Chapter Text
"Jat'jahaal! Another round!" Roared Wolffe and the table erupted into raucous cheers. He remembered seeing several nearby Vod'e roll their eyes at what was definitely the loudest table in 79’s. Fox would have been embarrassed if he wasn't too busy trying to control the broad grin that kept threatening to break out across his face.
He was surrounded by everyone he'd ever loved and was more than a little tipsy, forgive him if he had been finding it difficult not to burst out into giggles at the drop of a hat. Cody, who was sat beside him, glanced in his direction and playfully ribbed him in the side, smiling in a way that told Fox he knew exactly what he was feeling. Cody then turned to the other gathered Commanders of their batch, Bly, Ponds, Wolffe and Bacara, who were in the middle of eagerly accepting a mug of Dressellian beer from an exasperated waiter. Bly slid a couple of mugs over to Fox and Cody on the other side of the table.
Ponds lifted his mug and raised it for silence, the rest of the batch falling quiet as they quickly caught onto his pre-speech face. Ponds liked to give speeches. They all teased him relentlessly for it of course, but out of all of them, Ponds had always been the Ori'vod among them. Pond's speeches were good too, especially when they were 3 drinks into the night and celebrating the biggest moment of their lives.
Ponds cleared his throat.
"Brothers," he started, passing his gaze over them. He smirked,"Commanders " he corrected, and they all gave a brief cheer, quickly falling quiet again so he could continue. "From this point forward that's what we are, we're all commanders, and we've already had our first taste of battle, of what's to come, the challenges we might face." He dipped his head and they all copied.
Geonosis had been their first brush with conflict, the first indicator of what their new life under the war was going to be like. The first time their training had been put to the test.
The first time vod'e had died, the first time difficult decisions had had to be made. It had been a success though, and with their first battle over, the commanders and Fox’s batchmates were to be properly assigned to their jedi generals and legions of men to command. Fox's brothers were to be scattered across the galaxy, fighting under the same banner and name as he was, all of it for the Republic. Fox couldn't imagine what it would be like not to have his brothers on the same planet as him, could hardly fathom the distance that would be put between them.
But they had been trained for this, and he knew his brothers were just as excited as him to assume their new posts tomorrow when all of them set out to travel to their respective ships.
Well, all of them except Fox. Ponds continued his speech.
"But we're here today, and from now on we carry on for our fallen brothers, we carry on and we start our fight for the Republic, oya! "
They chorused 'oya!' After him and took a long drink from their drinks.
"So, Foxy, Head of the Coruscant guard eh?" Wolffe said, wiggling his eyebrows and Fox rolled his eyes.
"Oh kriff off Wolffe," he huffed, “It’s not exactly the biggest deal,”
The fact that everyone assumed it was going to be a glorified desk job went unsaid between them all, but Bly grimaced and nonetheless made a hearty attempt at injecting some more enthusiasm into Fox.
"Come on,” Bly said, dragging out the last word, “Being the guy solely in charge of defending the main headquarters of the Republic is not a big deal? You're pulling my leg here vod," he said.
"Not to mention you got the job after saving your entire battalion from the literal jaws of death," Bacara added dryly and Fox scowled.
"That's an exaggeration," he grumbled while carefully reminding himself not to bring up the fact that he hadn't actually saved his entire battalion. He had saved most of them, yes, but Fox had already written the names of those he hadn't on the inside of his vambrace. Fox had not saved his entire battalion.
Cody shoved him lightly in the side.
"Just take the compliment Fox," he said smiling fondly, and then Wolffe was launching across the table to strong arm Fox into an arm lock, giving a devastating noogie that had Fox cursing him and squirming.
"My twin brother's gonna be working with the Chancellor Palpatine, directly! " He crooned as Fox continued to struggle in the arm lock as Fox's brothers continued to chuckle good naturedly. Traitors .
"First of all," Fox said, wrestling himself free from Wolffe’s head lock, "I'm probably not going to be working directly with the Chancellor, and second of alI, you guys are the ones actually going off to fight, while I'm…” Fox trailed off, because he didn't really have a very good grasp on what exactly he would be doing as the Head of the Coruscant Guard, “Either way I’m going to be here while you guys go off to do the real work," he finished and Cody raised an eyebrow.
"I hardly think defending the Chancellor and the entirety of Coruscant isn't 'real work' " he said, and Fox rolled his eyes, but didn't bother trying to continue the argument.
The structure of the Guard had not been set up yet. Technically, Fox hadn't even started his first day. All of that setting up and getting settled was work to be done tomorrow. Either way, it was a pretty common conception that getting a posting on Coruscant was getting off easy. Way easy. Of course, the job was important , but Fox had been to Geonosis, he couldn't possibly fathom how anything on Coruscant could possibly be worse than that.
He knew he should be grateful, he had only gotten the position because of how exceptionally he'd performed his role as commander during the battle. But despite this, Fox couldn't help but feel as though he was being left behind. His brothers were going to do what they were raised for, were going to pair up with their respective Jedi and fight great battles amongst the stars, while Fox would remain here, acting as some karking security guard.
His brothers had been trying to hype up the job for him, but Fox could tell even they thought that he'd gotten a pretty safe posting. Maybe it was strange for him to want to be on the frontlines, but it was what they'd been bred for, and Fox didn't really know anything else.
Cody seemed to be able to sense his trepidation, because he craned his head down.
"You OK?" He asked quietly. It didn't really matter if he whispered or not, Wolffe and Bacara had started an impromptu wrestling match, which Bly was supporting emphatically, and Ponds was trying desperately to discourage. Fox smiled at the sight. It would probably be a long time before he saw his brothers like this together. (A darker voice in his head pointed out that it maybe be the last time, that they might perish out there, that one by one there would be less people at this table, until there was none of them left.)
Fox swallowed.
"Yeah, I'm fine." He said back to Cody, meeting his eyes, and he turned his face away in embarrassment when he felt his eyes sting slightly.
"Just, I'm going to miss you vod," he said and turned back to face Cody once he was confident he had his face under his control again. Cody's eyes softened and he pulled him forward by the back of his neck to rest their heads in a Keldabe.
"We'll come back," he said, and they both knew he was making promises he couldn't keep, "Until then we'll comm each other, I'll send you updates. You can tell me anything anytime, I'll always be here for you vod."
Fox closed his eyes and nodded. He then gave a grin.
"Not too many though. Don't want to overwhelm my extremely busy schedule," Fox said, and Cody pulled back and they'd both laughed.
Looking back, it had been funny. The joke had been funny, because realistically, Fox was going to be the least busy out of all of them. He was going to be the head of the Coruscant guard, the head of the planet that would likely never see a lick of violence. It should have been an easy job.
Fox remembered thinking to himself: how bad could it possibly be?
Fox blinked, and for a second he was completely ignorant to his surroundings, suspended in the haze that was the early morning. He pressed his face into the mattress, and briefly entertained the idea of smothering himself (he couldn't, it would be too much paperwork for the others to deal with.) He shifted his head and blinked again, slowly drawing on the bare threads of his consciousness. A couple of minutes. A couple minutes where nothing else existed except his presence in his bed, where he could almost believe he had no responsibilities, no expectations he had to meet. He breathed in deeply, savouring it.
And then Fox got out of bed.
Blacks, codpiece, thighplate, greeve, cuirass, belt, boots, helmet.
Comlink, click, messages pouring in from almost every channel. He didn't have time for breakfast. Two meetings in the next hour, grumpy senators and a routine security review. Leftover paperwork from yesterday. He needed the follow up on that missing trooper case. He pulled out his data pad as he walked and checked for what else he was missing.
Meeting, another meeting, patrol. Hmm, 12 minute lunch break, longer than usual.
Fox stopped and took a deep breath. He then closed his eyes and checked in with himself: pair of bruises on his thigh from restraining a criminal. Gash from a couple days ago, aching but still manageable. Blaster wound in the shoulder, still fresh but they didn't have enough excess bacta to be splurging on him. It was wrapped and had stopped bleeding after a night's rest so he should be fine.
A headache, which he'd had for nearly a year now. The cause of which had remained a mystery for almost as long as he'd had it . His current betting was it being caused by the blaster wound, but dehydration, hunger and stress were all strong contenders for that one.
Overall condition? Functional. Time to start the day.
Fox flung the door open.
Immediately the main headquarters of the Coruscant guard fell completely silent. Troopers stood stock still as they registered his presence.
"Well," Fox said, voice breaking cleanly through the silence, "Let's get to work," The chatter resumed immediately and troopers continued rushing from place to place. There was never a still moment in the Coruscant guard. There was always something to be done, some crisis to solve, some senator to be bossed around by.
The common saying went that “Coruscant was the planet whose lights never turned dimmed,” Corrie guards liked to add to that, saying that “ f Coruscant's lights never dimmed, then it was because the Corries were the kriffers stuck running the power generators,"
It was an apt representation of the Corries' place on Coruscant.
Fox strode over to his usual morning committee, a gaggle of anxious troopers holding datapads that all desperately needed Fox's input. Fox jerked his head in the direction of the door to the corridor linking the senate building and the Coruscant guard HQ. He then turned on his heel and his troopers fell into step behind him as he walked. They had all mastered this little song and dance and had likely already ordered themselves in order from most to least important.
"Commander, report on that case you were working on" Fox said brusquely and Thire pushed up through the small crowd of Corries and fell into step.
"Goodmorning Commander," he said formally, pulling up his data pad,"Investigation of the case was going well, however the Coruscant Security Force have laid claim on the case and we're being forced to hand it over,"
Thire was always very straight to the point, a characteristic Fox was grateful for when he had to put up with the steaming pile of osik that was the Coruscant Security Force. Not only were they unfathomably terrible at their jobs, but they then had the absolute gall to commandeer their investigations just when they started making headway.
Fox scowled, "Did the case involve anyone from the Senate? Anyone who might want to cover things up?" And Thire grimaced.
"The victim seemed to have been in contact with that one senator from-"
"Yes I know the one," Fox said, and he sighed. The CSF were quite obviously corrupt, to the point where it was practically an open secret, among the Corries at least. Fox had been expecting this particular case to have been shut down one way or another. Either by his men starting to 'randomly disappear' or by the CSF coming in to take it from them with some banthashit claim. Fox was just glad it had been the latter this time.
"Let it go Commander, we don't need to lose any more men on this. Make sure to relocate the people who were working on this case I don't want them going missing," Fox said and Thire nodded.
"Yes sir," Thire said, and he fell out of the current of Corries following Fox, allowing Thorn to take his place.
"Mornin’ Commander ," Thorn said as he sidled up to Fox. It was a rule that while outside the guard barracks, Fox, and any others with the title, were only to be addressed as 'Commander'.
Some Natborns, especially certain senators, got very twitchy with the reminder that clones weren't just glorified droids, and nothing reminded them more of this than when clones appeared to have something as sentient as Names . It made them uncomfortable, and when they were uncomfortable, they were irritable, and more likely to cause damage to Fox’s troopers, whether that be verbally or by ordering a reconditioning. (Sometimes they hurt his troopers regardless, and Fox always felt helpless when he visited the med bay to see Troopers injured by people they had done nothing to offend.)
Despite this. Fox couldn't help but marvel at how Thorn always managed to find a way to make the title 'Commander' sound incredibly ironic .
"What do you have for me Commander," Fox said and Thorn pulled up his own data pad.
"Just the weekly complaints report, sir" he said and he tapped the screen to pull up the figures, "You'll be happy to hear the numbers are lower this week. The senators have been in a good mood since the Trade Federation hasn't been on planet to stir up the pot as much,"
Fox hummed, a rare instance of good news, "Any reconditioning requests? Troopers we need to relocate?"
"Nope," Thorn said, "Trooper Tawn is settling in nicely from his last relocation, the senator who reported him also hasn't followed up on whether or not he's been reconditioned, so we might not have to change his number."
Reconditioning was one of the most infuriating problems Fox had to deal with. Fox hadn’t necessarily been surprised to learn that one of the available punishments for troopers in the Coruscant guard was reconditioning, the long necks had held it over them enough during their Kamino days, and had more than once followed through with it.
Fox just wasn't prepared for how common it was. All it took was a single slight against a senator, a trooper being slightly more out of place than expected, simply bumping into the wrong person, and suddenly Fox was being asked to send his troopers out to get their memories wiped and personalities eviscerated.
Reconditioning, in ways, was considered worse than death. Troopers weren’t quite the same, weren't quite the way they were before. They returned to the guard somewhat dull and distant. You did what you could for them, but most never lasted long after reconditioning, one way or another.
Reconditioning was bad, that it was perpetrated by the very senators they served was worse. But the fact that Fox had brought his concern about the number of his men being wrongfully sent to essentially have their brain scrambled to the very Chancellor himself and received no help at all had been enough to make his blood boil .
("Commader, if your men are being recommended for reconditioning then surely it's warranted? There's really no need to cause a fuss,"
"But Chancellor-"
“I don't want to entertain this conversation anymore. Please sign off on these forms and have these men reconditioned as requested.”)
Fox discovered very early on to pay attention to loopholes. Natborns weren’t likely to follow up on whether or not that random clone they'd thrown a fit about had actually received the punishment requested. All it took was a little bit of shift changing and a little forgery on some documents and the situation was easily handled. It's when they did poke around to check if Fox had done as asked that things got complicated.
"That's good," Fox said, "anything else?"
"Just some paperwork from last week we need your signature on but I'll leave those on your desk,"
Great, more paperwork. Fox was ecstatic.
"Thanks, I'll get those done," Fox said, and Thorn gave him a sympathetic pat on the back before leaving the stream of Corries.
There was a brief pause where they all moved to the side and stood at attention as a senator passed. They held themselves completely still, heads tilted at a particular angle that made them look professional, but not eye-catching in any way. Fox had trained them well, and even then anyone who worked with the Corries long enough knew that balancing the line between professionalism and obscurity was what kept you safe, alive .
The senator barely glanced at them and soon Fox and his entourage were back to power walking down the corridor.
"Next," Fox said. He had a meeting in around 10 minutes that would take him the duration of this walk to the office and he still had quite a few people he needed to get through.
Stone fell into step with him, "Commander," he said gruffly in greeting, and Fox gave him a side eye. He had his helmet on, but he could tell from the slight downard slope of his right shoulder that he was exhausted.
"Stone," Fox said flatly, "How much sleep did you get last night,"
"2 hours sir," Stone said and Fox hummed.
"Why?"
"The company sent with senator Nudo didn't return," he stated, voice carefully devoid of emotion. They were in the corridor of the senate building, and clones were not allowed to display an emotion as sentient as grief.
"Send me the report digitally and grab some rest in the Barracks. I'll have Rhys cover your shift" Fox said this without a smidge of inflection, his voice coming across flat and emotionless. Corries knew that when you weren't among Brothers or fellow Corries, the greatest you could do to comfort someone was keep as inconspicuous as possible. Fox could recognise Stone’s appreciation through the slight jerk of his helmet, a gesture which Fox returned. Stone then nodded tiredly, and dropped out of Fox's orbit. He fell into step with Rhys and handed over his data pad, explaining some of the points there before turning a corner that led to the Barracks.
Fox sighed. He'd need to check up on Stone later. He seemed to recall he'd been particularly close with one of the troopers on that escort mission. He needed to check up on all of the people who were connected to that escort mission. Death was common, but Corries were not completely unaffected by it. They weren't as emotionless as people, even some of the GAR, thought. They had built up a reputation of being heartless, curt, married to professionalism.
Fox was too tired to explain that they were just exhausted, that the vast majority of them were barely hanging on by a thread, that it was difficult to keep going when there was such a strong feeling of pointlessness in the work they did. That was a dangerous thought path for Fox to continue down, so he refocused on the next trooper that had fallen into step with him.
He was nearly at the office, and he still had quite a few troopers to get through. Fox focused on anything other than his own thoughts.
Fox rushed out of the meeting. He still had another one to attend that he was at risk of being late for. He also had to start figuring out who would be patrolling where next week and on top of that he still had to visit the medbay and check up on-
His shoulder collided into someone's side in the corridor, and immediately he straightened up, back snapping into a straight line and posture going completely rigid as he stood at attention.
"Apologies sir," he said crisply, "Forgive my carelessness,"
The senator he'd bumped into took a second to recover from the terrible indignity that was the sensation of being bumped into, and surveyed Fox with a critical eye. A sneer started building around the corner of his mouth.
Fox stood perfectly still. It was either that he was the type to brush him off, or he was the type to try and assert dominance over what he perceived to be a great slight against him. Regardless, Fox's posture gave away nothing about how he really had a million better things to be doing than waiting for some pompous asshole to figure out whether or not he wanted to be needlessly cruel to Fox today.
"Clone. Do you know who I am?" The senator snapped, clearly having decided on the route of making Fox as miserable as possible. To be fair, most things went down that route but Fox really didn't have time for this osik.
"Yes sir," Fox didn't have a single karking clue who this fucker was. Either way, the senator made an ambiguous noise in the back of his throat before running a critical eye over Fox.
"Take off your helmet, clone," the senator leered, apparently not satisfied by Fox’s demonstration of insuperiority.
Fox did not flinch, did not show any outwards signs of discomfort. He pulled off his helmet in a smooth arc, and tucked it under his arm. (Fox felt exposed, felt his skin crawling under the senator's scathing eyes.) Fox’s face was blank, a purely empty expression that had been carefully curated over years of use.
Fox did not jerk when the senator's hand shot out to grip the bottom of his face. His species had retractable claws at the end of their fingers, and Fox did not flinch when they dug into his skin as the senator forced his face towards him. He snarled and tightened his grip.
"You know I was furious when they announced they'd be letting you stupid meat driods run around the senate," he started and Fox bit back the urge to reply 'gee, no way '
"You lot are meant to be out there in the actual war, not being complete wastes of space in the senate. You guys aren't even sentient and here you are being in charge of our very security." The senator spat out a string of curses in what must have been his native language before tightening his grip once more, “Stay out of my sight, clone,” and with that, he stormed off.
Fox waited for the sound of his footsteps to disappear, then tenderly reached up to touch the sides of his face where the senator had gripped him. He pulled his hand back, noting the red smear of blood that coated the tips of his fingers.
Fox, all the Corrie guards actually, had learned the secret very early on. It wasn't much of a secret really, not here. It was only a secret because it didn't look like any of the other vod'e had realized yet. Fox liked to imagine that if it had been any other regular GAR soldier they would find it difficult to believe, that they would clutch their head in despair, that they would fall to their knees at the very injustice of it all. The Corries didn't do that because they didn't have time to, and those who did usually didn't last long in the guard.
The secret was this: The Republic was a steaming pile of Bantha shit.
The very place that brothers fought for, died for, dedicated their every waking moment to, didn't give a single shit about them. They were worthless unless they were fighting their stupid war, and when they weren't they made it crystal clear how unwanted Clones were. The GAR thought that clones all went to 79s because it was the best bar, because that's just where they went. But Corries knew that they went to 79s because it was one of the only places that would serve them, that wouldn't turn them away at the door. There were anti-clone protests, there were senators who wanted them dead, fighting in their wars or otherwise, there was the literal Chancellor who actively sought out ways to make life more difficult for them.
In the beginning Fox thought he wasn't going to engage in war anymore, thought that he would be playing a managerial role that centred around planning patrol routes, and to a certain extent, that was his job. What Fox had been unprepared for was everything else. Fox was unprepared for the warzone he had been sent to, unprepared for how there was no clear enemy, unprepared for the meaninglessness that accompanied the death of his troopers.
He had been unprepared for death at all. He hadn't fathomed how he could possibly end up with his troopers dying and yet the morgue was never quite fully empty. When you were viewed as simply meatdroids, viewed as disposable, replaceable, people thought that they were entitled to something, that they had the right to treat you how they wanted. Natborns, the people on Coruscant, felt that the guard owed them something, and they felt like they had every right to take it from them.
Fox had quickly learned that his job was not simply managerial. It wasn't even to lead a war in the way he'd been trained to. No, Fox's job was to make sure his Corries, his brothers survived. They had no allies, except for a handful of favourable Senators and Jedi, they had no way to defend themselves without being slated for decommissioning. All Fox could do was damage control and pray.
That was Fox's job. It was not easy, it did not leave his schedule clear, but it left him with a clear goal. (Survival, keeping the vod’e under his care alive.)
He put his helmet back on despite the blood that had started to run rivulets down the side of his face, soaking into the collar of his blacks. It wasn't the worst injury he'd sustained, he could manage till the end of the day to put a plaster on it.
He still had around 5 minutes till the meeting, he could make it if he sprinted. He quickly scrolled through his comm, firing a message to Thorn saying he might be late, before pausing on an unopened comm channel.
Cody. He hadn’t messaged him in almost a year, definitely not since…
Fox clicked off his comm. There was a lot he had been wrong about before starting as head of the guard, things he had been forced to leave behind. It just figured that the promise between him and Cody had been one of them.
He had a meeting to get to anyway, he didn't have enough time to be sending messages.
He had a busy schedule.