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Fox wakes up.
After everything, he's not expecting to. Not after what he had done - how uncharacteristically stupid he had been. He had done what he had, expecting to die, to be killed so that the nightmares would end and his brothers would be saved - it's what he deserves, after what the Chancellor had made him do. His brothers would see a future, he had made sure of it, but it wasn't a future for Fox, not with all the people he had killed, even if he hadn't meant to.
They haunt him. They scream in his dreams and he can feel their blood on his hands, he can see their faces every time he closes his eyes. He sees them as they were as they died, killed by his hands and with his weapons. It’s not always the same people haunting his nightmares, they’re interchangeable and they blend together - there’s been so many of them - but there’s always one that stays, clear and loud and there.
Fives.
Fives with his frantic voice, with his wild conspiracy and dilated eyes, and the gaping, burning hole in his chest, blackening the otherwise plain plastoid. The hole Fox put there. It never should have happened - it was supposed to stun, he had turned his blaster to stun as soon as he heard it was a brother the Guard were going after - and maybe that’s why Fox couldn’t forget his words or chase the ghost of the dead ARC from his thoughts. The more he thought about him, the less crazy Fives had seemed. The hate-filled eyes of his brothers followed him through his days, accusing - because he had committed the worst sort of crime against his brothers, he had killed one of them - and Fox doesn’t bother trying to keep them at bay. They hate him, and Fox doesn’t blame them. He hates himself too. It could have been the weeks of lost sleep or maybe the patchy memories he couldn’t string together, but Fox found himself continuing the dead man’s investigation, chasing rumours and diving into the darkest parts of the Republic.
What he had found only made Fox hate himself more.
Fives had been right, and Fox had killed him. He had killed the brother who had been trying to save them all. His brothers were dying in droves, and it was Fox’s fault. By killing Fives before he could bring the knowledge of what the Chancellor was to the Jedi, Fox had all but signed the death warrant of the Republic and allowed Palpatine to keep the power he was using to control the war from both sides.
Fox had known immediately what he had needed to do. He had compiled all the data into a single file, written out his goodbyes, and set it all to send on a timer. Then he had left to confront the Chancellor, never letting on to the Guard what was going on - but with Thorn marching on no one gave him a second look, no one would worry about his comings and goings - and looking to buy his brothers time to receive and read the results of his investigation. They would pass it on, Fox knows, because it was a threat to their men and their Jedi. Fox had never had a Jedi, never understood the love his brothers had for them, but he’s seen the way so many look at their Generals, how many of them love their Jedi Commanders, and he knows that they’d protect them.
They would be able to save themselves, and build the futures they all hadn’t dared to dream of. Fox wouldn’t be part of it, didn’t deserve to be part of it, but he was fine with it. He would die to ensure his brothers would be free, as a final apology to Fives, and to Rex, who had had to watch his vod’ika die in his arms - something none of them deserved, and it was especially heinous that he had had to deal with the trauma of knowing his brother was killed by his ori’vod. They may never have been especially close, not like he had been with Cody or Wolffe, but it was hard not to remember the little blond cadet Cody had brought back to their bunks all those years ago whenever he looked at the confident and scarred Captain Rex’ika had become. Rex couldn’t look at him anymore, not without a burning hatred in his eyes, and Cody and Wolffe were rarely ever on Coruscant, even if they had wanted to see him - which Fox doubts. Neither of them would love a brother-killer, not after the Malevolence and not after Sergeant Slick’s cold-blooded betrayal.
He doesn’t deserve their forgiveness, would never receive it, but apologizing for what he had done took some weight off his shoulders before his inevitable death. He had marched into Chancellor Palpatine’s office prepared to die, but at least he’d been able to warn his family, to share what he had found. He had thought that, at best, the Chancellor would have him killed then and there, that he would summon his Guard like he had with Fives. Fox hadn’t been expecting the man to throw lightning out of his fingers, and it hadn’t even registered until the burning pain tore through him, boiling his blood in his veins until the world went white.
Then he woke up.
He didn’t die, and Fox’s scattered, foggy mind has a hard time coming to terms with the fact. He blinks groggily into the darkness, body alight in agony, and he has a moment of overwhelming terror. He can’t see - where is he - why can’t he see?
Fox gasps, bile and blood burning the back of his throat as he chokes and wheezes, eyes rolling desperately, trying to see anything at all - but it’s just darkness. Fox forces himself to calm down, to categorize what he can tell of his situation as he had been trained for. His limbs are shaking, and he feels like he’s been flayed open alive. From what he can tell, he’s slumped against cold metal, arms held above his head by heavy manacles, and the chains clatter with every tremor that shakes his sprawled frame. His legs tingle uselessly, but he can still move them - or at least he thinks he can, from the sound of plastoid dragging across the metal floor - so the Chancellor’s attack hadn’t paralyzed him. He feels like he had been stabbed multiple times, then lit on fire and left to suffer.
Fox isn’t sure how he isn’t dead yet - better yet, he doesn’t know why he isn’t dead yet. Instead, he’s chained in some dark, stale room that tastes of badly recycled air and smells like blood. He doesn’t know how long he’s been here, or how long he will be here, with his arms going numb as gravity pushes the blood from the suspended limbs. The only courtesy he’s been shown is that he wasn’t chained standing up. With nothing else to do, Fox is left to drift.
He drifts in and out of consciousness, wondering, despite himself, what was going to happen to him. He drifts, and he dreams - and as time continues to pass without anything to mark the passage besides his own overwhelming hunger and thirst, Fox wonders if anyone will come. He knows, deep down, that he won’t be rescued, but it brings him a dark sort of amusement to think of Palpatine coming back to torture him to find his dead body here. He wants to die.
And yet he doesn’t.
He continues to cling to life - a life he doesn’t deserve. It’s almost funny that after so many casualties, that it’s Fox who can’t seem to die. It’s Fox who continues to close his eyes, hoping that he’ll finally march on, only to open his eyes once more and curse the world. Why was it him who wouldn’t die, when there were so many good men who deserved to live more than him. Men like Thorn, who had hope no matter how bad it got, and who’s mangled body had been left for the wildlife to eat. Men like Fives, who had tried so desperately to save everyone, but would never see the fall of the man who had been pulling all the strings.
He doesn’t know how long it’s been since the first time he woke up, but Fox finds himself flung back into his body by the sudden overwhelming presence of noise after so long of just the sound of his own rasping breath. Light burns against his eyelids. There are warm hands pressing against the burnt skin of his neck, drawing him close to a firm chest. Fox tries to flinch away on instinct, fighting against the hold - how long had it been since someone had touched him? Had it been when that last time Thorn had last clapped him on the shoulder and promised to see him soon? - and a rushed, familiar voice washes over him.
“Fox. Fox.” Someone says, as his arms are gently lowered one by one by another pair of hands. “Udesii, ori’vod. Udesii, ni olar, Fox.” Fox sucks in a ragged, gasping breath, body quivering, and he coughs around a dry, bloody throat. He can’t bring himself to open his eyes, afraid that it’ll all melt away into darkness once again. “You did it, Fox. You did it.”
His voice rasps when he speaks, rough with disuse, “Me'bana?”
“Palpatine is gone, vod.” Fox shivers, and agonizingly slowly, he forces his eyes to open. An orange pauldron meets his gaze, and Fox nearly sobs.
“Cody.”
“Yeah, ori’vod.” Cody chokes, and Fox suddenly realizes that he’s not the only one who’s shaking. “I’m here. And if you ever do something like this again I’m going to kick your ass. You’re not allowed to march on yet, vod.”
Fox chuckles wetly, turning his head to press his nose against the rough fabric of his brother’s blacks, ignoring the uncomfortable press of cold plastoid against his ravaged body because it’s something other than the cold metal he had had to deal with for so long. “Ni ceta.”
“Udesii.” His little brother breaths, voice thick, pressing his face into Fox’s no doubt greasy hair. “You have nothing to apologize for, Fox. As long as you’re alive.” Cody shivers again, and Fox forces his laden arms to rise, ignoring the fogginess of unconsciousness rising up to drown him once again, and he clumsily wraps them around his brother’s hips like he had all those years ago when Kote would crawl into his pod during summer storms. “You stopped him, Fox. He can’t hurt you anymore - he can’t hurt anyone anymore.”
“Good.”
“Sleep, vod.” Cody murmurs, curling around him protectively. “You’re safe.”
Fox sleeps.