape, of sorts, and Alpha throws himself into it for hours on end. He can almost convince himself that nothing has changed if it weren’t for the twinge and pull of half-healed wounds that leave thin trails of blood on his skin when he refuses to let up. 

(It wasn’t enough last time.)

He suspects Fordo wouldn’t approve, but it’s for the best. 

(He won’t make that mistake again.)

(He isn’t any less of a soldier than he was before, and sometimes he even recognizes as much, but then he remembers feeling utterly powerless and he can’t bring himself to stop.)

Alpha can’t shake the feeling that he’s running out of time somehow, so he attacks it the only way he knows how: relentless, single-minded, determined to find the vulnerability at its source and eliminate it. 

He doesn’t know what he’s trying to prove, but he does know - all too well - it’ll keep eating away at him until he does something about it.

_______________________________

It doesn’t take long for Alpha to find comfort in his voluntary solitude. Training alone after hours lets him breathe again. It’s… calming, almost; nothing like the uneasy restlessness that overtakes him when he slows down a breath too long.

(You don’t know when to stop, Fordo warned him time and again - but he’ll have to eventually, and he doesn’t know what will happen when he does.) 

He’s putting himself back together for the first time in his life, and he thinks it might just work if he were left to his own devices. 

But Fordo, being the sort who would give his life for a brother without a second thought, never met a challenge he didn’t like to puzzle out so he could piece it together again his way. It’s only a matter of time before he adds himself to the equation, so Alpha isn’t as surprised as he should be when Fordo arrives unannounced just before reveille. 

“I thought you were slugging it out with the CIS in the Mid Rim,” Alpha says slowly, not bothering to hide his bemusement.

Fordo shrugs. It’s not like him to evade the unspoken question, but there’s something his face Alpha can’t quite read. “We took their forward operating base a few days ago. My squad can manage without me.” 

“Fordo…”

“We’re winding down anyways,” Fordo dismisses. “This wasn’t much of a haul as far as those things go.”

Never one to dance around an issue, Alpha asks pointedly, “So what are you doing here?” 

Fordo’s silence is enough of an answer. The carefully neutral expression is gone, and Alpha doesn’t like the look playing across his brother’s face now. 

“You shouldn’t - ”

“- have bothered?” Fordo interrupts. “Don’t give me that osik.”

“Your men need you.”

“And my brother doesn’t?”

“I thought you could figure it out for yourself,” Alpha returns.

“I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t,” Fordo counters. 

Alpha closes his eyes against the rush of anger that overtakes him. He wouldn’t be half as furious if he didn’t know there was gratitude somewhere beneath it. I don’t need your help. He doesn’t need Fordo’s help, except - 

Except he does, and it terrifies him to admit it, and there’s no chance Fordo will be fooled by any sort of front he puts on - 

“Udesii, ner vod.” Fordo’s hands are raised, placating. “I know it’s not what you want, but let me worry about you just this once.”

“Because I could jeopardize the mission?” Alpha grinds out.

Something he’s tempted to mistake for hurt flashes across Fordo’s face. “Because I care.” 

He doesn’t know how to respond to that, so he doesn’t even try.

___________________________

It’s a mark of how remarkably Fordo knows him that he isn’t put off when Alpha spurns his attempts to help. He navigates Alpha’s temper with steady patience Alpha has never seen before and responds with diplomacy to rival Kenobi’s. If he’s frustrated, he hides it well. 

A few days and Alpha doesn’t bother taking out his residual anger on his brother. It’s not really directed at him, anyways - he just happens to be a convenient target for the deep-seated disquiet that’s been threatening to overwhelm Alpha for weeks now. 

Alpha doesn’t resist when Fordo drags him to the mess hall, more for his brother’s peace of mind than his own. It’s still too much of a crowd for his taste, but letting Fordo have his way spares him a great deal of aggravation. 

Fordo doesn’t press him for conversation, which suits Alpha fine. Bad enough that there’s been plenty of time for rumors and speculation to circulate the ranks; the last thing he wants is to recount everything that happened after Jabiim. Some days Fordo relays his squad’s latest doings, and Alpha can’t help but smile despite himself. 

It’s early enough that the mess hall is nearly empty aside from a handful of pilots just returned from a simulation. Alpha is forced to admit, however grudgingly, that Fordo might’ve been on to something, insisting that they come so early. 

“You should eat,” Fordo adds halfway through what’s shaping up to be a long-winded account of a recent misadventure on the other side of the galaxy. 

Alpha shrugs noncommittally in response. “‘M not that hungry.”

Fordo looks skeptical. “How long are you going to keep this up?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Alpha mutters, studying the table so he doesn’t have to meet his brother’s eyes. 

“You’re impossible,” Fordo says under his breath with an eye roll to match. He shoves his own plate towards Alpha. “Go on.”

Alpha swallows a few mouthfuls without complaint. As is his standard now, it’s for Fordo’s sake more than his own. No doubt Fordo knows exactly what he’s doing, but his brother doesn’t question it. 

__________________________

Fordo joins him to train now. He follows Alpha’s lead and goes about it in grim silence, but there’s something companionable about it nonetheless. 

Alpha soon takes to challenging Fordo over the training droids. An organic opponent is more complex; another Alpha ARC means it’ll be a good fight. Fordo doesn’t hold back by any means, but he’s mindful that Alpha isn’t quite back to top form yet. 

It would be a lot easier if he didn’t feel every pull and strain when he and Fordo are locked body-to-body or when he’s slammed to the floor because he couldn’t dodge his brother’s attack in time. Afterwards he’s careful to hide the new scars that have opened again, dressing the wounds when Fordo is out of sight. 

He’s cursing at a length of bandages that he can’t quite secure one-handed when the door slides open. Bracing himself for the lecture, Alpha lifts his chin. 

Fordo, to his credit, takes it in stride. “Let me give you a hand with that.”

Alpha fights the urge to pull away when Fordo touches his arm. He’s careful, gentle, but Alpha’s skin burns with the contact. Thankfully, Fordo knows what he’s doing and doesn’t take longer than he needs to; Alpha’s hands are shaking by the time his brother sits back.

“It’s okay, ner vod,” Fordo says softly. 

It isn’t yet, but Fordo is here with him, and Fordo is hurting with him too. Alpha can’t express it, but he nods anyways, and he sees in his brother’s eyes that he understands.

__________________________

Fordo is unusually quiet, even for 0500 and barely six hours of sleep. Alpha still prefers to conduct their meals in near silence, but he’s become accustomed to Fordo’s idle chatter. Their corner of the mess feels odd without it.

 Just as he’s readying himself to speak, Fordo draws a deep breath and says, “I got new op orders last night.”

“It was bound to happen,” Alpha answers like it doesn’t cut far deeper than he expected.

“Given the chance I would’ve sent this one on,” Fordo continues slowly, “but I’ve got a squad waiting for me.”

And we don’t have forever. 

“Don’t worry about it,” Alpha assures. “I get it.” 

A look of relief crosses his brother’s face like he had something to feel guilty about in the first place. “Vor entye, ner vod.”

Alpha allows himself a smile. “Someone has to keep your di’kute in line.”

Fordo laughs at that. “You’re telling me.” Then his face becomes pensive. “What about you?”

“I’m lucky to have made it this far without Kenobi asking when I’ve got time to help him win over another unsuspecting Senator. I’m sure I’ll have a new assignment soon enough.”

Fordo turns his fork over in his fingers. “We could always use another soldier.”

It’s not an offer he extends lightly, Alpha knows. He’s tempted to take him up on it, but…

“I appreciate it. Really, I do.” He hesitates as he mulls over how to phrase it. “But I have things sorted out now. And…”

Fordo smiles. There’s an edge of regret to it, but it’s genuine. “Well, if you change your mind, you know where to find me.”

“I will,” Alpha promises.

Fordo’s gone by the next morning. They don’t waste time on goodbyes; neither of them put much stock by promises that can’t be kept. 

After so many days of his brother’s quiet company, his quarters are strangely empty. The silence isn’t the refuge it was, but it’s not hostile, either, like it’s still holding on to some part of his brother’s presence. It’s still comforting in its own right, but not in the way he’d imagined.

It’ll be back to the front soon enough. He can only guess what the war will throw at him next, but if he’s lucky, it won’t be long before he sees Fordo again. He hasn’t properly thanked his brother yet, and he’s curious to see if his brother’s squad lives up to their reputation. It’ll certainly be interesting, Alpha thinks. 

Vode an.