Chapter Text
“Ma’am!”
“Son of a—" the woman swore, smacking her head on the underside of the huge ornate table she’d crawled under. She paused for a moment to rub her head, then proceeded to shuffle out from under the table, bottom first.
Fox observed the woman’s progress, head cocked as he watched her awkwardly crawl out backwards, eyes raking over the tightly clad bottom presented to him. He waited patiently as she made it out, then struggled to her feet on heels that seemed too high for any reasonable person to be able to walk on.
“Is there a reason you’re under there?” he demanded, his voice stern through his helmet’s modulator.
“I dropped my tape measure,” she said, rubbing the bump on her head and trying to smooth her hair into order, “those little suckers really roll once they get going.”
There was silence as the helmeted head stared down at her, unmoving. “Do you have some ID?”
“Yes,” she said, fishing around in the large bag she’d dropped on the table to pull out her Senate security tag, holding it out to him with a flourish, and he couldn’t help but notice the metallic green polish on her neatly manicured fingernails.
“You’re required to wear this at all times within the building,” he said, scanning the tag with his datapad and pulling up her ID.
“Oh, I know,” she said, “but it doesn’t really go with this outfit, and it was getting all tangled up with these.” She held up the mess of chains and beads hanging around her neck to illustrate her point.
He rolled his eyes under his helmet, trying to sigh inwardly so she wouldn’t hear him. “You’re here to see Senator Amidala?”
“Yes, I’m her designer. I’m here quite a lot. Most of the other guards just ignore me now…”
“I’m not most of the other guards,” he said firmly, handing her pass back. He grabbed her wrist when she went to put it back in her bag. “I need you to put that on and keep it on until you leave the building.”
She regarded him curiously, wondering if she should challenge him. But something about him warned her off, so she obediently took the ID tag and hung it around her neck, trying to settle it amongst her jewellery. Finally satisfied, she smiled sweetly up at him. “Better?”
“Yes, ma’am. Thank you. Did you get what you were looking for under there?” he asked, pointing to the large table.
“No,” she sighed, “it rolled right to the back corner, I couldn’t even see it under there!”
Sighing to himself again, he hooked his datapad onto his belt then grabbed the back corner of the enormous carved table, lifted it and pulled it out from the wall. She watched on, impressed with his strength, gasping with delight when her rolled-up tape measure appeared. She ducked down to retrieve it, then stepped back so the trooper could return the table to its rightful position. “Thank you, Commander…?”
“Fox,” the trooper filled in for her, his voice still alarmingly monotone.
“Well, thank you, Commander Fox. I appreciate your help. And I promise to keep my ID tag on.”
“See that you do,” he instructed, rolling his eyes again when she saluted him with a sly grin, then grabbed her bag and a large folder off the table and headed off towards the senator’s office. He watched her leave, left shaking his head at civilian fashion sense, taking in the high heels, the knee-length dress so tight that it dictated the way she walked as she tottered down the corridor trying to clutch her folder of sketches with one arm, her oversized bag sliding off the other one.
Shaking his head again, he hit a code on his comlink. “Thorn,” he said when he heard the click to indicate it had been answered, “you familiar with Sylvi Arak?”
“Sylvi? Of course I am,” Thorn responded. “Why, has something happened to her?”
“No, nothing’s happened to her,” Fox said. “It might do though if she keeps wandering around the Senate with no ID.”
“But everyone knows Sylvi,” Thorn protested. “Except you, I guess. Well, you do now…”
“Thorn,” Fox said, trying to keep his voice even, “in future, all visitors to the Senate are to wear their ID tags at all times. No exceptions! Is that clear?”
“Sir, yes sir!” came the snappy response, making Fox grunt irritably as he disconnected the call. He pulled out his datapad again, checking the visitor log for the day, wondering why Senator Amidala couldn’t see this woman in her own time, in her own home, rather than adding more visitors while the Senate was in session. He noted that she was due to leave at 1900, so he set a reminder on his datapad to be at the front checkpoint to make sure she actually left. Satisfied, he turned on his heel and headed back to the Senate floor to monitor proceedings, wondering why he couldn’t be sent to the frontlines where things were surely easier.
“Sylvi, these are marvellous!” the senator said, flipping through the design sketches. “I don’t know how I got so lucky finding you.”
“Well, I got pretty lucky too,” Sylvi shrugged. “I get to have my work paraded around in the public eye!”
“It’s a very mutually beneficial relationship,” the senator agreed with a smile. “How soon can you have these ready for fittings?”
“Three weeks,” Sylvi said, “maybe a little less. I have a full team now so shouldn’t take too long. Do you want to see fabric samples, or do you trust me?”
“You’ve never gone wrong so far,” the senator said with a smile, closing up the folder, “I trust you implicitly.”
“I’ve always said you’re a brave woman,” Sylvi said, “as a senator and as a client!”
The two women laughed as Sylvi packed her bag and got her folder in order, checking to make sure her ID tag was still in place. “You don’t usually wear that, do you?” the senator asked.
“No,” Sylvi lamented, “but I had a conversation with a Commander Fox on the way in. He politely remined me that I should be wearing it at all times.”
“Oh,” said Senator Amidala, suppressing a smirk, “well if Commander Fox said so…”
“He did seem very insistent,” Sylvi said, shouldering her bag and picking up her folder. “A little pernickety about it if you ask me. I’ll call Teckla when I’m ready and set up a fitting time, okay?”
“Perfect,” Amidala said, sitting at her desk to get back to work, “I look forward to seeing your creations.”
“See you soon,” Sylvi called out, blowing the senator a kiss as she sailed out of the office. She rebalanced everything before heading for the lift, hitting the call button with her elbow and waiting patiently for it to arrive. When the door slid open, she stepped in, surprised to see Commander Fox inside. Startled, she clipped her folder against the edge of the door, dropping it on the lift floor, sending her sketches spilling out across the confined space.
“Oh, you’ve got to be fucking kidding me!” she exclaimed, dropping to her knees to try and gather them together, swearing again when her large bag slipped off her other arm, falling open on the floor, some of the contents spilling out across the lift as the doors closed again.
Fox looked down at the woman scrabbling about on her hands and knees on the floor of the lift, wondering how she managed to get through a day, what with dropping and losing her personal belongings everywhere. Muttering under his breath, he got down on his knees beside her. “Here, let me help you.”
“No, it’s fine,” she said, lifting her head up suddenly and connecting with the base of his helmet with another curse. He shot an arm out to steady her as she raised a hand to rub at the second bump on her head for the day. He took the opportunity to look at her closely, while her face was scrunched up in pain. When she opened her eyes again, he saw that they were a bright, clear green. And her hair was a mix of dark brown and silver, all swept up in a series of intricate waves and curls, with a heavy fringe that dropped to her eyebrows. Her face was made up, with coral-coloured lips, and her eyes shaded with the same green of her eyes.
He tried to ignore the fact that he could see down the front of her dress as she knelt, still rubbing her head, focussing instead on gathering up her belongings. Once he had everything reasonably contained, he turned back to her. “Are you alright, ma’am?”
“Yes, I’m fine,” she said, looking at him sheepishly, “just very clumsy.”
He nodded in furious agreement with her, taking her arm so that he could help her stand, startled when the lift door opened, and he looked up to see Thorn standing there. “Uh, Fox…everything alright in here? Oh hey, Sylvi!”
“Hi Thorn,” she sighed, holding a hand up to him so he could pull her to her feet. Fox quickly got to his feet behind her, waiting till she was steady before handing her things to her. “Thank you,” she said gratefully, trying to keep all her bits and pieces together. “I’m sorry about all this. I wish I could say I’m not usually like this but—"
“Ha, you wish!” Thorn laughed, silenced by a sharp scowl from her.
“Is your head alright, ma’am?” Fox asked. He should at least make sure she wasn’t going to pass out before leaving the building.
“Yeah, I’ve got a hard head,” she sighed. “Now if you’ll both excuse me, I’ll get going before I embarrass myself any further. Goodnight.”
The two commanders watched her leave, then Thorn turned to Fox. “What did you do to her head?”
“I didn’t do anything to her head,” Fox protested. “She seems to be able to knock herself about without any assistance.”
“Yeah, I guess she does,” Thorn chuckled as the two of them headed towards the Senate chambers to clear them for the day. “She’s a nice girl though, if you like the clumsy, artistic type.”
“Well, whatever she is,” Fox said, “she shouldn’t be wandering around here with no ID visible. Don’t let it happen again.”
“Well, it’s just that she’s such a regular,” Thorn said. “All the Senate guard know her, and most of us. I guess you just must have had bad timing to miss her.”
“Or good,” Fox muttered, as they swept the chamber for stragglers before making their way through the enormous building towards the exit. As they approached the checkpoint, they noticed several of the Senate Guard conferring over a terminal.
“Problem?” Fox asked as he strode up to them.
“One visitor ID tag not returned, sir,” said one of the men, pointing to the screen. Fox leaned forward, seeing the name Sylvi Arak highlighted on the screen.
“She just left the building,” Fox said, frustrated, “how did she get past you?”
“We had a rush all at once, sir,” the other man said, embarrassed.
“Pull up her details, Thorn will go and get her pass and get it back here so you can log it out of the system.”
The first man quickly tapped into the system, pulling up a work and home address for the woman, as well as a comm code. Fox transmitted the data into his datapad, then sent it to Thorn’s pad. “Sir,” Thorn said, checking his pad, “I’m due at the detention centre to help Stone transfer some prisoners…”
Fox gave a long-suffering sigh. “Fine, I’ll go. You get moving. Stone’ll be waiting.”
“Yes, sir,” Thorn said, saluting his superior officer and making a quick exit.
Fox grabbed the comlink from the checkpoint, quickly tapping in the woman’s code, hoping she might at least still be in the local area, at a café or something. He let the comm buzz for several minutes but got no answer. Sighing again, he fished the code key for his bike out of a pouch on his belt. “I’ll be back soon,” he told the two men. “Make sure you either improve your systems here or get more men on duty when the Senate is in session.”
“Yes sir,” the two men said, watching as the commander of the Coruscant Guard strode from the building, heading for the bike parking bay out the front.
Once he was at his bike, he checked the two addresses seeing that they weren’t too far from each other. He checked his chrono, deciding to try her business address first, and fired up his bike, shooting up into a skylane.
Twenty minutes later, he was landing on a public platform near a busy retail sector. He secured his bike and walked the short distance to the address he had, finding an obscured doorway that opened onto a narrow stairwell. Double-checking the address, he took the stairs two at a time, pushing through a door at the top that opened onto a workroom.
It was a busy-looking space, reams of different fabrics draped over various surfaces, half-dressed mannequins, various pieces of machinery, a huge worktable covered with numerous half-finished projects, and a wall covered in fashion sketches. It was bright and colourful and chaotic and very disconcerting for a soldier more used to drab surroundings and orderly goings on.
He was just about to call out when he heard a shriek behind him, followed by the sound of something smashing. Pulling his blaster as he turned quickly, he found himself face to face with the designer, hands pressed to her face and a smashed cup at her feet, tea flooding out onto the floor. Sighing, he holstered his blaster and took a step towards her. “It’s alright, Ms Arak. It’s Commander Fox, from before.”
“Yes, I know,” she said, recovering herself, “I recognized your armor. I just…wasn’t expecting to see anyone in here. I thought I locked up downstairs.”
“No, you didn’t,” he said, noticing that her heels were gone, and she was in stocking feet. “You should step back so you don’t cut yourself.”
“Oh, right,” she said, taking a step back from the broken shards of her cup. Then she looked up at him, confused. “What are you doing here?”
“I came to collect your ID tag,” he said, “you didn’t hand it back when you left the building. They all need to be accounted for.”
“Oh shit, I’m so sorry!” she exclaimed, carefully stepping over the broken cup, pulling the tag from around her neck. “I was a bit flustered when I was leaving, I completely forgot.”
She paused at his complete lack of audible or visible response, unnerved and not knowing how to proceed. His body didn’t shift, and he didn’t say anything, just stood there with the visor of his helmet tilted in her direction. Embarrassed again, she took the remaining steps to him, to hand over the ID tag. “I’m really sorry you had to come all this way to get it,” she said. “Can I at least offer you a cup of tea or caf? Looks like I’ll be making more for myself…”
“No,” he said bluntly. “I need to get this back to the Senate.”
“Oh, well maybe another time then…” she said, trailing off when he seemed to jerk his head back at that. “I guess you know where to find me now.”
He nodded uncomfortably, looking intently at her, realising how much height she’d lost without her ridiculous shoes on. “You really should lock the door if you’re here alone.”
“I usually remember. Maybe all those knocks to the head today…” she said with a laugh, flustered again when he didn’t laugh back, and utterly unnerved at trying to converse with a helmeted head.
“Do you need to go to a medcentre?” he asked, his tone serious. “I can take you.”
“No, no…I was just joking,” she assured him. “All this clumsiness and forgetfulness is just me on a bad day.”
He studied her carefully for a moment, as though trying to reassure himself she wasn’t suffering from a concussion. “Are you usually here this late?”
“Yes, I get a lot done when the others have gone home.”
“Others?” he asked.
“My team,” she explained. “I have three people that work for me.”
“Oh,” he said, curious now about how this walking disaster somehow managed to run a business and supervise three staff members. “How do you get home?”
“Taxi,” she said, now looking at him curiously. “Why all the questions?”
“No reason,” he said abruptly, tucking the ID tag into a pouch on his belt and turning to leave. “Thank you for the tag. Try not to forget next time.”
“If I ever dare show my face there again,” she chuckled wryly. “Sorry again for all the trouble.”
He just nodded as he headed for the stairwell. “Goodnight, ma’am, make sure you lock up after I leave.”
“I will,” she said, watching his passage down the narrow stairwell. “Goodnight.”