Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Fox’s day goes to shit early.

It’s barely 0805. He’s been officially on shift for five minutes and thirty four seconds. He has four hundred and ten unread holomail messages. His caf sits on his desk untouched, too hot to drink without scalding himself. In another three minutes it will be perfect－ cool enough not to burn but still too hot to actually be able to taste anything, which is the only way anyone is able to stomach the horrible sludge the mess hall passes off as caf.

Fox stares at it sadly for a moment before hitting the blinking incoming call button on his wrist comm. “What is it, Hound?”

“Commander! You have to come to the Senate Plaza. It’s urgent.”

He doesn’t sound distressed. Hasn’t used any of the Guards’ careful coded phrases to indicate trouble, either. Fox’s eyes narrow, wary. “Why?”

There’s a long pause on the other end of the comm. “There’s been a－” Hound coughs, a choked-off sound that couldn’t be more suspicious if it were wearing a trench-coat and lurking in a dark alley in the underlevels. “There’s been a murder.”

Fox squeezes his eyes shut in a futile attempt to stave off his incipient headache. There is, frankly, no karking way there’s been an actual murder and no one has thought to mention it to him before now. Even Stone, who says maybe ten words a day if he’s feeling particularly chatty, would have said something about it when Fox passed him in the hallway on his way into the office. No, Hound is up to something.

Ninety more seconds before his caf is drinkable. Fox takes a deep breath and slugs the whole thing back anyway. “If this is some kind of joke, I’m going to throw you off the top of the rotunda. Just a heads up.”

“Copy that,” Hound says, bright and undeterred, and disconnects.

He burned the shit out of his tongue with the caf, of course. It hurts the whole way to the Senate Plaza.

*****

“－ so you see, it really is a most terrible and serious crime,” Dr. Amira Ker says, wringing her hands together. The pale green skin under her eyes is puffy from crying.

“Of course, sir. I’ll open an investigation at once,” Fox agrees absently, most of his focus fixed on trying to kill Hound with his mind. Hound himself stands a little way behind the conservationist, Grizzer panting happily by his feet. His bucket is on, but Fox can feel his shit-eating grin.

“Oh, thank goodness. I was so worried you wouldn’t take me seriously,” she says, and Hound’s shoulders begin to shake with silent laughter. Fox concentrates hard enough to feel his long-expected headache begin to bloom in his temple, but Hound remains stubbornly upright and alive.

Fox sighs and resigns himself to killing Hound the old-fashioned way. Later. “And you believe it was poisoned?”

The biologist looks down at the cooler by her feet, chewing her lip. “I think so, yes. But I wasn’t able to identify anything that it might have been during my examination of the remains. It’s nothing I’ve ever seen before.”

Fox nods, and out of morbid curiosity, bends down to peek inside the cooler.

The cooler contains a quadduck. Well, technically, the mortal remains of what was previously a quadduck. It’s wrapped in a plastic sheet and much the worse for wear, but still pretty obviously a bird of some kind.

A handful of the same creatures－ living versions－ glide placidly along the surface of the newly-installed memorial pond in the center of the Senate Plaza behind their caretaker. They just look like weird, four-legged versions of the ducks that he’s seen on Naboo while travelling with the Chancellor to Fox, but Dr. Ker assures him they’re much different.

They are, apparently, critically endangered: completely extinct in the wild due to the fact that the wilds of Coruscant are also completely extinct, and survive only in contained and protected areas like the new pond habitat here. Whoever is Chancellor technically owns each bird, in an arcane workaround to make killing one a capital crime. It is, Dr. Ker had explained tearfully, essentially equivalent to murder.

Fox is also technically owned by the Chancellor, but killing him would just be property damage. He had elected not to point this out.

“Well, uh,” Fox says, looking down at his conveniently-prepackaged murder victim. “We’ll need to take this back to headquarters. For the… investigation.”

“Oh, of course!”

“And if you have any more information about quadducks in general, I’d appreciate it,” he adds, on an impulse. It can’t hurt, anyway.

“I’ll put something together and send it to you today,” Dr. Ker promises. She looks much happier already, either at the prospect of the investigation or just the chance to subject someone new to a deep dive into the thrilling world of the Coruscant quadduck.

They exchange pleasantries and comm codes, and Fox and Hound set off back to headquarters, cooler full of deceased endangered animal in tow.

Hound at least has the decency to wait until they’re out of view before he starts laughing again.

“C’mon,” Hound says, knocking his shoulder into Fox’s with a force that makes Fox stumble. “You gotta admit, it’s pretty funny.”

“It’d be funnier if we didn’t have to investigate fucking bird murder now,” Fox mutters. He can’t believe he chugged his caf for this. The burn on his tongue still stings.

“Burder,” Hound says under his breath. Then, “Wait. You’re not really going to investigate it, are you?”

Fox stops. Hound does, too, shifting his weight, uneasy, like he senses he’s stepped into a trap. “Of course I’m going to fucking investigate it. It’s my job.”

“But. It’s a duck.”

“Wrong. It’s the Chancellor’s duck. And that makes it our problem.”

“Our?” Hound asks weakly.

“Good news,” Fox announces, clapping Hound on the shoulder with more force than strictly necessary. “Since you’re the one who started this, you get to help me with the investigation! I expect your initial report before the end of your shift.” Hound slumps, defeat written in the line of his shoulders, and it warms Fox’s cold dead heart almost enough to make up for the fact that he’s stuck with this stupid case too.

Almost.

*****

The Guard isn’t actually equipped for in-house autopsies－ or whatever it is when it’s a bird instead of a sentient－ but somehow Fox doesn’t think the Grand Republic Medical Examiner’s Officer would be willing to help with this investigation.

He leaves Hound looking tragic in the report writing room and takes the cooler to the Guard medbay instead, because CMO Lucas is the closest thing they have to a doctor. He also technically works for Fox, so he’s not allowed to refuse the job.

“Commander,” Lucas greets levelly when Fox arrives, wrist-deep in something complicated involving a mess of clear tubing and a collection of round-bellied beakers. The whole thing reeks of alcohol and regs violations. Fox eyes it suspiciously for a moment and decides it’s none of his business. “You seem unusually conscious to be willingly coming to see me.”

Fox winces. You put off going to medbay and pass out from blood loss one time… “I have a job for you. There’s a body I need you to take a look at.”

“Not the Medical Examiner?”

“Not, uh. Not for this.”

Lucas hmphs, setting down his length of tubing. He’s halfway through peeling off his gloves when he registers the cooler Fox is still carrying. “Wait. Is that－?”

The bird, still partially frozen, makes a resounding clunk as Fox dumps it out onto the nearest examination table. Lucas looks at it, then up at Fox, then back at the bird again like he hopes it will have changed into something else since the last time he looked. “What am I supposed to do with this?”

“Full work-up,” Fox says. “It’s an official investigation.”

Lucas’ answering glare is flatter than the quadduck’s vital signs. “Get the fuck out of my medbay.”

Fox goes.

*****

True to her word, Dr. Ker sends over a packet of information shortly before noon. The message attached assures him it’s only “the essentials”,  which seems a little doubtful given that it’s easily three hundred pages and contains titles like “Phylogeography of the Coruscanti tetranatidae” and “The inheritance of plumage color in the Coruscant quadduck”.

It’s a nice change from his normal holomail though, so he downloads the whole lot of it into his bucket and spends the rest of his shift reading in between his other duties. All his practice reading reports and illicitly-downloaded holobooks over his HUD while patrolling the Senate Dome finally comes in handy, and by the time his day is over he’s gotten through over half of the files, and only tripped over an unexpected step once.

Most of it is is beyond his understanding－ the longnecks had been rather keen on them not learning much about genetics, to protect Kamino’s intellectual property－ but he does pick up a few interesting facts.

Quadducks were migratory once, before Coruscant’s planetary weather dome eliminated seasons. They’re omnivorous, and mate for life.

They are also sensitive to the Force. Not Force sensitive, the scientists are at pains to point out－ which is also how Fox discovers that there are animals that possess crude Force abilities, and isn’t that an alarming realization－ but sensitive to the currents and flow of the Force in their surroundings. The animals sicken and die when the Dark side of the Force becomes too strong, which is described in such vague and unhelpful terms that Fox suspects the authors of the paper also don’t really understand the whole Force thing.

There’s also a paper by Dr. Ker herself, discussing the Senate Plaza pond project and the conservation efforts going on in the background. There’s a whole team of biologists dedicated to monitoring the birds as they adjust to their new habitat. Dr. Ker had even given a speech about the project at the grand opening of the pond a tenday ago, which Fox had technically been present for but paid zero attention to, too busy worrying about possible snipers on the surrounding rooftops as the Chancellor posed for photos and shook hands in front of his latest propaganda coup.

By the time the chrono ticks over to the last half hour of his shift, he’s much more prepared to win a quadduck-themed trivia competition against everyone except Dr. Ker herself, and exactly none more prepared to figure out what actually killed the thing.

Sighing, he shuts down the file reader in his bucket. He should use some of this time to catch up on his holomail－ down to only two hundred and three messages－ but his eyes feel like they’re about to fall out of his skull, and frankly he’d rather hurl himself into traffic.

Hound’s report is still conspicuously absent from his inbox. He redirects his course from his office toward the report writing room with a shiver of malicious glee.

The room is mostly abandoned at this hour－ too late for most of day shift to be finishing up their reports and too early for most of night shift to have reports piled up yet. It’s just Hound, settled in one of the mismatched chairs the Guard had “rescued” from various dumpsters to replace the solid metal torture devices GAR requisitions insisted were seating, Grizzer sprawled over on her side at his feet.

Hound is slumped over the desk, bucket off, holding his head in his hands. From the way his hair is mussed, blond curls spilling messily out around his fingers instead of contained in their usual neat bun, he’s been at it for awhile.

Fox crouches down to scratch at the scales on Grizzer’s belly, to her unconstrained delight. “How’s that report coming?”

“Remember this morning when you said you’d throw me off the Senate rotunda? Is that offer still on the table?”

“Sure,” Fox agrees, and Hound’s head pops up, desperate hope in his eyes. “As soon as your report is submitted.”

Hound groans and thunks his head down onto the desk, sending the topmost datapad on his stack clattering to the floor. Fox manages to rescue it before Grizzer can get her teeth into it, but it’s a near thing. “What’s all this?”

“Security footage from the Plaza,” Hound mumbles directly into the desk. “I’ve been going over all the footage since they introduced the birds. Trying to see if the cameras caught anyone putting anything weird in the water.”

That’s－ an incredible amount of work. Fox straightens slowly, studying the stack of datapads with a new eye. Hound is an absolute fucker and a menace, but he’s a good officer. Plenty of troopers would try to skate by on the bare minimum of effort on a case they thought was a joke, but Hound is thorough. Dedicated, even when Fox couldn’t really blame him if he weren’t.

All at once, any enjoyment in pestering Hound drains from Fox’s body, and he’s just tired. Tired and ready to be done with this day. “Did you find anything?”

“No,” Hound says. He rolls his head to peer sideways up at Fox, sounding just as exhausted as Fox feels. “Turns out people throw shit in the pond all the time. They even throw credits.”

“What? Why?”

Hound shrugs. “Why do natborns do anything?”

There’s a lot of answers Fox could give for that, but he forces them down and tosses the datapad in his hand back onto the desk with the others. “Come on. Shift’s over. We’ll pick this up again in the morning.”

Hound grunts, but he lets Fox drag him upright out of his despondent sprawl and out towards the barracks, Grizzer happily doing her level best to trip them the whole way. And if Fox makes a mental note to have the troopers patrolling the plaza during night shift do some volunteer “clean up” of the pond, well. That’s something only he needs to know.

Chapter Text

“Come get your stupid bird,” is the first thing Lucas says when Fox picks up his comm call the next morning.

Fox pulls himself a little straighter in chair, trying to banish the lingering cobwebs of another too-short night’s sleep through sheer force of will and failing. “You’re done already?”

“Get down here,” Lucas repeats, instead of an answer, and hangs up. Which, rude. Hanging up on other people is Fox’s move.

He debates collecting Hound along the way, but Grizzer is still officially banned from the medbay after the incident with the defibrillator, so in the end he goes down alone, grimacing at the sharp smell of disinfectant and misery that hits him the moment the doors slide open.

Lucas’ mysterious project from yesterday is missing, replaced with a junior medic inventorying hypos and looking barely more awake than Fox feels. Fox waves off their half-hearted salute and lets himself into the CMO’s office, which is just barely big enough to fit Lucas’ desk and still smells like the cleaning fluid that used to be stored there when it was still a closet.

“First off, if you ever bring me another animal I’m going to stick you with every experimental hypo I can get my hands on until you die or I revolutionize medicine forever,” Lucas says, where a normal person might start with hello or good morning, Commander. “Second, I have no idea what killed this thing.”

Lucas has always been straight to the point, at least. It’s one of the things Fox would like about him, if Fox were willing to admit to liking anyone.

“The biologist thought it was poison,” he ventures. He’d even forwarded Dr. Ker’s findings once he’d received them himself, although he’d spared Lucas the rest of her “Introduction to Quadducks” packet.

Lucas’ answering glare is withering. “Yes, I can read.” He drums his fingers on the desk, a frustrated staccato. “If it were poison, it’s nothing I’ve ever seen before. I ran every toxicology test I have access to; they all came back with nothing.”

The same results Dr. Ker had gotten, as far as Fox could understand from the report. And the reason she decided to reach out for outside assistance. Not surprising, maybe, but still disappointing. He’d been really hoping to wrap this whole thing up as quickly as possible, while he still had some dignity left.

“So there’s nothing else you can tell me?”

“I can tell you to get fucked,” Lucas replies without hesitation. “I’m not a veterinarian, in case you forgot. I’m not even a real doctor.”

Fox waits. He’s heard this particular rant before, after every serious Guard casualty. Every time a trooper returns to duty with a limp they’ll never be rid of or has to be shuffled onto permanent desk duty from an injury that would have been fully repairable with access to real medical equipment. It’s not personal. Lucas just needs a minute to tamp down the helpless rage against his situation before he’ll move onto his results.

Shove your feelings down as far as they’ll go and never actually talk about them until one day you finally die. That’s the Coruscant Guard way.

After a moment Lucas sighs, leaning back in his chair and dropping his datapad heavily onto the desk. “The whole bird looked like it had rotted from the inside while still alive. If I didn’t know better I would have thought the thing had been dead a week.”

Well, that’s a lovely mental image Fox could have done without. “I’m guessing that’s not normal.”

Lucas arches a judgemental brow. “Wow, incredible guess. It’d be perfectly normal if your bird had, say, Balmorran necrotizing fasciitis. Or had recently gotten into some Felucian death mushrooms. But none of those were present in your feathery pain in my ass.”

“Ah,” Fox says. He doesn’t actually know what either of those things are, but he hates the fact that he’s now aware they exist. And are possibly related to something he’d recently been within a meter of. “And are those kinds of things… common?”

“No,” Lucas says, flat. “Obviously not. You don’t think you’d have heard about it before now if people were frequently melting to death from the inside?”

“I try not to pay attention to news that’s going to give me nightmares forever.”

But Lucas isn’t wrong. Something like that on Coruscant would have made every news broadcast－ there’s too many people, packed too tightly, with no real way to limit travel between districts or set up effective quarantine zones. It would be a public emergency. Either Dr. Ker’s duck is patient zero, or it’s something new. Something unknown.

Both options are terrible.

So much for getting the case over with quickly. He snags the datapad from across the desk and maneuvers himself through the cramped space to get back to the door.

“Hold on to the corpse for now,” he orders, knowing Lucas won’t like it. Too bad. There’s a real chance this bird just became actual evidence. “I’ll be back when I have something else for you.”

“Feel free to not do that,” Lucas calls after him.

*****

“We’re not gonna find anything,” Hound grumbles as they cross the flat expanse of the Senate Plaza. He had not shared Fox’s concerns about Lucas’ findings, and made no attempt to hide it.

Fox glares, knowing Hound will sense it even through both their buckets.

Hound is almost certainly right, but Fox will die before he admits that out loud. Checking the scene for evidence is what they would do on anything other case, and so it’s what they’re going to do now.

Fox lets himself really look at the pond for the first time as they walk up, instead of just filing it away as so much background noise. The names of Coruscanti citizens killed fighting the Separatists are etched into the bricks edging the water－ no clones, of course, not on a Republic memorial where it might accidentally make the public think a clone might be worth remembering. The water itself makes a huge circle, duracrete blocks positioned to transform the whole thing into the emblem of the Republic when viewed from above. There’s a fountain on the largest block in the center, the spray of water turning to glittering rainbows in the bright dawn sunlight.  

It’s nice enough, he supposes. If you don’t think about all the credits that were poured into it while the Guard scrapes by with outdated bacta and troopers pulling twenty-hours shifts because they only have half the staffing their duties require.

But hey, the fountain is pretty.

It’s early enough that the Plaza is mostly abandoned, the sun just beginning to reach over Coruscant’s glass and durasteel horizon. Hound glances around and then unhooks Grizzer’s lead as they near the pond, and the massiff launches herself like a missile toward the water.

Fox pauses. “Can she swim?”

“Sinks like a rock,” Hound confirms, sounding unconcerned. “Don’t worry, the water’s not deep enough for her to get into trouble.”

It seems like an animal native to Tatooine could get into a lot of trouble in any amount of water, actually. “I’m not helping you pull her out if she does.”

Hound snorts. “I think I’ll manage.” He comes to a stop beside Fox at the water’s edge, winding Grizzer’s lead around his hand as he watches her slap at the water with her big stupid paws. “So. We’re here. Now what?”

That is a great question that Fox definitely has an answer to.

Hound’s careful review of the Plaza surveillance videos hasn’t yielded any leads, just a lot of citizens who could technically be cited for littering if Fox had the kind of time and unhinged pettiness to track all of them down. Well, he has the pettiness. But the time is a problem.

“Now we take a look at the area, see if we find anything out of place the cameras might have missed,” he decides, and Hound slants him a judgemental look.

By unspoken agreement, they split up, Hound heading for the west side of the pond with a muttered insult about Fox’s planning abilities. Fox goes east, sweeping his gaze over the water.

He’s not really sure what he’s expecting them to find. It’s been at least two days since Dr. Ker’s duck died; any evidence is likely long gone, destroyed by the sheer number of people passing through the Plaza every day, or picked up by another of the pond’s ducks, or wiped out by the Senate’s fleet of automated cleaning droids. Or it never existed at all.

But he needs to know.

It’s stupid. It’s so stupid. The rest of the GAR is on the front-lines, putting their lives on the line, making an actual difference in the war, and he’s out here investigating the suspicious death of a karking bird. If any of the front-line Commanders could see him now they’d laugh themselves into a coma.

But something killed Dr. Ker’s duck. And he has a duty to make sure that something isn’t bad news for the whole planet.

In any case, it’s gotten under his skin now, despite his best efforts and own sense of embarrassment. He’s never cared about anything the way Dr. Ker cares about her ducks, except his siblings, and－ he’s invested, he realizes with abrupt surprise. He wants to figure out what happened.

It’d be much easier if he didn’t. He sighs, turning away from the water to peer under the various benches and decorative bushes surrounding the area. By the time he’s almost made it back to Hound, he’s found a handful of discarded food wrappers, three empty cans, someone’s lost speeder key with a tooka key-chain, and a five credit piece that he slips into the pocket of his kama while he’s in one of the security cameras’ blind-spots. He has not, however, found any suspicious containers with convenient labels like “poison for endangered waterfowl”, or plant-life resembling the Felucian death mushroom, which despite Lucas’ findings he’d still looked up on the holonet earlier. Just in case.

“Let me guess,” Hound says, the moment Fox is close enough not to have to shout. “You didn’t find anything either.”

“Spoken like someone volunteering to check the whole area again, Sergeant.”

Unholy screeching drowns out Hound’s offended response. Fox drops to one knee, adrenaline dumping into his blood as his hand flies to his blaster.

“Grizzer!” Hound spins to face the water, panic written into the lines of his stance. Fox turns, following the direction of his gaze, and－

The massiff barrels toward them through the shallow pond, gouts of water flying into the air with every step, yowling like she’s being murdered. Behind her, squawking furiously and sending up its own smaller waves as it chases her, is one of the quadducks.

Fox stands back up, sheepishly dropping his hand from the butt of his blaster, just in time for Grizzer to leap the edge of the pond and come skidding to a halt behind Hound, sending a sheet of water over both clones and the nearest three square meters of ground.

The duck also skids to a halt at the edge of the water, considerably more graceful, and glares at them with beady eyes.

“Kriff, Grizz, you scared me,” Hound huffs, thumping one side of her scaly hide like a drum as she tries to disappear behind him. “C’mon, girl, it’s just a duck. You’re okay.”

Grizzer does not agree. She presses into Hound’s legs, emitting a constant high-pitched whine. It’s the most pathetic noise Fox has ever heard a creature make.

Fox turns back to the duck. It stands its ground, raising its wings, threatening. He takes a step toward it, making a vague flapping motion with his hands. “Fuck off, duck.”

The duck cocks its head at him. Behind him, Grizzer’s whine climbs another octave.

“You’re embarrassing me. This is embarrassing,” Hound informs her, words punctuated by grunts as he attempts to wrestle Grizzer’s lead back on while she attempts to become one with his legs.

Fox takes another step toward the bird. Picking a fight with a massiff is one－ stupid－ thing, but he’s big enough that even its tiny brain must recognize a lost cause. Right?

Wrong. In a sudden burst of motion, the duck launches itself into the air. Fox recoils, foot slipping on the wet duracrete, and barely keeps himself from falling on his ass . The bird takes advantage of his momentary distraction to land heavily on top of his helmet.

Fox freezes.

“Wark,” says the duck.

“Holy shit,” Hound whispers.

This is terrible. This is a disaster. Fox swipes blindly at his helmet, trying to dislodge the bird and gets his fingers pecked for his trouble. “If you’re filming this right now, Hound－” and of course he is, Fox knows－ “I swear to the Manda there is no place in the fucking galaxy you will be able to hide from me.”

He whirls around, feeling the duck brace its four webbed feet on his bucket at the sudden motion. Hound lets out a sound like one of Grizzer’s toys being stepped on.

“I would－ I would never, sir.” The external recording light on his helmet blinks, accusing.

Fox is a Commander. He is respected. Most decorated soldier in the GAR, even if it’s all empty platitudes to make the Chancellor look good. He doesn’t deserve this.

He pitches himself forward, hoping to dump the bird onto the ground, but the thing just explodes into a storm of flapping and resettles onto his pauldron the moment he’s upright again. Turning his head just gets him a visor filled with gray-brown feathers.

And－ wait. His pauldron is easier to reach, at least, and he manages to get one hand in between the bird and his bucket, shoving gently. The duck warks unhappily, but with a little maneuvering he manages to move it just far enough away that he can actually focus on it.

Speckled brown feathers cover its chest, deepening to dark browns across its back, but the pattern is marred－ interrupted by bare patches where the duck’s pebbly skin shows through. “Hound, look at this. Does this look weird?”

Hound leans in closer, unable to actually take a step due to the quivering tangle Grizzer has made around his legs. The bird whips its snaky neck around and snaps its beak at him with a sharp clack like dropping plastoid armor down a flight of stairs.

“Wow, Fox,” Hound says, smartly drawing back out of striking range. “You finally found a friend just as unpleasant as you.”

Hound will regret this. Fox will make sure of it. “Oh, did the duck hurt your feelings?”

Hound rolls his eyes, the movement visible in the tilt of his bucket, but he looks where Fox tells him. “The missing feathers? Do you think it’s sick?”

Fox shrugs, the duck rising and falling with the motion. “Could be related. It’s the best lead we have so far.”

It’s also the only lead they have so far, but Hound is smart enough not to say it.

Fox snaps a couple uncomfortably-close holos with his bucket cam, sending them to Dr. Ker as the duck watches and Hound murmurs reassurances to Grizzer in the background. Then carefully－ so carefully－ he reaches up both hands and grabs the bird off his pauldron.

The duck does not appreciate this. It squawks, indignant and betrayed, as he drops it to the ground and backs away. But it only lasts a moment before it flutters awkwardly into the air to land on Fox’s other pauldron.

Okay. Fuck. He tries again, the bird flapping wildly as he grabs it. Once again, he drops it to the ground, and once again it launches itself back into the air immediately.

It lands on his helmet this time.

Hound wheezes, loud enough to be heard even with his bucket speakers off. In the distance, a handful  of people have begun flowing through the Plaza, citizens on their way to work in the Senate district. None are close enough to have noticed the two Guards by the water, but it’s only a matter of time.

Fox is going to delete every second of security camera footage from today.

He needs－ fuck. He needs a distraction. Something to keep his feathered nemesis occupied while he makes his escape. “Hound! Give me one of Grizzer’s treats.”

Behind Hound, Grizzer cocks her head to the side, her terrible tea-kettle noise pausing for a moment. She is a creature of set priorities and Fox respects that. Hound is not, and can barely get his hand into his treat pouch because he is too busy laughing at his commanding officer. Fox does not respect him.

“Can ducks even eat these?”

“They’re omnivores,” Fox snaps, dredging the information up from the section of his brain now permanently devoted to quadduck facts. “It’s fine. Give me one.”

Hounds eventually manages to extract and toss over a treat. Grizzer’s eyes follow its arc with an air of utter tragedy, but Fox will not be distracted. He holds the little cube up to his pauldron for inspection.

The duck regards it beadily. For a long moment Fox thinks it won’t work, but then－ thank fuck－ the bird goes for it. It smacks its beak more into Fox’s gloved fingers than the treat, but that’s fine. Fox tosses the treat into the pond, and the bird launches itself off his shoulder in pursuit.

Fox runs.

Chapter Text

Primeday brings Fox’s weekly check-in with the Chancellor, which Palpatine insists on conducting in-person whenever he’s on on planet. It’s a pain in the ass, but the man is ancient. It takes him long enough to figure out how to open Fox’s encrypted incident logs when Fox is there to assist; Fox would die of old age first if they tried to do them over holocomm.

It’s been an unfortunately busy week－ use of force incidents were up five percent, due to a multi-day anti-war protest on the steps of the Senate Dome－ and their scheduled hour is almost up by the time Fox’s review winds to a halt.

“And lastly, Commander Thorn will be accompanying Senator Atishan on a diplomatic mission to Ryloth two days from now,” Fox says, scrolling down to the last item on the agenda.

“Excellent work, Commander,” the Chancellor says, folding his hands on his desk with a rustle of stiff fabric. “I see you have everything under impeccable control as usual.”

The Chancellor has no idea the amount of work that actually goes into keeping the Guard running smoothly, but Fox nods anyway. “Thank you, Your Excellency.”

“I did have a question about one of the incidents in this week’s log,” Palpatine continues, mild, and Fox’s heart drops. The Chancellor may prefer the grandfatherly approach, but he’s honed minor disapproval into a deadly weapon, with the power and streak of ruthlessness needed to back it up. “It seems there was an incident at the Senate Plaza on Zhellday? Was there a reason I was not informed?”

“Ah. It was not a security threat, Your Excellency. One of the quadducks introduced to the new memorial pond was found dead,” Fox explains, relief and embarrassment mingling in equal parts. “The head of the project was concerned about the possibility of－” don’t say fowl play, don’t say fowl play－ “Malicious intent being involved, and she asked us to look into it.”

“Oh my,” Palpatine says, face crinkling with concern. “Was there?”

“We’re still investigating, Your Excellency.”

“Do keep me updated. That poor creature.” Fox will eat his bucket if the Chancellor actually gives two shits about the bird, but it won’t look good if it gets out that someone has been sabotaging Palpatine’s latest propaganda project right under the man’s nose. He nods.

“I’ll let you get back to work, Commander.”

“Thank you, Your Excellency.”

Palpatine waves him off, already turning back to the day-to-day work of running the Republic. Fox lets himself out into the foyer, where he nearly collides with General Skywalker. The General nods distractedly toward Fox, rushing into the Chancellor’s office before the door has even managed to slide closed again.

Thank the stars Fox doesn’t have to deal with any of the Jedi. They seem exhausting.

*****

He’s going to have to deal with the Jedi.

Dr. Ker’s quadduck has been dead for a week, and they’re no closer to figuring out what killed it than they were the day she first contacted them. Hound had finished poring over countless hours of surveillance video, and found nothing except a ring of juvenile graffiti artists. Fox had reviewed every animal call handled by the Guard or the CSF in the last six months in hopes of finding similar incidents, with no better results. Even Dr. Ker had examined the sick duck Fox had taken holos of, and sent a message reporting that yes, this duck also seemed sick, but no, she had no idea why and none of her tests showed any possible causes.

He’s out of options.

He has one last idea to check－ one last stupid, impossible idea so ridiculous he hasn’t dared to mention it to Hound－ before this whole thing gets condemned to the Guards’ ever-growing library of inactive cases. Action recommended: Suspend due to lack of viable leads. End of story.

Statistically speaking most cases－ Guard or not－ end up unsolved, languishing away deep in storage until the requisite time required to hold onto them expires and someone years down the line can delete them to make room for more unsolved cases. Most crimes don’t get answers, with all their loose ends neatly tied up in a bow and perpetrators facing fair and proportionate consequences for their actions the way they do on the illegally-downloaded holostreams Thorn loves to watch.

So Fox should be used to not getting a satisfying resolution.

It’s just… embarrassing, is what it is. Sure, the quadduck hasn’t turned out to be patient zero for a killer flesh-melting epidemic poised to destroy all life on Coruscant after all. It’s just a duck. Just a duck that only one small team of scientists ever cared about to begin with. He’d feel bad letting Dr. Ker down, of course, but－

But what’s really at stake is his fucking pride. Let the rest of the GAR laugh at him for investigating a bird murder. But investigating a bird murder and not even being able to solve it－

He can’t let it come to that. He won’t.

Fox groans, burying his head in his hands. Easier said than done.

“You better not be dying over there,” Thire demands from his desk on the other side of the room. “I have twenty credits on you keeling over in the Senate one day, not in your office.”

Fox doesn’t bother to look up. “You don’t even have twenty credits.”

“I would, if I won the bet.”

He’d have put money on the office, personally. A heart attack from too much shitty caf. Or all the stress Lucas keeps making increasingly-angry noises about every time Fox holds still long enough for a medic to scan his vitals.

Thire takes an obnoxious slurp of his own shitty caf, pausing to stretch out his bad leg before picking up his datapad again. For as young as he is, Thire has still seen more front-line combat than most of the Guard, Fox included. He’d been deployed to Rugosa, early in the war, and－

“You’ve worked with High General Yoda,” Fox realizes.

“Ages ago, yeah,” Thire says, slow. His eyes narrow suspiciously, the expression ruined by the much-chewed stylus hanging out of the corner of his mouth like a knock-off deathstick.

It’d been before Thire made Commander, Fox remembers. Before anyone really knew what the Guard’s job would be, and sending a contingent of Guards with a High General on a front-line mission seemed like a good idea to someone in GAR Command.

“If I wanted to get in contact with the Jedi－ not Yoda specifically－” he amends, as Thire’s eyebrows climb to never-before-seen heights of incredulity. “Just in general, what’s the best way to do that?”

Thire leans back in his chair, finally taking the stylus from his mouth. “I’m assuming this is a crazy hypothetical scenario where you can’t just send High Command a message as the Commander of the Guard like a normal person?”

Thire has always been too smart for his own good. Under normal circumstances it makes Fox fiercely, viciously proud of him－ the youngest Guard Commander and the only one who had to work his way up the ranks rather than get decanted straight into it－ but at the moment he could do with a little less speed on the uptake.

Of course Jedi High Command would answer any message sent via official channels from the Guard. But then he would have to try to explain his new foray into investigating bird crime to a High General and honestly he’d rather eat his own blaster.

“That would be ridiculous. But yes, let’s assume that.”

Thire rolls his eyes. “I don’t know. I guess－ the General mentioned once that the Temple is always open to the clones, even just to visit. He wanted us to see the room they have there with all the fountains.”

“And he… meant it?” Natborns barely want anything to do with clones at the best of times; they don’t invite clones over for tea and sight-seeing. Well, except for Senator Organa, once. But Fox had assumed his invitation to lunch was a reflex born of misplaced natborn politeness, not a genuine offer. And even Organa’s invitation was to Fox specifically, not any random clone who happened to wander by.

“I think so.” Thire shrugs, fiddling with his stylus. His gaze goes distant for a moment, remembering things that Fox won’t ever really understand. “The General was… kind. He cared about all of us who were with him. Even wanted to know our names.”

“Oh,” Fox says, his last excuse crumbling away. He’s never told a natborn his name before, and the idea makes jittery anxiety curl in his gut. But if it gets him in the door－ and if the rest of the Jedi are willing to honor the High General’s invitation…

Well. It seems like a visit to the Temple is in his immediate future. And Hound’s, though he doesn’t know it yet.

“Take holos of the fountain room if they let you see it,” Thire calls as Fox tucks his datapad into his kama and heads for the door, because part of being too smart for his own good is also knowing when it’s safer to not ask for details on exactly what kind of secret bullshit your commanding officer is getting up to.

It probably won’t be that hard to get a holo or two. If it’s on the way.

*****

Fox has spent the entirety of his post-Kamino life in the few square kilometers surrounding the Senate District, but he’s never been to the Jedi Temple.

Even now, standing with Hound outside the main public entrance, it’s hard to think of it as a place he can go. The Temple has always been part of the landscape, a colossal stone shape looming in the background of his day-to-day life the way he’s always imagined a mountain would. Scenery, not  destination.

“Wow,” Hound says, a little awed, craning his neck back as far as his bucket will permit. Four towering bronzium statues－ ancient Jedi, of some sort－ flank the entrance, smooth surfaces glinting in the sun, details lost to distance.

“Yeah.” Fox is used to the massive bulk of the Senate Dome, but up close the Temple dwarfs it easily. He and Hound pass between two more monumental carvings of Jedi, edges worn soft with time, and find themselves in a cavernous atrium.

They’re the only visitors inside. It feels empty, like their footsteps should echo in the vast space, but welcoming despite it. The stone walls are warm cream and brown, every surface carved with sinuous patterns, elaborate but somehow not overwhelming. It’s… nice. Not at all like the ostentatious gaudiness of the Senate or stark utilitarianism of Guard Headquarters. It’s not like anywhere Fox has been before at all.

At the end of the hall, a truly interminable distance from the main doors, sits a single reception desk, occupied by a Mon Calamari who looks barely old enough to be out of a tube.

Fox takes in a deep breath and steps forward, trying to convey authority and the impression that he has any idea what he’s doing there. “Hello. I need to speak to a Jedi.”

The kid breaks into a burbling laugh, the little tendrils Fox doesn’t know the name of around their mouth waving gently. “Good news! I’m a Jedi!”

Turns out natborn cadets are just as annoying as the clone versions.

Behind him, Hound snorts and does a terrible job trying to cover it with a cough.

Fox scowls. He’ll see how much Hound laughs when he finds out he’s on Representative Binks duty for the next ten-day. “An adult Jedi. Someone who, uh. Knows about the Dark side.”

The smile falls off the cadet’s face so fast that Fox feels a little bad. “Oh. Oh－ I. I’d better get my Master.” They scramble down off their oversized seat and disappear through the door behind them before Fox can object.

“Real smooth,” Hound puts in, low.

Make that the next two ten-days.

The cadet returns after only a moment, trailing a Nautolan woman the color of Kamino’s seas during a storm. She bows, deep, to both of them, and Fox snaps off a reflexive salute in return.

“Hello, my friends. Welcome to the Temple. I am Master Inyo Kodd, and this is my Padawan Tak Teeb. Might I have your names?”

“Commander Fox, of the Coruscant Guard,” he says, steadier than he thought possible even while his heart tries to beat its way out of his chest. There. He did it. He told a natborn his name and didn’t even throw up in his bucket.

Yet, anyway.

“I’m Sergeant Hound.” Hound also sounds steady, the hitch in his voice undetectable unless you know him, and Fox is grateful again for Thire’s warning. “And this is Grizzer,” Hound adds, easier, gesturing to his partner. The cadet peeks out from behind Master Kodd and offers a little wave. It is only aimed at Grizzer.

Kodd nods, like hearing a clone’s name is a routine and not particularly noteworthy occurrence. Maybe it is, for her. “It is good to meet you. My Padawan has told me of your request, but I’m afraid it’s a rather unusual one. You must understand that even a little knowledge of the Dark side can be extremely dangerous in the wrong hands, especially in uncertain times like ours.” Kodd’s dark eyes harden, a hint of durasteel under her placid exterior. “So I must ask－ why are you seeking this information?”

“I understand, General.” He doesn’t. Clones don’t have the Force; Fox could learn everything the Jedi know about the Dark side and it still wouldn’t do shit for him. But he has plenty of practice following stupid and arbitrary rules, and at least this is an easier ask than the time he had to count a Senator’s holoimage frames to ensure they complied with an ancient and almost-forgotten rule about the amount of decorations allowed per Senate office. “It’s relevant to an investigation the Guard is conducting.”

Master Kodd’s eyebrow ridges climb, color draining from her face. “You believe the Dark side is involved? Here on Coruscant?”

“In… a way,” Fox hedges. Kodd still looks hesitant, mouth set in a troubled frown, so Fox barrels ahead. “It’s an active investigation, so I really can’t discuss details outside of with anyone not involved, sir.”

Please don’t ask. Please.

The Jedi’s frown deepens. Her dark eyes bore into Fox’s, like she can see straight through the visor of his bucket, weighing his story. The silence stretches for a small eternity.

“I believe I know someone that can assist you,” she says at last. “Please, follow me.”

Chapter Text

Kodd leads them deeper into the Temple, each new section just as huge and soaring as the entrance. The sheer scale of the place feels impossible. Fox had worried about being stopped, questioned about what clones were doing here in the heart of the Jedi’s space, but they don’t pass another soul on their way to wherever Kodd is taking them. The endless hallways are just as empty as the entrance.

“Is this your first time at the Temple?” Kodd asks, when Hound gets so caught up examining a statue that he has to jog several steps to catch up. At Fox’s nod, she sighs. “I’m sorry you have to see it like this. With the war, there are few of us left here. It’s normally much more… vibrant. Full of life.”

“I’m sorry,” Fox says, inadequate and more than a little conflicted. He can sympathize, but the war is the only reason he exists to begin with.

“We all must do our duty,” Kodd says, attempting a little smile without quite hitting the mark. “Perhaps you and Sergeant Hound can return after the war is over, and see the Temple as it is meant to be.”

If Fox makes it to the end of the war. If there is an end of the war, someday. He’s not sure he believes in either possibility. “Maybe.”

Kodd lets the subject drop, like she can tell the skeptical direction of Fox’s thoughts, and they continue in silence. They descend several levels in a turbolift bigger than the Guard Commanders’ shared office and walk what feels like kilometers of unpopulated corridors before she stops in front of a set of towering arched doors.

“This is the Room of a Thousand Fountains,” Kodd explains, pausing before the still-closed doors, and Fox straightens, curious to see what could be impressive that a High General would invite clones to see it. “It is one of the Temple’s greatest treasures. And if I’m right, it should be where we’ll find your Dark side expert.”

She palms open the door controls, and reveals more green than Fox thought existed in the entire galaxy.

Room doesn’t come close to doing justice to the space behind the doors, so vast and full of plant-life that it’s like stepping directly from the Temple onto a jungle planet. It’s huge, even by the ludicrous standards of the rest of the Temple－ if there is a ceiling, it’s lost to distance, impossible to make out through the canopy of leaves shadowing the paths inside. Plants Fox can’t even begin to identify jostle for space along the stone walkways, crowding over one another with no apparent rhyme or reason, in organic tangles nothing like the carefully manicured decorative shrubs of the Senate District.

It’s the first time Fox has seen a tree that existed outside of a planter, and suddenly Yoda’s words to Thire make a lot more sense.  

“What is this place?” Hound asks, voice hushed. It feels right, somehow, like this green growing space isn’t meant for human voices.

Grizzer, just as bewildered as the clones but without the same innate sense of awe or appropriate timing, barks enthusiastically at a falling leaf, shattering the air of contemplative silence immediately.

Kodd laughs and nudges another leaf toward Grizzer with her foot. “It’s a place we use for meditation, and for contemplation of the Living Force. A place where one can rest, and commune with the Force that flows through all things.” She grins at them as Grizzer pounces on the leaf. “We also use it for parties.”

Fox had thought contemplation and meditation were the Jedi’s idea of a party.

But there isn’t time to investigate that idea further, because Kodd continues along the path like she hasn’t just proton-torpedoed Fox’s fundamental understanding of the Order. The deeper they go into the room, the most sounds begin to register: the low rush of several waterfalls, the buzz of insects, the chattering of birds. Peaceful, but like Kodd had said, overwhelmingly alive.

After several minutes they pass through a dense thicket of blue-green shrubs and emerge into a sort of open clearing, a sweep of thick grass dominated by a massive purple-barked tree in the center. Kodd steps off the stone pathway onto the grass without hesitation, heading directly for the tree, like walking on grass is just something that’s allowed. Fox exchanges a quick glance with Hound－ equally hesitant－ and Grizzer－ delighted, thriving－ before stepping out after her. The grass is springy underfoot, uneven in unexpected places. Fox rather likes it.

“There you are. Wake up, Quinlan, I’ve brought guests,” Kodd says, drawing to a stop at the base of the tree. Fox tears his gaze away from the rippling carpet of green under his feet, and all other thoughts in his head vanish.

There’s another person here, a Kiffar, stretched out on the grass under the shadow of the tree. He’s not dressed like Kodd, or any of the other Jedi Fox has seen－ instead of robes, a dark sleeveless vest leaves both of his powerful arms on display, the artificial sunlight casting dappled shadows across his brown skin. The man cracks one eye open as Kodd speaks, a slow smile spreading across his face, blurring the edges of his golden tattoos, and Fox’s mouth goes dry.

“Well,” the man－ Quinlan?－ says, levering himself upright with an easy motion that makes the muscles in his arms flex distractingly. “I’ve woken up to worse surprises than a pair of strapping clone troopers. How can I help you folks?”

He accompanies the question with a wink, aimed directly at Fox, and Fox feels his face go hot under his bucket.

Focus. He has to focus. He came here for a reason.

“Uh,” Fox says, fucking up immediately.

“They’re seeking information about the Dark side,” Kodd cuts in, taking pity on him. Or possibly she just thinks Quinlan will take the news better coming from her. Judging by the way the Kiffar’s expression shutters at the words, face going dangerously blank, Fox thinks it was more than just simple kindness toward an awkward clone. “This is Master Quinlan Vos. He has more knowledge of the Dark side than anyone else currently at the Temple.”

Master Vos doesn’t respond, but the skin around his eyes tightens, small and unhappy.

“This is Commander Fox and Sergeant Hound,” Kodd continues, powering through introductions like she hasn’t noticed Vos’ reaction. “They’re from the Guard, and they need help with a case. Be nice.”

“I’m always nice. I’m a delight,” Vos mutters, but it’s halfhearted, his expression still closed off and distant.

Kodd rolls her eyes. “I must get back to Tak. It was nice to meet you, Commander. Sergeant.”

Fox almost wishes she would stay, a friendly buffer between them and this new unknown quantity. But he’s already said he would only discuss details with those who are－ or will be－ involved, and it’s too late to take it back now.

So the three of them－ Grizzer distracted trying to eat a brightly colored flying insect out of the air－ watch her go, the brown of her robes disappearing into the riot of plant-life almost immediately. The silence left in her wake is oppressive, broken only by the intermittent frustrated snap of Grizzer’s jaws as she repeatedly misses her target.

“Fine,” Vos huffs, after they’ve been staring at each other awkwardly for a long moment. His smile is back－ sharper and less convincing than before. A false front. “You’re already here; may as well ask your questions so I can tell you I don’t know and we can all get on with our day.”

Fox glances to the side, but Hound only shrugs, a minute shift of his pauldrons. Helpful as always.

Okay. Well, fuck it. Vos clearly wants nothing to do with this, and Fox is beginning to feel the same way. It was a ridiculous idea anyway, but－

He still has to try. One last shot at making progress in the case.

“If you’d just take a look at this, sir,” he says, deciding to just get it over with. His heart still trips up a beat as he hands over the datapad with Dr. Ker and Lucas’ reports, need for answers warring with the abrupt and bone-deep desire to not make a fool of himself in front of the most attractive sentient Fox has ever seen.

Vos takes the proffered device without comment. Their fingers don’t brush, and Fox refuses to let himself be disappointed. He’s going to be so normal about this.

He’ll be so normal and then when the Jedi can’t help them, he’ll go back to his bunk and scream into his pillow where no one can hear him and think about the color of Vos’ eyes in the green-dappled light until the day he dies. Which will hopefully be soon.

Vos, oblivious to Fox’s imminent mental collapse, reads in silence. His frown grows the longer he skims through the reports.

“Where did you get this?”

“It’s evidence in an ongoing investigation.”

The Jedi looks up from the screen, eyebrow cocked in an expression so flatly  judgemental Fox is almost jealous. “Wow, that’s a conveniently vague answer. An investigation into what?”

“Unlawful killing of a protected species,” Fox says, at the exact same time Hound says, “Murder.”

Vos drops the datapad into his lap to fix them both with an unimpressed stare. “You guys want to try that one again?”

“It’s not murder,” Fox says, over-loud, drowning out whatever absolute banthashit Hound is about to say. “The creature in those reports is not a sentient. We’re trying to rule out the possibility of Dark side involvement.”

A technically fully accurate answer. And more importantly, one with no mention of the fact that the non-sentient in question is a duck. Vos can tell them to fuck off all he wants, but Fox will still escape with a modicum of his dignity intact.

“And why,” Vos says, slow and pointed. “Would you think there’s Dark side involvement at all?”

Okay, maybe not. He pauses, weighing his words. “I wasn’t sure. But supposedly the… ambient Force－” he waves a hand in a vaguely mystical gesture that makes Vos’ mouth twitch up. “－has a strong effect on this type of creature. I didn’t think it would actually be involved. I just wanted to eliminate all possibilities.”

Vos holds his gaze for a long moment, like he can see straight through Fox’s bucket. Heat rises in Fox’s cheeks again, and he forces himself not to shift his weight under the power of the other man’s stare, feeling ridiculous and off-balance.

“It does look like textbook Dark side corruption,” Vos says at last, to Fox’s simultaneous vindicated delight and complete, suffocating dread.

He was right! His stupid, impossible theory was right, there was more to this idiotic case than it first seemed, and he’s going to hold this over Hound’s head until the heat death of the universe.

Also, fuck. He was right.

The Jedi are going to have to get involved for real now. There’s undoubtedly several metric tons of paperwork in his near future－ probably forms that haven’t even been invented yet. He’s going to have to look the Supreme Chancellor of the Republic in the eye and tell him a duck revealed a source of Dark side corruption right under the nose of the Jedi and the Senate.

Gods damn it.

“I need to know where you found this,” Vos says, urgent, interrupting Fox’s spiral. “The Dark side is… it’s more dangerous than you could possibly know. Even for the Jedi. Especially for the Jedi.”

Right. Focus. Lament about how his life is a bureaucratic nightmare later, worry about mysterious duck-killing Dark side problems now. “I can show you. But－ what about a living subject? Would you be able to tell if the same thing were happening?”

Vos looks up from the datapad, eyes narrowing suspiciously. “Yes. But I’d need to physically examine them. Not just see holos.”

“Are you up for a field trip?”

Chapter Text

Vos’ eyebrows have been climbing steadily higher the closer they come to the vast ornamental pond and its placidly swimming ducks.

They’d explained the rough outlines of the situation on the way, after Vos had agreed to examine the living subjects, but it’s one thing to accept at a distance and another to accept when actively confronted by genuine waterfowl. Fox wouldn’t have blamed him for thinking it was all an elaborate and bizarre prank.

“Gotta say, this is nothing like any of my normal missions,” Vos remarks as they reach the water’s edge.

There’s no sign of Dr. Ker or any of her associates, which is probably a good thing. Fox isn’t really sure how to even begin explaining what they’re doing here.

“That a good thing or a bad thing?” he asks, curious despite himself.

Vos grins at him, lopsided. “Jury’s still out.”

Something warm in Fox’s chest flips over under the bright intensity of Vos’ smile. Despite the bizarre circumstances－ or because of them?－ the Jedi’s mood has improved since leaving the Temple, his smile back to the same caliber of sunniness he’d first greeted them with. Maybe it’s another act, but it’s a convincing one, and it makes Fox’s breath stutter to look at. He turns away and looks at the water instead. It’s the safer option.

All the ducks look pretty much the same. Beak, horrible snaky neck, two wings, four legs. Brownish. Fox can’t tell if any of the birds on the water are the menace that accosted him on their last visit or not. A couple of them have begun to drift over toward the group, though most stay clustered on the other side of the pond, where a Twi’lek tubie is industriously hurling bread into the water while their mother looks on.

“We should have brought some bread this time,” Hound comments.

“It’s not good for them,” Fox says without thinking, and is immediately met with two equally incredulous looks. Hound’s is covered by his bucket, but Fox knows it’s there. He can feel it. “What? I read the material Dr. Ker sent. Bread doesn’t have any nutritional value for them.”

“Neeeeerd,” Hound pronounces. Fox flips him off while Vos is looking at the birds.

“Okay, so no bread,” Vos says. “Any other ideas?”

Honestly, Fox kind of thought Vos could just use… Jedi magic to draw a bird over, or something. He’s seen holo footage of other Generals picking up battle droids and clone troopers with the Force. High General Windu picked up a whole starfighter. How hard could a duck be?

“We used Grizzer’s treats last time,” Hound offers.

Vos looks intrigued at the mention of last time, eyes lighting with a desire for chaos that Fox recognizes from every single one of his younger batchers. It’s disconcerting to see on a Jedi, but this has been a day for disconcerting Jedi discoveries.

No one comes up with a better solution, so Hound pulls out a small handful of treats, sacrificing some to Grizzer, who is being a very good girl while also refusing to get within a meter of the water or look directly at any of the ducks. Fox gets the rest, and barely manages to grab them before－

The brownish feathery missile rockets out of the water with a splash that sends Grizzer cowering behind Hound, landing on Fox’s pauldron with a grace usually only found in speeder crashes. Its webbed feet scrabble for purchase on the slick plastoid before it manages to settle. “Wark,” it says, excitedly.

It’s the same fucking duck.

Vos cackles, sounding very much like the duck and also like someone Fox would dearly love to punch in the face. Hound has the decency to turn off his external speakers, but the way his shoulders are shaking rather defeats the point.

Fox stands very still and prays for death.

“Hey there, little guy,” Vos gasps eventually. “Who’s this?” His grin spreads across his face like a sunrise, creasing the gold markings on his cheeks and crinkling the corners of his eyes. Fox’s mind goes totally and unhelpfully blank.

“That’s Fox Junior,” Hound declares, immediate.

“It absolutely the fuck is not－”

“Hmm, I don’t know.” Vos’ expression turns sly as he glances up at the perching bird and then back at Fox. “I think she has your eyes, Commander.”

Oh no, Fox thinks, glaring through the visor of the bucket he has not removed since meeting the Jedi. He’s perfect.

He’s also a Jedi. Fox swallows down his panic, trying to come up with some kind of rebuttal that will make him sound normal and not like someone having an internal meltdown about how attractive Vos is. Vos, who is a Jedi and a natborn and not a person Fox can risk having these thoughts about it.

It’s just a little hard to remember that when Vos smiles at him.

The bird－ not Fox Junior, Fox will die first－ readjusts on Fox’s pauldron, and Vos extends a hand out toward it－ her? She snaps her beak, hissing like an evil air leak, but the Jedi doesn’t flinch, just keeps his hand steady and his dark eyes fixed on the demonic creature. After a moment she settles down again and Vos, apparently with no regard for his fingers, reaches out to stroke the bird’s neck, ruffling the gray feathers.

The duck lets out a pleased wark, leaning into the motion. Fox is absolutely not jealous of a bird, because that would be ridiculous.

“Kriff,” Vos says, his expression going distant. His fingers pause in their movement over the duck’s feathers.

“What is it?” Fox cranes his neck, trying to get a better look at the bird on his shoulder. She looks the same－ patchy featherless spots scattered across her body, but it doesn’t seem to have gotten any worse since last time. She pecks at Vos’ hand, upset that the scratching has stopped.

“Dark side corruption,” Vos says, grim. He gives the bird one last pat and drops his arm again, shaking out his hand like the corruption is something physical he can shake off. “Not as advanced as in the other, obviously, since she’s still alive, but it’s there.”

“Can you, you know, fix it?” Hound asks, waggling his fingers in the universal sign for Force banthashit.

Vos frowns, gnawing absently on his lip. “Temporarily, sure. But if whatever is causing it is still around, it will just come back eventually.”

“Wait,” Fox says, tearing his eyes away from the soft shape of Vos’ mouth. “You don’t know if it’s still around? You can’t… sense it?”

This isn’t how this is supposed to go. He’s done his part, getting the Jedi involved. They’re supposed to be able to handle all the… Force shit. It’s what they do.

Vos’ mouth twists into a rueful smile. He glances around, assuring himself that there’s no one else within earshot of their bizarre little group, before leaning in, voice low and serious. “It’s… complicated. The Force on Coruscant has been clouded by the Dark side since before the start of the war. It’s like… trying to pick out a single shadow in a dark room. Even the Grand Masters have trouble sensing anything clearly right now.”

That seems… bad.

No, it seems fucking terrible, actually. Fox doesn’t know the first thing about the Force－ the front-line clones had all gotten basic modules on it, but not anyone slated for the Guard. The longnecks hadn’t seen the need, not when the Guard wouldn’t ever be working directly with the Jedi－ but even he doesn’t need training to recognize that overwhelming Darkness is probably not great.

“Well,” Hound says, after a long moment. “If the darkness is everywhere, that’s what could be causing the ducks to get sick, right?”

Fox shakes his head, accidentally nudging the duck with his helmet and getting an annoyed hiss in response. “Then why now? They’ve only been affected recently. If it’s just from the Dark side across the whole planet, they should have gotten sick before now.”

“That’s… a good point,” Vos says, thoughtful. “This pond is new, right? Where were the ducks before this?”

“The university.”

Vos’ frown deepens. “That’s not far.”

It’s three kilometers. Fox checked, when he first started to suspect Force Shit was involved.

“Okay,” Vos says after a moment, clapping his gloved hands together. “So, that means somewhere between the university and here, these ducks encountered a source of Darkness so strong it’s literally killing them. Maybe it’s a new source, or maybe it’s related to the planet-wide Darkness. None of the Jedi have noticed and we have literally no idea where or what it is.”

“Well, when you put it like that it sounds stupid as fuck,” Hound remarks, because he has never been stopped by anything as minor as a basic sense of self-preservation.

Vos laughs. “You want to hear stupid? My Master and I had to go undercover as a Hutt once for a mission. We had to wear this big synthrubber costume－ one of us in each half.” He pauses, then adds darkly, “Master Tholme got the front half, of course.”

“That’s－ you’re joking,” Fox says, less confident than he meant to. The Jedi are a serious order. They’re monks. Every holo he’s ever seen of High General Windu looks like the man has never smiled in his life, and the others aren’t much better. There’s no way.

But then again, he didn’t think they’d ever have parties, either－

“Am I?” Vos asks, with a wink that sends a traitorous flush to Fox’s cheeks. “In any case, this isn’t even in the top five of dumbest missions I’ve been on. Top ten maybe.”

“It’s early yet,” Fox says before he can stop himself, earning a smirk from the Jedi.

“True. But I do have an idea. Whatever is affecting the ducks, it wasn’t a problem when they were still at the university, right?” Both clones nod. “So whatever the source of the Dark side is, it’s probably something localized that they only encountered after being moved to the pond, not whatever has been affecting the whole planet. Maybe we can use our new friend here to… triangulate the source, somehow.”

That sounds like a solid enough plan. Except－ “Does the Force work like that?”

“The Force works in many mysterious ways,” Vos replies, with a beatific smile Fox doesn’t trust in the least.

“So you have no idea.”

“I have no idea.”

Well. It’s still not the worst plan Fox has ever followed.

“So, what,” Hound cuts in. “You’re just gonna use a duck like a tracking massiff?”

“More like a passive sensor,” Vos corrects. “We’ll take the duck around the city and I can monitor for any changes in the level of Dark side corruption in her body. Like a radiation detector, but for the Force.”

Hound exchanges a dubious glance with Grizzer. “Ooookay. But you are technically stealing that duck.”

“Borrowing! We’re going to bring it back.”

That’s… not how that works.

“Besides,” Vos continues, before Fox can explain what actually constitutes theft. “This is official business. I’m sure the Guard can look the other way just this once.”

He follows that statement up with another devastating wink, and Fox feels his resolve crumble. “I’ll file it as an emergency requisition,” he says, and Vos claps his non-ducked shoulder with a triumphant grin.

Hound opts out of accompanying them, on the convenient grounds that Grizzer is still too terrified of the duck to do anything but cower behind Hound’s legs, but his parting “Have fun!” is smug enough that Fox knows it was just an excuse to escape having to be seen in public with a grown man with a duck on his head. Fox can’t even blame him.

“All right, Fox Senior,” Vos says, when Hound and Grizzer have gone. “Where to first?”

Fox has made a huge mistake.

Chapter Text

They decide to check the area around the university first, on the basis that it’s the closest thing to a known variable they have, and that the people there are slightly less likely to be alarmed by two adult humanoids carrying an endangered waterfowl. It’s not an area Fox is familiar with－ the Guard’s jurisdiction doesn’t extend into the Fobosi District under normal circumstances－ but Vos sets off toward campus with the confidence of someone who’s made the trip before.

Do Jedi go to university? Or does the Temple teach them everything they need to know, the same way Kamino did for the clones?

He glances at Vos out of the corner of his eye as they walk, safely hidden behind the dark visor of his helmet. He could ask, maybe. Vos has been nothing but friendly since leaving the Temple, open and joking with them in a way Fox had never thought Jedi would be. Had never thought any natborn would be, with a clone.

But he also remembers the sharp bite of Vos’ words when Kodd had introduced them. The way his face had gone hard and distant when she’d mentioned his expertise. There’s a minefield there, carefully concealed, and Fox doesn’t want to risk stepping into it.

He doesn’t ask.

They get some odd looks as they enter the district’s main pedestrian thoroughfare. It’s mostly foot traffic here, a concession to the students of the university which dominates the majority of the district, the ever-present noise of speeder traffic relegated to a distant background hum. Nowhere is ever truly quiet on Coruscant, but the area around the university manages peaceful.

Fox walks with the duck tucked securely under his arm like a feathery limmie ball, successfully lured off his pauldron with no small amount of finagling and minor bribery with part of a ration bar he’d had in his kama. It’s not ideal as far as leaving his hands free for his weapons if they run into trouble, but it makes it look like he’s at least slightly in control of the situation. It’s not true, of course, but the illusion makes him feel better.

He’s not really expecting to need his blaster, in any case. The path from the Senate District to the university is all well-lit upper-levels, open to the sky and populated by the kind of law-abiding average citizen that the Guard doesn’t get a lot of experience with.

Granted, he hadn’t really expected Force shit to actually be involved, either. It’s been a day for surprises.

He catches the flash of people taking holo images of their little group, no doubt delighted by the sight of a fully uniformed Guard member carrying a stupid duck, and winces. Bad enough to have his own face－ well, bucket, but it’s the same thing really－ plastered all over the holonet looking ridiculous, but Vos mentioned he works undercover, and he doesn’t have the benefit of two million other people with his face to blend in with. The Jedi doesn’t seem concerned by the attention, but Fox can be concerned enough for both of them.

He’s very good at being concerned.

Vos agrees easily to his suggestion that they find somewhere less crowded, turning them aside onto one of the many side streets branching off the main path. It’s quieter almost immediately, the flow of pedestrian traffic trailing off the further they walk. Fox muffles a relieved sigh in the privacy of his bucket.

The street they’ve ended up on is mostly residential, all broad duracrete pathways and faux-stone buildings meant to imitate the space and ostentatious wealth of the nearby Senate District. There’s no more surreptitious holo-taking－ this is a respectable neighborhood, not a place where clones belong, and the upturned sneers of the few people they pass make that very clear.

“Hold up a second,” Vos says after awhile. He draws them to a stop, tucked between two well-kept apartment buildings that probably charge more for a month of rent than the Guard’s whole yearly budget. “This is about halfway between the Plaza and the university. Let me check Fox Junior again.”

“We are not calling her that,” Fox grumbles, but he turns obligingly to bring the duck closer to Vos all the same.

Vos smirks. “I think that ship has already sailed, buddy.”

Fox glares, safe in the knowledge that Vos can’t see it. Vos laughs like he can anyway.

He reaches out for the duck, going quiet for a moment, the corners of his mouth turned down in concentration. “It’s hard to tell, but I think the corruption has receded a little.” He gives the bird another quick scratch before dropping his hand again. “You wouldn’t happen to know how quickly the Force is supposed to affect these guys, would you?”

“No,” Fox says, slow, thinking about everything he’s read about them. It’s easy to recall the sections of Dr. Ker’s materials that had mentioned the birds’ not-quite-Force-sensitivity, but that’s thanks less to Kaminoan engineering for near-perfect memory and more to the fact that there simply hadn’t been that much about it. For all their knowledge about the quadducks themselves, it was clear that the researchers hadn’t known much more about the Force than Fox did. “I don’t think anyone does, actually.”

“Maybe we can co-author a paper about it when this is done. Break new academic ground. Drs. Vos and Fox－ what do you think?”

He thinks the university is more likely to grant an honorary degree to the duck than a clone, but he keeps his mouth shut. Vos is grinning, pleased with his joke, and Fox doesn’t want the smile to vanish, much less be the cause of its disappearance.

“Fox and Vos. So it’s alphabetical, of course,” he says instead, and a pleased little glow of warmth curls in his chest when Vos laughs.

The transition from neighborhood to campus proper is obvious, the university grounds marked by a broad avenue lined with flowering trees in heavy stone planters that Fox probably would have found impressive before seeing the Room of a Thousand Fountains. As it is, the trees just look… sad, somehow. Constricted and overly-manicured.

Vos stops under one of the nearest trees, gazing thoughtfully down the walkway to where the main building of the university crouches like a stalking nexu. “Do you think we should go see the quadduck project leader? What did you say her name was?”

“Dr. Ker. And no, I don’t think so. Not until we have something more concrete.” It’s pointless to get her hopes up before they really know anything. And maybe this way she never has to find out that they technically stole one of her precious and highly endangered birds. Even if they are going to put it back.

“Oh, good. I was hoping you’d say that. I am possibly a little bit banned from the university grounds for life.”

This news is less surprising than it probably should be. He discards several possible responses－ how the hells did you manage that and why the fuck didn’t you mention that at literally any point before now being top contenders－ and settles, neutrally, on: “This is probably close enough, anyway.”

“You’re a gem, Foxy,” Vos says, already reaching out to commune with with Force essence of the duck again, oblivious to the way Fox’s brain has completely shut down. Foxy.

… Foxy.

It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just－ a stupid nickname. Vos is using it to be nice, to make a connection, because Vos is a Jedi who is being normal and friendly. Fox is the one who can’t get his shit together here. Vos doesn’t mean anything by it, because Vos is－

Oh. Vos is talking.

“Huh? I mean－ sir?”

Vos has been staring at him, but he shudders theatrically when Fox speaks. “Ugh, don’t call me sir. Respectability gives me hives. I said the corruption is weakening even further here. I don’t think it would disappear completely, even if the birds stayed here permanently again, but I doubt it’d be strong enough to kill them.” He cocks his head to the side, eyes still searching Fox’s helmet. It was probably too much to hope for that he wouldn’t notice Fox’s latest complete failure to not be a total disaster. “You okay there?”

“Fine,” he lies. “Just distracted. By the, uh. Trees.”

“Uh huh,” Vos says, slow. He glances upward, like it’s the first time he’s noticed where he’s sitting. The light doesn’t paint his face with the same dappled shadows it had in the Temple, but the way the long line of his neck stretches makes Fox’s breath catch all the same. “Yeah, I guess you probably don’t see them a lot. But I’d like to stay here for at least half an hour, just to see if the extra time helps at all. Plenty of time for you to check out the trees if you want.”

“That’s fine.” The simple, easy kindness of the offer makes Fox’s heart trip in an alarming way, so he does the logical thing and ignores it. He can start working on his absolute clusterfuck of a report instead. Fox Junior－ kriff, no－ the duck wriggles impatiently in his hold now that they’re no longer moving, pecking at his chest plate with imperious dignity and a muted bonking sound.

Vos has settled onto the edge of the planter, leaning back on his hands, looking relaxed and elegant, like this is exactly where he wants to be. Fox dumps the duck down next to him. She glares at him beadily before deciding she has better things to do－ namely, rooting around in the sparse dirt for some arcane duck purpose known only to herself. Vos watches her for a long moment.

“So,” he says lightly, derailing the pathetic start－ opening the form and staring at it despairingly－ Fox has made on his report. “Commander of the Guard, huh? How’d you end up with that gig?”

Is this… small talk? Is the Jedi attempting to small talk him? Fox wasn’t prepared for this.

“My batch was designated for the Guard while we were still being grown,” he tries. At Vos’ blank look, he adds, awkward, “I was assigned to it before I was decanted. Or, uh. Born.”

“Oh.” The Jedi’s face does something complicated, smoothed away too quickly for Fox to parse. He looked almost… sad? But that doesn’t make any sense. Unless－ unless he had expected a better answer? Has Fox already ruined his chances for getting a passing grade in natborn social interactions, something that is both normal to want and possible to achieve?

No. He can fix this.

“What about you? You mentioned undercover work, before－ is that why you’re here and not on the front-lines?”

Nailed it.

“You caught that, huh?” Vos’ mouth twists ruefully, not quite a smile. “My specialty is undercover work, yeah. I’m… between missions, at the moment.”

He did not nail it. The tension is back in Vos’ frame, the same stiff discomfort as when Master Kodd introduced him as an expert in the Dark side. Fox has gone and blundered straight into the minefield he was so determined to avoid. Of course. But before the silence can stretch into something stifling, Vos visibly shakes it off, brightening again, only slightly false.

“You know, you guys actually arrested me once.”

“Oh. I’m… sorry?”

“Don’t be,” Vos says with an easy laugh, like he hasn’t once again upended Fox’s understanding of how Jedi are supposed to act and given him emotional whiplash at the same time. “It was great for my cover. Got all the info I needed pretty much as soon as I made bail.”

Fox isn’t sure what to say to that－ you’re welcome seems presumptuous, but－

“Happy to help,” he says instead, like an idiot.

They lapse into comfortable silence after that, natural and lacking the hidden weight of their last. Vos watches the duck through half-lidded eyes. Fox adds several more sentences to his report without managing to say anything of substance whatsoever. The duck unearths a horrible many-legged insect from the leaf litter around the tree and swallows it with the same relish she’d shown Grizzer’s treats.

“I’ve been thinking,” Fox says, when he reaches the part of his report where he can no longer avoid mentioning waterfowl directly. Vos raises his eyebrows in exaggerated concern, a smile lurking at the corners of his mouth. Fox ignores him. “We need… a system. Some way to measure the level of Dark side corruption, so we can correlate it with location and pinpoint the source.”

“Smart. I like it,” Vos agrees easily, and familiar traitorous heat fills Fox’s face. He’s known natborns that would resist any suggestion he gave them, no matter how valid, simply because it came from a clone. It’s a relief to discover Vos isn’t one of them. Not that Fox thought he would be, but－

It’s good to know for sure. For purely professional reasons.

“Okay. How about a ranking out of ten? One is no Dark side at all, ten is the level that killed the duck in the report you showed me.”

Fox nods, keeping his eyes on his datapad even though he knows Vos can’t actually see the flush on his cheeks, and only feels a little ridiculous typing Quadduck Dark Side Levels by Location into a new spreadsheet. Dr. Ker would be so proud.

“Okay. Great. So, the pond?

“Eight.”

“The last place we stopped? By the apartments?”

“Hmm. Six and a half. Maybe seven.”

“Here?”

They’re only a few minutes shy of the thirty Vos had stipulated. The Jedi brushes a hand over the duck’s back－ which the creature in question ignores in favor of pecking at a fallen twig－ and says, “Five. It might go down even further with more time, but I don’t think either of us wants to sit here all day to find out.”

Fox certainly doesn’t. Each minute they stay here makes Fox itch with the need to be doing something, more than just working on his report and enjoying the company－ and view, a sly, terrible part of his brain adds－ of an overly-kind Jedi.

Also if he has to watch the duck devour another bug with more legs than the three of them combined, he’s going to lose it.

“Where to next, then?”

“The university and pond are about three kilometers apart, right? So I figure we should go three kilometers down from here and see what results we get.” Idly, he picks up a fallen leaf and lays it carefully on the bird’s head, earning a disgruntled wark and a peck to the arm. “After that, we can work out way back until we’re directly under the Senate District and take another reading there.”

Clever. And methodical. Fox feels a surge of interest that has nothing to do with the flex of Vos’ muscles or the dark sweep of his eyelashes against his skin, and tamps it down with extreme prejudice. Admiring the Jedi’s appearance is bad enough, but this－ this is dangerous territory.

But he is a professional. Trained from decanting to focus on the mission and nothing but the mission.

He takes the lead to the nearest public turbolift. It’s easier not to get caught up in admiring the breadth of Vos’ shoulders when they’re two meters behind him.

Chapter Text

Three kilometers down is still barely within Coruscant’s mid levels. Natural light is a distant memory, but the levels are well-patrolled and law-abiding enough that they can walk around with no real trouble. Any deeper and Fox will need to call in back-up－ the upper and under levels are united in their dislike of clones, but the under levels’ version is significantly more likely to get him stabbed in the kidneys and left in a dark alleyway. Vos may be a Jedi, but Fox hasn’t survived as long as he has by taking unnecessary chances.

Level 4058－ selected because Vos said it “sounded good”, and Fox is still unclear if that was just a phrase or Actual Force Banthashit－ turns out to be a bustling commercial district, packed with storefronts and middle-class Coruscant residents going about their daily business. Eye-searing neon advertisements line every available surface, casting everything in violent shades of fuchsia and cyan, a migraine made visible. People jam together in a claustrophobic crush, packed into a narrow strip of available space by the food carts fighting for position along the edges of the walkway.

Fox angles his body toward Vos, trying to keep the duck out of jostling range of the crowd. She’d let herself be scooped up again without difficulty, apparently sated by her meal of horrifying crawling monsters, and now dozes in Fox’s arms in a way he refuses to admit is teeth-rottingly adorable. If anyone wakes her up he’s going to kill them.

“Hey,” Vos says, turning to examine a row of neon-lit food carts as they pass. He’s in his element here, navigating the press of people with an easy grace that Fox is definitely not jealous of. “You want to get lunch? I don’t know about you, but I’m starving.”

Fox eyes the food carts. Even through the filters on his helmet, the smells are an equal part incredible and bewildering. He can’t identify even half of what they’re selling－ each oversized holo display a mystery of bizarre colors and textures. He can count the number of times he’s had food that didn’t come in the form of a pre-processed bar on one hand and still have most of his fingers left over.

He’s also never been paid, and as far as he understands it most merchants are reluctant to exchange their goods without credits in return. All Fox has to his name is a single five-credit piece, which is technically stolen from a crime scene and not enough to buy a meal even if it weren’t.

“My treat,” Vos adds, hopeful, after Fox has been silent for a beat too long.

He should probably refuse. It’s probably a… conflict of ethics, or something. There’s almost certainly a rule against accepting gifts from natborns buried somewhere in the regulations. But－

But Vos is kind under all his nonchalance and sarcasm, and waits for Fox’s answer with an easiness that somehow lacks both pressure and expectation.

“Yeah. Okay.”

“Excellent!” Vos’ grins, wide and delighted, like getting to buy Fox lunch is the best news he’s had all day. It’s a little overwhelming. “Any preferences?”

The holo board above one of the nearby carts flickers to a new image, a plate of wobbly-looking orbs that are such a poisonous green he’s not actually sure they’re safe for humanoid consumption. Fox has his pride, but he also has a deep desire not to accidentally kill himself trying to eat the wrong thing, if only because he refuses to die in such a stupid way. “I don’t have a lot of experience with, uh…” he trails off, the words natborn food crouched on the tip of his tongue.

“Oh. Okay, no problem.” Vos takes the news in stride, only a flicker of the same there-and-gone expression he’d had when Fox explained about being chosen for the Guard while still in a tube. A hand comes up to stroke his chin as he thinks for a moment, dark eyes scanning the rows the carts. “Do you know if you like sweet things?”

One of the Cuy’val Dar, the Mandalorian trainers, had given him a jogan fruit once, when he’d won them a bet by out-performing a whole class of front-line CC cadets in a training exercise. It’s been years, but he still remembers the burst of almost painful sweetness across his tongue, bright and sharp like Vos’ smile. “Yeah. I do. Like them, I mean.”

“Perfect. I know just the thing,” Vos says, and disappears into the thick of the crowd.

“This is a mistake, right? This is probably a mistake.” Unfortunately the quadduck in his arms is indifferent to Fox’s second thoughts, and everything else for that matter, still fast asleep against his chest plate. Fox snaps a quick holo with his helmet cam, and then immediately buries it under six layers of password protected files so no one will ever find out.

Vos returns a few minutes later, arms piled high with steaming plastifoam boxes, and directs Fox toward a seating area off to the side of press. He claims them the table with the best sightlines, too, an intriguing choice that just adds to the list of questions Fox will never dare to ask.

The duck wakes up when Fox sets her gently down on the battered metal surface of their table, warking grumpily at him until Vos distracts her by opening the smallest of the food containers he’d brought. He spins the box toward her with a flourish, and Fox barely has time to register the mass of still-crawling insects and what looks like small raw vegetables before she dives in, going at it with a vengeance that shouldn’t be possible for something so small.

“You got something for the duck?” he asks. Then, more urgently, “They sell bugs here?”

Vos laughs, divvying up the remaining containers. “Hey, those are a delicacy if you’re a Chadra-Fan. Sometimes even if you’re human; I’ve got some stories about Anakin eating things you wouldn’t believe.” Fox has just enough time to realize that the Anakin so casually mentioned must be karking General Skywalker before Vos continues, gesturing toward the duck with his chopsticks, “I figured she deserved something too for all her hard work today.”

What the fuck. Not the bugs－ Fox will get over that, with a little time and a lot of nightmares－ but who does that? Who buys lunch for a duck?

But then again, who buys lunch for a clone, either?

It’s too much. No one should be this effortlessly kind and clever and have arms like that. There should be a law against it.

Fox looks down at his hands, something unnameable and warm turning over in his chest. Normal. He can be normal.

He will be normal, because Vos’ kindness doesn’t mean anything. Vos is just a decent person, under the sarcasm and lack of usual Jedi decorum. Fox just isn’t used to decency extending all the way to clones, is all.

“Okay,” Vos announces, flipping the lid on the nearest container open with a dramatic motion. “I got us some classic glowblue noodles, almost totally guaranteed no insects involved.”

He expects Fox to follow up, to fire back with a witty response or an indignant question, the pleased grin on his face obvious as a signpost, but Fox… can’t. Can’t because he’d realized he’s made a mistake as soon as Vos hands him a steaming container of vibrant blue noodles and he abruptly remembers that, oh－

He has to take his bucket off to eat.

He’s never taken his bucket off in front of a natborn. Even the Chancellor, with his infuriating insistence on in-person meetings, has never asked. Just the idea of it makes all the previous warmth drain from his veins, replaced by a sickly jolt of adrenaline like his body doesn’t know the difference between a blaster shootout and a flimsy container of takeout.

He freezes, staring at the container in his hand while his heart-rate does its level best to convince him that he’s dying.

But the noodles do look delicious, a rich blue studded with a rainbow of various unidentifiable vegetables and chunks of meat. Even through the helmet filters it smells better than anything he’s ever eaten before. And Vos picked it. For him. Vos, who laughs at his tentative jokes and treats him like a real person and makes his pulse flutter－

He’s already told Vos his name. His face is much less personal. This is fine.

“I’m excited to hear what you think about it,” Vos says, deceptively casual. Like he knows the frantic trajectory of Fox’s thoughts.

Kriff, he better not. Can Jedi do that?

Fox shakes the thought off and braces himself, sucking in a deep and embarrassingly shaky breath before reaching up and pulling the helmet off his head fast and decisive like ripping off a bacta patch, so he doesn’t have time to change his mind part-way through.

Vos’ grin is immediate.

“Well, hello there,” he says, leaning forward with a sly grin that is somehow even more overwhelming without the barrier of Fox’s visor between them. “Didn’t realize I was having lunch with such a handsome man.”

Fox chokes on nothing and nearly dies right there at the table.

“Oh fuck, sorry! Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Fox chokes out, once he can breathe again.

It should be a joke. It must be a joke, but the Jedi’s eyes rove over Fox’s face like he’s trying to memorize Fox’s features, which is ridiculous. There’s nothing to look at. Fox has the same features as two million other troopers. Worse, even, with the way stress has turned his hair a premature and non-regulation gray, and he barely stops himself from running a self-conscious hand through his hair at the reminder.

“Are you just saying that?” Vos asks, eyes narrowing suspiciously.

“No.” Yes.

“I mean it. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

“You didn’t. I’m just… not used to the… unfiltered air.”

Vos arches a brow, clearly not buying this. “Then you wouldn’t mind if I said it again? In the future, maybe?”

“Uh.” Fox’s face must be as red as his armor. Is this how aneurysms happen? He’s probably having an aneurysm.

“Interesting,” Vos says, drawing the word out. He drops his eyes to the table in front of them, a shadow of a grin playing around his mouth. “Eat your noodles.”

That’s a fantastic idea. If they’re both eating then no one will be talking and saying things that are obviously intended to be nice if they were so completely unbelievable. Senators give each other baseless compliments all the time. This is normal. Fox can also be normal.

He fails, immediately.

The noodles are the best thing Fox has ever tasted. They are possibly the best thing he ever will taste. The noodles themselves are thick and slightly chewy, slathered in some kind of electric blue sauce that manages to be sweet and tangy and incredible at the same time. There aren’t words in any language in the galaxy to describe the flavors Fox is experiencing, and even if there were he wouldn’t use them because that would mean he would have to stop eating long enough to speak them. The noise he makes instead is frankly embarrassing.

“You like it?”

Reality snaps back into focus. Fox discovers he’s inhaled at least half of his noodles already. Vos stares at him, a faint flush darkening his cheeks beneath the golden markings. Kriff, Fox can’t blame him. Fox would be embarrassed to be seen with himself in public, too.

“This is the best thing I’ve ever had,” he says, feeling his own face heat to match Vos’. “Thank you.”

Vos’ smile turns unbearable soft. Fox has to look away. “I’m glad.”

*****

By the time they’ve taken measurements directly below the Senate District-- six-- and returned to the pond, the sun is just beginning to touch Coruscant’s jagged horizon, casting long purple shadows over the Plaza.

“I think we’re off to a good start,” Vos says as they near the water, gazing thoughtfully out at the rest of the quadducks. “You up for more tomorrow?”

“Meet here at 0700? I’ll requisition a patrol speeder,” Fox agrees, guiltily. They had made a good start, but they’d make even more progress if they didn’t have to walk and take public turbolifts. Dark side involvement or not, Vos undoubtedly had better things to do than traipse around Coruscant all day with a duck and clone.

Even if Fox had enjoyed it.

“It’s a date,” Vos says with a wink.

He walks away, hands tucked into his pockets and every line of his body limned with gold by the setting sun, before Fox’s brain catches up enough to respond.

That’s－ a joke. Vos was just joking. Obviously. Ha ha. He seems like the kind to joke with anyone, even an awkward clone he met only a few hours ago. He’s just continuing the bit from lunch, with his ridiculous compliment. It doesn’t mean anything. Fox is a clone and Vos is a Jedi, and he was just joking.

“He was joking,” Fox says out loud, needing to hear it. Wishing he hadn’t needed to tell himself the same thing quite so often today.

“Wark,” says Fox Junior, unhelpfully.

Chapter Text

Fox sleeps poorly that night, the words it’s a date running through his mind on desperate repeat like a womp rat in a trap. The words keep playing through his head as he finally gives up and leaves the bunk room a hour and half before his alarm, as he suffers through the tepid vibration of the Guard sonics, and as he drags himself to the mess for a meal of nutritionally-balanced cardboard that somehow manages to be even less appetizing than ever after yesterday.

They play through his mind as he spends just a beat too long staring at his own reflection in the dark surface of his caf, distracted by the thrumming anxiety at the knowledge that he has to－ gets to－ see Vos again today, and when he does finally take a drink he ends up with a mouthful of ice-cold sludge for his trouble.

“How’d it go after I left yesterday?” Hound asks, dropping gracelessly into the chair across from Fox’s desk, Grizzer an enthusiastic shadow at his heels.

Fox swears, mopping fruitlessly at the caf he’s just spilled onto his vambrace. “Kriff. You ever hear of knocking?”

“Nope. Explain it to me after you tell me how yesterday went.”

The bastard leans back, propping his scuffed boots on the corner of the nearest desk with infuriating familiarity. Fox thinks about reprimanding him but gives it up as a waste of effort as soon as the thought forms.

Besides, it’s Thorn’s desk.

“It was fine. We worked out a rating system for Dark side levels, and I’m plotting the measurements into a map. We should be able to work out a rough location for the Force shit after a few more tests.”

Hound nods, tipping his chair back even further. “Great. Happy to hear it. But how was Vos?”

“... he was very helpful.”

“Interesting,” Hound says, and Fox is powerless to stop his flush as his mind flashes back to the same word in Vos’ voice, low and intent, right after calling him handsome. Maybe Hound won’t notice.

Maybe Grizzer will fly and the Chancellor will learn to use the Force, too.

“Hah! I knew it!” The legs of Hound’s chair crash back onto the floor with the force of his smug delight, startling Grizzer and probably leaving dents in the duracrete. He points an accusing finger at Fox. “No wonder you could barely get out a complete sentence the whole time. You like him.”

“What are you, a tubie? He’s a Jedi.”

“So? The entire GAR knows Cody is fucking his Jedi.”

“Marshal Commander Cody is a respected officer and what he does in his personal life is none of our business.”

Hound levels him with a flat look. “’Respected officer’? You hate that guy.”

“I do not.” He does. Cody is the only one who ever beat Fox’s training scores back on Kamino. There’s a small possibility he isn’t over it.

“Whatever. You’re dodging the question.”

He is, absolutely. Hound will see through any denials he could make, just like he saw through Fox’s complete failure to be casual at the Temple. Hound knows Fox, has been with him practically since they were both still in their tubes. Not quite batchmates, but close.

He knows Fox, and he uses that knowledge exclusively for evil.

“I’m not going to talk about this. Get out of my office.”

“Fine, fine.” Hound throws his hands up in surrender, and Fox doesn’t believe it for a second. “But I’m right and we both know it. You got it bad for the Jedi.”

“I’m demoting you. You’re demoted. Grizzer is sergeant now.”

Grizzer looks up at the sound of her name, whole body vibrating in doggy delight. Notably, she says nothing about any hypothetical feelings Fox may have for certain hypothetical Jedi. He feels good about this promotion already.

“You heard the man,” Hound tells her, with exaggerated woe. “Come on, sir.”

Fox throws his stylus at Hound’s retreating back, but he escapes out the door before it can make contact. Typical.

*****

Vos is already at the pond when Fox arrives, lounging on one of the benches and scattering food for the small army of ducks around him. Fox Junior sits on the bench beside him, receiving her portion of the food by hand delivery and looking over the other birds with an air of proprietary smugness that shouldn’t be possible for a creature with a brain the size of a koja nut.

She looks… better. Still scruffy, still missing patches of features, but brighter, somehow. Like spending the day away from whatever Dark energy is poisoning the Plaza has done her good.

“Morning, Foxy,” Vos greets as he approaches. Fox Junior warks quietly but doesn’t get up, content to stay on the bench with her new best friend.

Traitor.

“Good morning.”

Vos scatters the last of his duck food, sending the rest of the birds into a frenzied scrabble that Fox Junior looks down upon with cool avian disdain. Vos gives her a quick pat and stands, cocking his head slightly at Fox.

 “You look tired.”

“... what?” Fox is tired. He’s always tired. But he’s also wearing his full kit, bucket included. The only thing he looks like is helmet.

“Force shit,” Vos says, smiling sheepishly. “I guess I should say you feel tired, in the Force.” He pauses, then brightens suddenly. “Hey, you ever had real caf?”

“Uh. No. But you really don’t－”

“There’s a Spacebucks on the way to the next spot I want to check,” Vos cuts him off, scooping the duck up and walking away toward the parked patrol speeder. “My treat.”

Fox had plans. He had intentions. Intentions to keep today fully professional. To not let himself get distracted by Vos’ smile and his jokes and his flirting. To not let himself get caught up by Vos’ simple kindness.

But he is also a weak man, and the idea of caffeine that doesn’t taste like burnt motor oil is too much for him to resist. “Well. If it’s on the way.”

“Great!” Vos exclaims, already impatiently trying the doors on the idling patrol speeder. “Now come on. I’ve never gotten to ride in the front seat of one of these before.”

*****

“Sorry about your speeder,” Vos says later, as they pull out of the Spacebucks drive-through and rejoin the endless river of Coruscant’s mid-morning commuters.

The pack of teenage sentients manning the shop had been delighted by Fox Junior, insisting on giving the duck her own drink－ a cup of ice water with floating chunks of fresh fruit, which she had attacked with an enthusiasm that left the cadets delighted and water splashed all across the interior of the speeder.

Luckily it’s mostly on Vos’ side.

Fox shrugs. “It’s fine. This isn’t even close to the worst thing I’ve had to clean out of this vehicle.”

And he wouldn’t care even if it were. His own drink is some complicated concoction in a cup the size of his head, sweet and rich and filled with enough caffeine to kill a rancor. It’s so good Fox wouldn’t care if the whole speeder were destroyed. He’s a new man now. He only cares about one thing, and that’s having more of this caf.

“Wow, I hate that,” Vos says, mopping futilely at the water soaking into his pants with the edge of his tabard. It does not appear to be having any effect. He stops for a moment to consult the datapad propped on the dashboard, safely out of splashing range. “Anywhere around here should be fine.”

Fox flips on the emergency lights and he pulls to the side of the speeder lane, a gross abuse of his authority, but there’s no way they’re going to find parking otherwise since Vos wants to spend at least fifteen minutes at each of the locations they check today. The speeder ahead of them－ registration six months expired－ disappears immediately, and Fox guides the speeder to a halt in the space left behind.

They wait. Vos settles a hand on Fox Junior’s back, the duck cheerfully settling down into his lap now that her treat has been successfully annihilated. Vos’ eyes slip closed, and Fox concentrates very hard on his caf and not staring at the Jedi’s profile or the way his eyelashes cast inky shadows across his face in the flashing emergency lights. Definitely not.

“Huh,” Vos says after a while. “That’s weird.”

He doesn’t sound alarmed, so it’s probably nothing that will kill them in the next few moments. That’s something at least. “What?”

“The level of Dark side corruption feels the same here as it did at the university,” Vos says, furrowing his brow. “Five out of ten again.”

Okay, yeah, that is weird. They’d opted to check the opposite direction of the university this morning, heading three kilometers away from the pond in an almost exact straight line away from campus. They’d been expecting some fluctuation, even if the mysterious source didn’t turn out to be in this area of the city.

Fox notes the rating on his spreadsheet, then checks the map. “Something to the north or south, then?”

The university and their current location are roughly east and west of the pond, respectively. Not quite perfectly aligned, but close enough for their purposes. Vos leans over the center console, angling to see the map, and his arm brushes against Fox’s.

Fox can’t feel it, of course. There are too many layers of plastoid and fabric between them, a protective shell he’s never regretted until this exact moment.

He imagines he can feel the phantom warmth of Vos’ skin anyway.

“Yeah, must be,” Vos murmurs, oblivious to Fox’s latest internal crisis.

Thankfully the Jedi retreats back to his own side of the speeder after that, leaving Fox to navigate the crowded airlanes to their next stop. Fox watches the buildings change, growing less pristine and more run-down the further they descend, the natural light gradually replaced by neon and shadows, and feels an unwelcome question growing in his mind.

It’s not one he wants to ask. Even one day in Vos’ company was enough to let him know which topics were off-limits, and this seems likely to blow directly through those boundaries. But they have a plan now－ they might actually solve this－ and the more time he spends with the Jedi, the more Fox realizes he’s out of his depth.

He needs to know. Unfortunately.

“Can I ask a stupid question, Master Vos?”

“Call me Quinlan,” the Jedi responds immediately. “Or Quin, if you want. And yeah, of course.”

Fox freezes instead, because it turns out all the thoughts in his brain have been replaced by a single all-consuming echo of Quinlan Quinlan Quinlan. His personal name, offered to Fox.

Natborns don’t hold their names as close to their chests as clones do, he knows, don’t keep them secret and safe like a treasure only to be shared with those they trust and hidden from the rest of the world. They offer their names freely, without fear of punishment, to anyone they meet. Vos－ Quinlan!－ doesn’t mean anything by it, can’t mean anything by it, is once again just being polite. But it feels－

It feels significant, to Fox, all the same. A privilege.

One he’s not bold enough to actually use, of course. But in his mind, to himself－ he can do that.

“So what was your question?”

“Oh. Uh.” Fox tears his thoughts away from the complicated tangle of imagined intimacies, wondering if the permission to use the Jedi’s name will still apply after. “The Dark side. How can it affect the ducks? What exactly is it?”

The interior of the speeder is silent for a long moment before Vos－ Quinlan－ blows out a heavy breath, eyes fixed on the traffic around them without seeming to really see it. “That’s not a stupid question. It’s a complicated question. People have been arguing about it for millennia.”

Fox blinks, absorbing this. The idea that the Jedi might not all agree on the Force, the very thing they are supposed to be experts in, is both new and more than slightly alarming. But he keeps his mouth shut, filing those thoughts away for another time. Vo－ Quinlan continues to stare out the window, with the look of a man working himself up to something.

“You don’t have to answer,” Fox says, when the silence has stretched into discomfort. “Sorry.”

Quinlan turns back toward him, managing a weak smile. “No, it’s fine. It’s a valid question. Just… bad memories, you know?”

Fox nods. He may not know the Force, or whatever unpleasant history is behind Quinlan’s reaction  when the Dark side gets brought up, but he’s no stranger to bad memories.

“Okay.” Another deep breath, Quinlan’s fingers compulsively stroking over Fox Junior’s smooth feathers. “So. The Force flows through all things, right? People who are Force sensitive can harness that power to do what you call Jedi banthashit.” Fox winces, but the words aren’t accusatory, just matter-of-fact. “But it’s not a one-way thing. The Jedi－ or Sith, or whoever－ uses the Force, but the Force draws energy from the user’s emotions at the same time.

“The Light side of the Force is all about harmony and peace. Part of becoming a Jedi is learning to clear yourself of emotions, especially negative emotions, and let the Force guide you without inference from your own feelings.

“The Dark side is different. It feeds off passion, off strong emotions. If you’re angry, or scared, or full of hatred, it becomes stronger. You become stronger. It’s… addicting.” Quinlan stops suddenly, sucking in a shaky breath, the sound loud in the quiet of the speeder. Fox concentrates on merging lanes and very carefully does not let himself think about the history hinted at by Quinlan’s words. “But it corrupts. The person using it, and the Force itself. It leaves wounds in the Force that can corrupt any life nearby, not just Force sensitives.”

Wounds in the Force. A cloud of Darkness over Coruscant, blinding even the Jedi’s eyes. Life in danger of corruption.

There is a distinct possibility Fox is in over his head.

“That’s what’s happening with the ducks? They’re being affected by some of these… wounds?”

“I think so,” Quinlan shrugs. “But I can’t say for sure without finding the source.”

“Can the wounds be healed?”

Quinlan’s fingers tighten in Fox Junior’s feathers. Fox cuts his eyes away, pretending not to notice. “Yes. With time, and help from the Light. It might not ever go back to the way it was before, but… yes.”

“Well that’s good news at least,” Fox says with false cheer.

Quinlan huffs out a ghost of a laugh. It is not reassuring.

Chapter Text

“There must be something we’re missing,” Quinlan says, later that week.

Fox’s map of the city is covered in glowing points, the paths of their investigation spreading out like spokes on a wheel from the Senate Plaza. They’ve spent the last three days trekking across Coruscant while carrying an endangered animal like a pair of idiots, checking all the directions radiating out from the Plaza, and are still no closer to an answer than they were at the start.

No matter where they check, the results are still the same: the Dark side corruption is strongest at the pond.

The same fucking pond they’d started at.

“It doesn’t make any godsdamn sense,” Fox mutters, throwing his stylus down in frustration. “Why would a duck pond be evil?”

Even having to ask the question annoys him. Everything about this case seems specifically designed to be as infuriating as possible to him personally, and he is at the end of his rope. This is where he finally loses it. Three days of no progress has meant three more absolutely-not-dates, and Fox has been growing a little more desperate with each one.

Quinlan’s favorite color is green. He holocalls his former Padawan at least once a week, even though it’s been years since she was his student. He doesn’t care for fried chokeroot, but he’d bought some because Fox had been curious. Those are all things Fox knows now, along with the exact shape of his mouth when Fox makes him laugh, and the way his eyes had softened the first time he’d watched Fox try real caf.

It’s unbearable.

“Maybe it’s not the pond,” Quinlan says, thoughtful. He’s hunched over in his own chair, both of them sharing Fox’s desk in the Commanders’ office. Fox Junior dozes next to a stack of datapads, managing to be a nuisance even while unconscious. “What was there before?”

Fox doesn’t even need to check. He’d walked past it on patrol often enough. “An incredibly hideous statue of the last Chancellor. And some hoverbike parking.”

Quinlan hums, leaning back in his chair to stare at the ceiling. “Probably wasn’t that, then.”

Fox stamps down on the urge to say something biting, tangling his fingers in his hair instead. It’s not Quinlan’s fault they’re stuck, anymore than it is his fault that Fox can’t get his unwanted feelings under control. The dull spark of pain is a welcome distraction, something to focus on instead of his sad pining and thoughts of his imminent and extremely embarrassing investigative failure. Maybe if he pulls hard enough he can yank his skull directly off his spinal column and put himself out of his misery completely.

Fingers brush his, gently disentangling his hand, and Fox startles, jerking back suddenly enough that he nearly overbalances out of his chair.

“Don’t,” Quinlan says softly, hand still outstretched, their fingers twined together like they belong there. He doesn’t let go even as Fox allows him to draw their joined hands away from Fox’s head. He doesn’t let go even as Fox’s breath hitches, heart pounding in his chest as he meets Quinlan’s gaze. They’re so close.

A thumb brushes over the back of his hand, feather-light and almost imperceptible through the thick plastoid of his hand plate, and Fox can’t stop the sound that emerges from him, thin and cracked.

Quinlan’s eyes widen, and Fox－

Fox snatches his hand back, mortified.

He drops his eyes away from Quinlan’s face, not wanting to see the expression there. He’s overstepped. He knows. Quinlan is being kind, and he’s gone and twisted it into something more, some awkward thing Quinlan obviously never intended, just because he has no self control and can’t get the idea of normal social behaviors through his thick skull. He doesn’t need to see the stark evidence of discomfort on Quinlan’s face. He knows.

“Sorry,” he manages to croak out, on his second try. It’s a sheer miracle none of the other Commanders are there to witness his humiliation. Stone had come in earlier, taken one look at the sleeping duck, the lightsaber on Quinlan’s hip, and Fox’s bare, unhelmeted face, and walked straight back out again.

Stone doesn’t lecture, but Fox is in for some extremely judgemental facial expressions in the near future. He deserves every one of them.

Next to him, Quinlan is silent for a long moment, and Fox wonders if it’s already too late, if he’s ruined everything. Quinlan will request to work with another Commander, or just with Hound. He’ll withdraw from the investigation entirely. He’ll go back to the Temple and Fox will never see him again, all because he couldn’t keep his idiotic emotions to himself－

But maybe he’ll let it go, because Quinlan is kind and surprisingly thoughtful and he likes to tease but he’s never once twisted the knife on something that obviously makes Fox uncomfortable. Maybe they can both just pretend Fox didn’t make an utter and complete fool of himself and just move on with their lives instead.

Please let that be the case.

“My fault,” Quinlan says, quiet. It’s a blatant lie. Fox is the only one here who can’t get a grip. Quinlan shifts back to his own side of the desk, away from Fox. The extra space between should be a relief. It is a relief. He doesn’t feel a flash of disappointment, because that would be absurd.

Quinlan turns back to the datapad in his hand, and Fox breathes a sigh of relief so strong he’s dizzy with it.

“I’ve been thinking,” Quinlan starts, after a long moment. Fox makes himself look up, hands clenching around his own datapad, tight enough he can feel the material creak. Was he wrong after all? Is there where Quinlan tells him it would be better if the Jedi took over this investigation alone? Where Quinlan－ where Vos－ informs him that he can’t work with a clone who can’t get his shit together? “What about the Senate Dome itself? It’s the only place we haven’t checked.”

What?

Wait. What?

“We haven’t checked it because it’s not a possibility,” Fox says, professional pride temporarily overriding his catastrophizing. “The Senate Dome has the tightest security on the entire planet. It’s under constant guard. There are security feeds covering every square meter of the building, outside of personal offices and freshers. Someone would have noticed a Sith.”

“Yeah, now,” Quinlan counters, leveling his stylus at Fox. “But the Force has been clouded since the beginning of the war, right? And security was probably increased after the official declaration of conflict. So what if whatever caused the wounds in the Force actually happened years ago, before we even realized?”

Fox turns the idea over in mind. Put like that, it sounds… plausible. More plausible, anyway. The Chancellor has always had the Senate Guard as personal protection, but before the clones the security of the Dome itself had fallen to the CSF. And sure, the CSF had the funding and staffing levels the Coruscant Guard lacked, but they’re not what anyone with two brain cells to rub together would call competent.

But－ No. There’s no way. This is the Senate they’re talking about. Even with most of the beings that frequent its halls as Force sensitive as your average brick, surely someone would have noticed enough Dark side usage to leave scars in the fabric of the universe years later.

The Jedi are in and out of the Senate Dome all the time now, on wartime business. The High Generals themselves meet frequently with the Chancellor. They should have noticed, at least. Back when the war was first beginning and the wounds in the Force still raw and fresh.

Fox shakes his head. “No. I don’t buy it as a viable possibility. There’s no way it would have avoided notice for this long.”

“We should still check it out,” Quinlan says reasonably. He fiddles with the stack of datapads on the desk, sighing. “It’s the only lead we have left.”

That, unfortunately, Fox has to agree with. Every time he thinks he’s made a breakthrough on Hound’s stupid joke of a case, he hits another dead-end. What’s one more?

“Fine,” he concedes. “But I’m not bringing an endangered waterfowl into the Senate Dome in broad daylight. We’ll go in later tonight.”

*****

After hours is by far Fox’s favorite time to visit the Senate Dome, because it lacks the one thing that makes the place truly insufferable: Senators.

Few of the Republic’s chosen representatives stay later than mid-afternoon outside of major bill proposals, and the handful that do tend to be the less terrible ones. There’s a non-zero chance they’ll have to avoid Senator Amidala and General Skywalker sneaking in－ poorly, since they’ve never  bothered to learn where the security feeds are－ to make inappropriate use of taxpayer credits in her office, but he’ll take that any day over running into Vice Chair Amedda or Chief of Staff Moore.

Amedda is just an asshole, but Sly Moore makes him feel like she’s looking right through him, sifting through his thoughts with her pale fingers and laying them bare for anyone to see.

Hound says he’s being dramatic, but Hound has never had to sit though a staff meeting with her pale eyes boring into his helmet for ninety standard minutes.

He leads them in through a service entrance in the lower levels of the building. The Dome may be mostly empty now, but that’s no reason to take unnecessary chances. He checks the position of the night shift patrol on his HUD and is relieved to see they’re right on schedule－ on the other side of the building, several floors up. The sergeant pings his comm, a quick ??, and Fox sends back confirmation that he’s all fine here now, thank you. No need for assistance. Or witnesses.

“Okay. We’re directly below the Senate Chamber here.” Separated by multiple levels and layers of additional security, but as close to the heart of the Dome as Fox is willing to risk without more evidence.

Get in, let Quinlan see for himself that the Dome is a dead-end, get out. Easy.

Fox Junior make a noise like a deflating balloon capable of hatred when Quinlan draws her out of the makeshift bag Fox had insisted he use for this trip, nipping at the Jedi’s arm and making him yelp. Fox snorts, then busies himself scrolling through the security log for the day while they wait for the duck to adjust to the ambient Dark side levels.

The moment, when it comes, is almost anticlimactic. Quinlan lays a hand across Fox Junior’s back, and his eyes widen.

“Holy shit, Foxy, this is it.”

“What?”

“It’s here! Ten out of ten! Dark side corruption off the charts.”

“This is the Senate,” Fox hisses, like Quinlan has forgotten.

“Trust me, I’m aware.”

“Check again.”

Quinlan glares, making a show of placing his hand back on Fox Junior’s feathers. “Wow, look at that! Still ten out of ten. Trust me, Fox.”

He does, he realizes. It brings him up short, staring into Quinlan’s frustrated expression with a shock of recognition. He does trust Quinlan.

But this is wrong. It doesn’t make any sense. Quinlan may have been right about the Dome being the source of the corruption, but Fox had also been right: someone should have noticed. The fact that no one has feels more than just implausible. It feels malicious. Deliberate.

But－

He trusts Quinlan.

“I need to inform the Chancellor,” Fox says, realization crawling up his spine with icy claws.

Whatever is behind the corruption－ treachery? A rogue Jedi?－ will have to be a problem for later. The corruption is harmful to life, and the Chancellor is in danger every second he spends in this place. The man’s already ancient, it’s a miracle it hasn’t killed him already.

“No!” Quinlan exclaims, startling them both. He grabs Fox’s arm, eyes wild and hand painfully tight even over the plastoid vambrace. “You can’t tell Palpatine.”

“What do you mean no?” Fox demands, wrenching his arm away. “This is a threat to the Chancellor. It’s a threat to every single member of the Senate!”

It’s not just a security threat. It’s the security threat. It’s a breach so egregious that Fox will probably be decommissioned for it, even if they manage to find the source and eliminate the corruption.

But Fox’s first responsibility is to the Republic. He will do his duty.

Quinlan runs the hand not currently taken up holding the duck through his locs, shoving them away from his face sharply. “Look, can we argue about this outside? I’ll explain, I promise. But we need to get Fox Junior out of here. It’s too dangerous for her to stay.”

Fox freezes, looking down at his erstwhile namesake. She’s breathing heavy in Quinlan’s hold, head resting tiredly against his arm. She looks… bad, and a new wash of fear－ sharper, more personal－ hooks beneath his ribs.

She’s just a duck, a dumb creature who has brought him nothing but complications and difficulty. The investigation is bigger than a single animal, is bigger than any of them. She’s their only lead. He should insist on staying, insist on bringing them deeper into the Dome until they can narrow down the source even further, regardless of consequences. There are more ducks outside.

But the words sound hollow even in his own head.

He and Quinlan make their way outside in tense silence, and every second feels like an eternity.

Chapter Text

The moment they pass into the Plaza, Fox stops, grabbing Quinlan’s arm and dragging him to a halt. “What do you mean about the Chancellor?”

Quinlan sighs. His hand－ not the one in Fox’s grip－ strokes over Fox Junior’s head absently. She’s already perking back up, warking in quiet pleasure at the Jedi’s attention. “Just what I said. We can’t tell him. Not yet. I felt it, in the Force.”

Fox stares. “The Force… told you that.”

“Not exactly. It’s hard to explain.”

“Try.”

The Force, Quinlan tells him, isn’t all physical. It’s not just moving starfighters with your mind or even sensing Darkness in endangered animals. It’s also… guidance. Whole visions of the future for a rare few Jedi, or just a bad feeling about a particular course of action for most. Premonitions. Warnings.

“It’s been harder, with the Force clouded the way it is, but sometimes we can still get glimpses. Like a single ray of sunlight through the fog.” Quinlan pauses, snorting at his own overly-poetic choice of words. “That’s what I felt back there. I can’t tell you why, but it’s vital that we don’t inform the Chancellor yet.”

Trust me, Fox.

And fuck him, he still does. It goes against every instinct he has, every part of him that’s been trained for obedience to the highest office of the Republic since the moment he was decanted, but this is Quinlan. There are still things Fox doesn’t know, the shadows still lying heavy around Quinlan’s history with the Dark side, but he’s never outright lied. He jumped into this whole stupid mess with no hesitation or personal benefit, and he’s never given Fox a reason not to trust his word. Fox is beginning to suspect he never will.

“I want it on the record that I hate this,” Fox mutters, and Quinlan huffs a relieved laugh, recognizing the concession for what it is. “Fine. We can’t tell the Chancellor. What about the Jedi Council?”

The idea of it still makes Fox a little queasy, but the entire Republic government being slowly poisoned by Darkness from the inside seems like the kind of thing they should know about.

“About that,” Quinlan says, with the lopsided smile Fox has begun to associate with news he’s not going to like. “I may or may not actually be grounded from any active missions right now. Including this one.”

Fox doesn’t say anything to that, because if he does he’s going to start yelling. Quinlan only lasts a moment in the face of his judgemental silence before he caves.

“Inyo－ Master Kodd－ is a crechemate of mine. She was… let’s say, bending the rules when she brought you to see me. Told me she was tired of watching me mope around the Temple feeling sorry for myself.” He shrugs, delivering the news as casually as if they were discussing where to get lunch, but his eyes dart between Fox’s helmet and the ground, subtle tension pulling the line of his shoulders taut.

“Vos. Quinlan.” It’s the first time Fox has dared to use the Jedi’s name out loud, outside the private confines of his own thoughts, and Quinlan looks gratifyingly surprised and pleased by it. “You have got to be fucking kidding me.”

Quinlan snorts. “It’ll be fine, Foxy. We’ll pinpoint where the corruption is coming from, get some solid evidence, and then we can bring it to the Council. We’re just… saving them some time. Okay?”

It is not okay. It is the opposite of okay. It is the furthest away from okay it is possible to get without leaving this reality.

But part of him, deep in the darkest and most suspicious corners of his brain, is relieved. He doesn’t really want the Jedi involved, especially not the Council. Quinlan is a special case, worming his way under Fox’s defenses before he was even aware of it, but the others－

The Guard isn’t trained to trust. They’re trained from infancy to look for connections, leads, motivations. To approach everyone and everything with suspicion. And that part of Fox－ the part trained as a Guard, not the part going soft over Quinlan’s charming smile and kind words－ sees the way the Jedi have conveniently never noticed the Darkness growing on their own doorstep and thinks, what if.

It’s no secret there are tensions between the Jedi and the Senate about the war. And sure, personally Fox would use his mind powers to unscrew Palpatine’s head like a top instead of slowly poisoning him if he were going for a coup, but he’s not a Jedi. Who knows what their priorities might be.

He tucks the thought away in the back of his mind. A problem for later, if they ever actually figure out where the Darkness is coming from.

“I’m informing the other Commanders,” he says, not asking. “This is too big for just the two of us.”

“Okay, yeah. That’s probably smart. I’ll leave a message for Inyo, in case something goes wrong.”

It’s something, at least. A single maverick Jedi and a sick duck are not the support Fox would have imagined in what is turning out to be the biggest case of his life, but at this point he can’t even muster the energy to be surprised. Although－

“I hope you have some brilliant idea about how we’re going to find the source of the corruption without the duck or other Jedi to help,” Fox grumbles. Said duck is looking much better, beady eyes bright as she nibbles industriously at the edge of Quinlan’s tabard, and Fox would sooner eat his own blaster than willingly take her back inside.

“Actually…” Quinlan grins. “I think I have a plan.”

Without warning, he raises the hand not holding Fox Junior up to his face and strips his glove off with his teeth. Fox can’t stop the strangled noise that punches out of him.

Quinlan tucks the glove into his belt with a wink that doesn’t help the heat pooling in Fox’s abdomen at all. “Give me your hand.”

Fox does. Immediately and without hesitation. He’s never seen Quinlan without his gloves, and the sight of his long fingers sends a frisson of bewildered excitement through him. Quinlan’s hands are paler than the rest of his arms, evidence of constant covering, and it should look ridiculous, but instead it just seems… weirdly intimate. Fox remembers the first time he took off his bucket in front of Quinlan, the weight of the other man’s dark eyes on a part of him normally hidden, and feels his face flush.

Quinlan squeezes his hand, and Fox snaps his gaze back to the other man’s face. “Okay. So there’s this thing I can do with the Force. If I touch something－ an object usually, but sometimes parts of the environment－ I can sense the memories of those who were in contact with it. Like seeing a glimpse into the past. We call it psychometry.”

Fox nods, too distracted by the feeling of Quinlan’s fingers around his own to get sidetracked by questions. Visions of the past connected to objects. Sure. Why not.

Quinlan’s thumb brushes back and forth over his hand plate, the motion drawing Fox’s eyes like a magnet. For a brief, reckless moment he imagines shucking his own glove, imagines feeling Quinlan’s touch against his skin with nothing in between them. He shivers.

“... armor should work. Is that all right?”

Oh. Right. The plan. Visions. “That’s fine,” Fox manages, not really sure what he just agreed to.

Quinlan’s eyes slide closed, and the movement of his thumb stills. They stand for a moment in silence. Just a duck and two grown men holding hands in the middle of the Senate Plaza at night while one of them hyperventilates about it. Nothing weird going on here at all.

“You broke this arm jumping out of a moving speeder while chasing a suspect,” Quinlan says suddenly, his eyes snapping open again. “Which, I gotta say, points for style, but what were you thinking?”

“There was no one else in position,” Fox responds automatically. “Wait. You read that off my armor?”

He glances down. He’d had to replace his vambrace afterwards, but his hand plate is the same one he’d been wearing that day, considerably more scuffed and worn with the intervening months. Quinlan still has his fingers wrapped around it, warm brown against the battered red.

“Like I said, memories. That was a pretty strong one, probably on account of it being utterly deranged.”

Fox raises an unimpressed eyebrow. “Jedi jump out of ships all the time.”

“Yeah, because we have the Force to catch us. All you had were your extremely breakable bones, and look how that turned out.”

He’d caught the suspect, though, in a flying tackle from the speeder that had sent them both nearly tumbling off the edge of the level, and the flush of triumph had been so strong he hadn’t even realized his arm was broken until they’d made it back to Headquarters. He’s still proud of it now, though he’d had to spend the next six weeks on light duty with his arm in an old-fashioned cast. He hadn’t even lost any mobility in the arm. It seems like it turned out just fine.

“In any case, I think we can use this－” Quinlan looks down, realizes he’s still holding Fox’s hand, and lets go, dropping his hand back down to his side. He doesn’t put the glove back on. “Uh. We can use my psychometry to find the source, now that we know for sure it’s somewhere in the building.”

Fox flexes his hand, missing the barely-there touch already, and turns the idea over in his mind. “So your new plan is to go into the Senate and touch everything until you pick the right one and get a vision of someone doing obviously evil Dark side shit?”

“Pretty much, yeah.”

“This is even stupider than the duck plan.”

Quinlan laughs, the force of his lopsided grin hitting Fox full in the chest. “Probably. You got any better ideas?”

“No,” Fox admits. “What do you need me to do?”

*****

They run into their first obstacle immediately.

“No, you have to stay here,” Fox says to his armful of duck, because apparently he’s the kind of person who talks to birds now. “It’s too dangerous.”

“Wark,” Fox Junior protests.

Quinlan had barely managed to set her down at the edge of the pond before she’d launched herself clumsily back into the air, directly at Fox, and his only options had been to catch her or let her crash heavily to the ground. He’d caught her.

“He’s right,” Quinlan says. They’ve both lost it. “We’ll be back before you know it.”

She huffs and pecks Fox’s hand hard enough that he feels it through the plastoid, but when he sets her down again she stays put, glaring beadily. Even the half a ration bar he sets down as a peace offering is summarily rejected.

“Sorry,” he says, feeling ridiculous. Hound can never find out about this.

A soft stream of accusatory warks follows them back into the Dome, cutting off with ominous finality when the door slides shuts behind them. Fox leads them back to the hallway beneath the Senate Chamber, figuring it’s as good a place to start as any. Quinlan’s eyes trace every doorway they pass, but he doesn’t offer any objections.

“You really can’t feel it?” Fox can’t help but ask. He doesn’t… doubt Quinlan, not exactly, but some part of him still refuses to accept that the corruption－ strong enough to kill－ is just undetectable. Memories of radiation safety training back on Kamino rise unbidden in his mind, holofootage of skin sloughing off and organs liquefying before the subjects even realized they were sick, and his skin crawls with unease.

Quinlan grimaces, looking no more happy about it than Fox. “No. Nothing. Everything just feels… normal. Clouded, but not any different than it has been since the war.”

Normal. “Is that good or bad in this case?”

“With my luck?” Quinlan’s smirk is jagged around the edges. “It’s probably terrible.”

Fox huffs a laugh, but it’s a sad effort. They’re both on edge now, tense and hyper-alert with no real target. The hallway they’re standing in is the picture of banal normalcy: the soft buzz of fluorescent lighting, gray walls scuffed with the passage of countless bodies, burgundy carpet dingier and cheaper than what’s used in the higher levels where it would be seen by anyone other than the menial staff.

The world’s most boring office hallway, which also happens to be infected with an unseen creeping evil that corrupts all life. Fuck this whole stupid planet, honestly.

Quinlan has his glove off again, crouching down to place his fingers against a patch of floor that doesn’t look any different from the rest.

“Oh. Okay. We’re… starting.”

“No time like the present,” Quinlan responds easily. His eyes flutter closed, but only a moment later he shakes his head, rising to his feet. “Nothing useful. Let’s try closer to the Chamber.”

The Senate Chamber alone is over two kilometers across. There are one thousand twenty four separate repulsorpods, one for each pair of Senators, and each of those Senators has their own office, along with offices for their aides and general staff. That’s not even counting the offices and work areas for the support staff of the building itself. It will be a miracle if Fox doesn’t die of old age before Quinlan finds what he’s looking for.

Fox sighs and starts walking. It’s going to be a long night.

Chapter Text

“Anything?”

“Our good Senator is having an affair with the Brentaal IV minister of Finance,” Quinlan answers from his place by the oversized desk. “They’re very… adventurous in the bedroom. Or I guess I should say office.”

“Fascinating,” Fox says, flat, and shifts slightly, so he’s no longer touching any part of the wall.

They’ve been at it for six hours now. Quinlan has fondled every door handle and half the floor tiles of the lower levels, and has moved on to the offices of the less important Senators. Fox now knows more about the interpersonal liaisons of the Senate than he ever wanted to know (nothing) and not nearly enough about the source of the Dark side corruption slowly poisoning the entire Republic government (also nothing).

Kriff, he’d kill for some caf.

Quinlan steps away from the desk－ yet another dead end－ and heads for the door. Wordlessly, Fox passes him a wet wipe stolen from one of the other offices, and they move on to the next.

Three offices later, Quinlan pauses suddenly, interrupting their new routine. “Hey, what do you want to do after the war?”

Fox startles a little, overtired and under-caffeinated, though he’d deny it if asked. “Uh. Whatever I’m ordered to, I guess.”

Quinlan frowns. He communes with the desk chair for a moment before opening his eyes again and continuing, “No, I mean, what do you want? If you could do anything.”

It’s Fox’s turn to frown now. “I’ve never thought about it.”

Some of the Guards do, especially the younger ones, fresh off Kamino and not yet as dead inside as the rest of them. He’s never seen much point.

The clones aren’t people, they’re property. And they’re going to remain property, unless a majority of the citizens of the Republic get real cool about a bunch of stuff really quickly, which seems unlikely. So he’ll stay a Guard, because that’s what he was created to be, and that’s the only option that exists. He’ll stay a Guard until he fucks up enough to get himself killed, and then he’ll be dead. The end.

“Well, think about it now,” Quinlan demands, hefting a stupendously tacky I <3 Coruscant mug from a side table in his ungloved hand.

Fox answers the first thing that comes to mind. “I would have caf every day. Real caf, not the instant shit we get. I’d try every type. Find the best one.”

Fuck, that’s a terrible answer. Quinlan was probably expecting something ambitious, something more like what the Guard’s shinies whisper to each other when they think the older clones aren’t listening. I’d travel the galaxy or I’d be a farmer somewhere and grow things. 

Something less… pathetic.

Even if it would be nice. He’s never been able to try enough kinds of something to have a favorite before.

“That’s a good answer,” Quinlan says, expression unbearably soft as he looks at Fox, and Fox has to look away, face burning.

“What about you?” he asks, because he does have some idea of how to carry on a normal conversation, all evidence to the contrary.“Will you go back to undercover missions, once you’re cleared?”

Something complicated and painful flickers across Quinlan’s face, too fast for Fox to read. “Yeah. Maybe.”

Nice going, idiot. So much for being able to carry on a conversation without fucking it up.

He opens his mouth, trying to conjure the right words for an apology or at least a change of subject and unspoken agreement to never bring it up again, but Quinlan shrugs, brushing the moment off like it didn’t mean anything. He walks around the desk to the counter at the back of the office, mug still in hand, and fiddles with the arcane looking machine there. A moment later the room fills with the smell of fresh caf.

“What are you doing?”

“Here,” Quinlan says, the tilt of his lips transforming into something more genuine as he hands the now-steaming mug to Fox. “This Senator’s got the good stuff－ imported from Alderaan. You can start your quest a little early.”

“This is theft,” Fox says, automatic. There are definitely rules about this. But he takes the mug anyway, fumbling his helmet off one-handed. The mug is warm through his gloves, matching the fluttery warmth spreading beneath his ribs. “I－ thank you.”

“What’s a little petty crime between friends?”

“... are we friends?” he blurts, and immediately wishes the Dark side corruption would kill him. Preferably right at this exact moment.

It’s just that he knows－ he’d thought－ that Quinlan was only tolerating him for the sake of the investigation. He’d make the same jokes, smile the same blinding smiles, be as unfailingly kind to anyone he worked with, because that’s the sort of person Quinlan is.

Fox isn’t special, he’s just the one Quinlan got stuck with.

“Fox,” Quinlan sighs, a helpless smile playing around his lips. “Yes, we’re friends. And more, if you want. I’ve been trying to get you to go on a real date with me since the first day we met.”

“Oh.” Oh.

“We’ll still be friends either way.”

“But…” Fox’s hand tightens around the mug until his fingers protest. His thoughts spiral, chasing each other in stunned loops that keep circling back to the same point, the same insurmountable, unavoidable obstacle: “Why? You’re a Jedi. I’m just a clone.”

Quinlan’s face turns serious. He meets Fox’s gaze, direct and overwhelming and impossibly earnest. “You’re not just anything, Fox. You’re brave, and devoted, and you’re funny when you let yourself be, and this is the most fun I’ve had in… a long time. I want to get to know you better. If you want that, too.”

“Oh,” Fox repeats, feeling a little like he’s just taken a blow directly to the skull. Quinlan just keeps looking at him, with the same patience and utter lack of pressure that had been behind every one of his invitations over the last few days. And oh, turns out he’d been wrong about those, too.

He sucks in a breath, tamping down the traitorous part of himself that whispers this can’t be real, that no one like Quinlan could ever be interested in an awkward disaster of a clone like him. He trusts Quinlan. “I do. I do want that.”

Quinlan’s smile spreads across his face like a sunrise, blinding and warm and just as miraculous. He steps forward, one hand coming up to gently pry the mug out of Fox’s hand, setting it safely on the desk beside him. The other－ bare fingers, Fox notes, dizzily－ coming up to brush against Fox’s cheek, feather-light and burning.

“Is this okay?”

Fox nods, shaky, all ability to form words disappearing from his mind like it was never there to begin with. Quinlan’s eyes dip down to Fox’s mouth, and Fox’s breath punches out of him.

He sways forward, drawn to Quinlan with the inexorability of a gravity well, and－

“There you fucking are.”

Fox rears backward like he’s been burned, slamming into the wall with a crash of plastoid as the door slides open to reveal three figures in Guard red that Fox would know anywhere and will never forgive.

Quinlan steps back too, much more calmly, the faintest flush painting his cheeks dark beneath the gold. He nods to the newcomers, perfectly polite like they’d happened to run into each other while out and about in the city rather than when he and Fox were right in the middle of something.

Fox gulps in a breath, trying to calm the wild beating of his heart, body thrumming with frustrated heat. “What are－ what?  I ordered you not to come here.”

The message he’d sent the other Commanders and Hound had been extremely specific on that point. It laid out all the findings of their investigation, including their plan for checking the Senate Dome, along with strict orders not to come to the Dome and expose themselves unnecessarily. There was nothing he could do about the normal patrol shift without raising suspicion, but he could at least keep the rest of Command away, safely out of reach of the corruption.

Or so he’d thought.

“Don’t care, and you already demoted me,” Hound says easily, shouldering past Stone and into the office. He hasn’t brought Grizzer, at least. Small miracles. “We’re not just gonna let you do this with no backup.”

“What he said,” Thire adds. Stone, as talkative as his namesake, merely shrugs.

Fox sighs, knowing a losing battle when he sees one. Or three. “Where’s Thorn?”

“We took a vote,” Thire says, cheerfully enough that Fox knows at least one of them is hiding a black eye under their buckets. “And we decided Thorn had to stay behind and be in charge in case we all die horribly.”

“Smart,” Quinlan says, ignoring the glare Fox directs to the side of his head.

Curiously, Hound reaches for the mug still steaming on the desk, and Fox smacks his hand away, snatching the caf out of his reach and taking a vindictive drink. It’s incredible, of course, though the experience is somewhat ruined by the inquisitive tilt of Hound’s helmet and the way Fox can feel himself blushing furiously under the scrutiny.

Behind Hound, Thire holds himself with the distinctive stillness of a clone studying something while trying not to move their bucket and give themselves away, undoubtedly putting together several pieces that Stone (reluctantly) and Hound (enthusiastically) have already connected.

“Soooo,” the youngest Commander says, bucket finally tilting pointedly away from Fox and Quinlan. “Any progress so far?”

Chapter Text

Two hours later, Hound flops down dramatically into yet another over-engineered office chair with the world’s heaviest sigh. “This is seriously all you guys have been doing all night?”

“I did tell you not to come,” Fox points out, taking perverse and justified satisfaction in Hound’s misery.

They’re edging dangerously close to morning, when the first Senate staff will begin trickling in to start a new day of whatever it is they spend their time actually doing outside of legislative sessions. Quinlan has yet to find anything more dangerous than a couple minor instances of bribery and embezzlement, all scrupulously noted down by Thire for later investigation, in between a seemingly endless litany of questions about the Force that Quinlan bears with good grace and an expression of only minor suffering.

“It was a grand gesture of solidarity and support,” Hound says, pouting.

“It was a grand gesture of wasting your time and taking unnecessary risks,” Fox counters flatly.

“Rude.”

Fox shrugs. It’s a huge relief, having them here with him, knowing they have his back－ with the minor exception of their fucking wretched timing. He’ll never admit it out loud, though.

“Seriously though,” Hound says, leaning in and switching to private comms. Fox has long since replaced his helmet, unwilling to venture into the wider Senate without it or to put up with the others’ pointed glances, and Hound takes full advantage of that now. “You guys were standing awfully close when we got here.”

“You’ll never believe this,” Fox starts, and Hound practically vibrates with excitement. “But it’s none of your fucking business.”

Hound laughs, utterly undeterred. “You know that just makes me even more convinced that something did happen.”

“Guess you’ll have to live with the mystery,” Fox tells him, and switches off the private connection. Hound can never find out how right he is－ he’d be even more insufferable than he already is.

Fox can’t quite stop himself from glancing over at the Jedi, heart beating a little faster. Quinlan seems to sense his attention, because he looks up from where he’s sorting through things on the desk with a tiny, private smile that does nothing for Fox’s composure. He almost got to feel the shape of that smile against his own lips. He was so close.

But－ after. After they find the source of the Dark side corruption and save the Republic. They’ll have another chance.

Unless… Quinlan realizes he can do better than a clone after all and changes his mind. Or they all die.

Fox shakes himself, unwilling to entertain either possibility. Over by the door, Stone’s helmet tips up in unspoken question, but Fox waves him off. It’s better than Hound’s blatant prying, but not by much. No one does judgemental silence like Stone.

“I think,” Quinlan starts, and all four helmets swing towards him immediately. “I think I might have something.”

They wait, but he doesn’t elaborate, staring down at the datapad in his hand like he’s not really seeing it, brows furrowed and unhappy.

“Sir?” Thire prompts, after a moment.

“Just Quinlan,” just Quinlan corrects automatically, but it seems to shake him from whatever trance the datapad had held him in. “You guys aren’t gonna like it.”

“What else is new?” Hound mutters, to a poisonous glare from Thire.

“I saw Mas Amedda here,” Quinlan says, ending the fight before it can really begin. “He was here to talk to the Senator about… tariffs, or something,” he waves his ungloved hand vaguely. Not a crucial detail, then. “But he was worried. Scared, even. He kept thinking about a figure in a black robe. He was afraid of how they would react to the results of the meeting.”

There are a lot of questionable fashion choices in the Senate, but somehow Fox has a feeling this black robed figure is not one of them. Which means it’s something much worse.

“You couldn’t see any details of the figure?” Thire asks.

Quinlan shakes his head, frown deepening. “No, nothing. It’s a memory of a memory－ I could barely make out that much. But it feels Dark.”

Fox sighs, feeling the stress headache beginning to gather in his temples already. “You want to go to Amedda’s office.”

“I want to go to Amedda’s office,” Quinlan agrees.

Fox doesn’t bother to protest. Breaking into the office of the Vice Chair of the Republic Senate. Sure, this may as well happen.

*****

Amedda’s office is as garish and unpleasant as the man himself. Fox has only been here once or twice before－ Amedda makes a point of ignoring the clones unless forced, something the Guard has never been upset by－ and he’d never had the opportunity to really take in the surroundings during his previous visits. He’s not enjoying the chance now.

Gold features heavily in Amedda’s decorating scheme, accenting every available surface. The room itself is huge, easily larger than the Guard’s entire mess hall, but made smaller by the cases of art and obscure artifacts crowding against the walls. None of the items seem to be related to each other or even to Amedda, and Fox has a sneaking suspicion they exist only to ape Palpatine’s collection of historical artifacts without any of the taste or education. Just like Amedda himself, really.

Stone plucks a wooden statue from one of the display cases, holding it wordlessly up for the rest of them to see. It is astoundingly penis-shaped.

“Put that back!” Thire hisses.

“Yeah, Stone, you don’t know where that’s been,” Hound quips, unhelpfully. Quinlan chokes, but Stone just tilts his bucket in an unimpressed eye-roll and replaces the thing in its spot.

“I think I’ll leave the more… unusual objects for last,” Quinlan says, eyeing Stone’s display case with a barely-suppressed smirk. He heads for the desk－ overlarge and gaudy, just like its owner－ and Fox settles in for another uneventful session of watching Quinlan stand around holding things with his eyes closed.

That is not what happens, because the universe hates Fox and wants him specifically to suffer.

Quinlan’s fingers brush the lacquered surface of the desk and he recoils as if burned, snatching his hand back and cradling it against his chest. All four clones start forward, instincts taking over, but there’s nothing there. No visible threat. It’s just an ugly desk.

Kriff, Fox hates Force shit.

“This is it,” Quinlan says, staring down at the dark surface of the desk. His voice is low, quiet like he’s afraid of being overheard, and Fox exchanges a wary glance with Hound, closest to the door.

“Amedda? He’s a Sith?”

“No,” Quinlan says, lowering his hand but not putting it back on the desk. “Not him. The figure in the black robe. I can feel the Darkness coming from them, even as a memory. They’ve been meeting.”

Fox lets out a long breath. It’s not great news, but at this point he’ll take whatever he can get, and the Vice Chair of the Senate not being a secret Sith Lord is an improvement over the other possibilities. “So he’s a traitor, but not the source.”

Quinlan shakes his head, worry etching deep lines into his face. “Probably. I need to see more.”

He selects the holoterminal this time, laying his hand on the monitor before Fox can object. The contact lasts longer than the desk, but the moment Quinlan’s eyes open again he shakes his hand out like he touched something red-hot, wincing.

“The Chancellor,” Quinlan says, still quiet. “Amedda is afraid of him. He’s associated with the robed figure, somehow.”

He meets Fox’s eye, deliberate, and Fox huffs. Okay, so maybe he was right about not telling the Chancellor immediately. There’s no need to rub it in.

“Let me guess－ you want to break into his office next.”

Quinlan just grins, and Fox would be annoyed if not for the soft warmth the expression sparks in his chest. The Vice Chair is a traitor and the Chancellor may be under the direct influence of a previously unknown Sith, but when Quinlan smiles at him he can almost believe that they’re going to figure it out okay.

“Can I just point out, real quick, that breaking into the Chancellor’s office is treason and we’ll all definitely be decommissioned if anyone finds out?” Thire protests.

“I dunno, it sounds pretty fun to me,” Hound says, because the only thing he loves more than general mayhem is winding up Thire.

Stone shrugs, but he heads toward the door, as close to a declaration of support that they’re likely to get.

“We’ll be decommissioned anyway, if we let some Dark side corruption or an actual Sith poison the Chancellor,” Fox points out. They’ve come this far already. It’s probably too late to back out without consequences－ breaking into the Vice Chair’s office is also a crime, after all. They need to finish it.

He just hopes he gets the chance to kiss Quinlan before the end.

Thire sighs, but he follows the rest of them out into the hall.

*****

The door slide open easily to Fox’s override code. Palpatine’s office is everything Amedda’s is not－ a large open space in subdued colors, the edges of the room decorated with elegant pedestals holding the Chancellor’s collection of art and artifacts. Outside the vast windows, dawn is breaking over Coruscant, rosy light just beginning to peek over the horizon. The Chancellor’s office is just about the highest point you can go without being in a ship, and the distance casts the surrounding city in blurred miniature below them. The Commanders have been here before－ Fox more often than the rest－ but Hound has not, and he lets out a low whistle as they enter.

“What are all these?” Quinlan asks, stopping in front of one of the displays.

“I have no idea,” Fox says honestly, coming up beside him. Palpatine has never bothered to explain the intricacies of his collection to a clone, not that Fox would have paid attention if he had. “Why?”

Quinlan shakes his head, but he doesn’t take his eyes off the object－ some kind of tall, dark metal vase, but that’s all Fox can identify. It doesn’t look like anything special. There’s even another vase, identical to the first, flanking the other side of the doorway. Buy one get one free, maybe. “It… reminds me of something I saw once. A Sith artifact.”

So much for nothing special.

“Could it be the source of the corruption?” That would solve a lot of Fox’s problems, honestly. A Sith artifact the Chancellor accidentally bought at a garage sale would be a lot easier to deal with than a full on Sith with access to the highest members of the Republic government. Fox might even get out of this alive, in that case.

“Let’s find out,” Quinlan says, and places his hand on the metal.

He doesn’t scream, and that’s almost worse. His mouth opens, wide and anguished, but the only sound that emerges is a strangled sob that cuts off in the middle like the Force had reached out and stopped his breath. The Jedi’s eyes are open, but unseeing, rolled back in his head until only the whites show. Shudders roll through him, wracking his body like convulsions, but he doesn’t take his hand off the vase.

He’d told Fox, before they entered the Senate the first time, not to touch him while he was in a psychometric vision. It could ruin the vision, he’d said, accidentally combining the memories of whatever object he was reading with those embodied in Fox’s armor. Or it could send him spiraling, thrown off-balance and unable to find his way out of the Force memory.

Fox ignores all of that now. He shoves Quinlan, breaking the connection between his hand and the metal of the vase. He stumbles, but Fox is there, catching his arms and holding him sure. Quinlan’s breath comes in pants, and Fox’s stupid traitorous brain catches on how close they are again, a blurry echo of their moment in the office, and what it would be like to hear that noise in an entirely different context.

Fox drops his hands as soon as Quinlan is steady, face burning. “Are you okay?”

Quinlan stares past him for a split second, eyes hazy and unfocused, before he shakes off whatever vision was in the metal vase. “I’m fine. It is a Sith artifact. A very old, very powerful one. It was… stronger than I expected. Surprised me.”

“Is it the source of the corruption?” Thire asks.

“No,” Quinlan says, flat, and Fox’s heart sinks. So much for an easy solution. Nothing about this fucking case has been easy. “I need to check the other artifacts.”

“Is that safe?”

“I’ll be fine, Fox.”

“That’s not actually an answer.”

“I said I’ll be fine,” Quinlan snaps, whirling to face him, and Fox takes a step back, startled. The orange morning light coming through the windows casts everything in warm shades, but for a moment－

For a moment, Fox almost thought his eyes looked gold.

“Shit,” Quinlan says, hands coming up like he wants to touch Fox. He drops them before making contact, sucking in a shaky breath. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. It’s－ the Dark side. It’s affecting me more than I thought.”

“We can stop,” Fox says. The Chancellor and the Republic have lasted this long already. They can call in the Council, have them finish searching. It’s too late to save the clones from punishment－ they passed the point of no return on that once they broke into Amedda’s office－ but the Jedi don’t need them to investigate. Fox can probably argue that the others were following his orders and take the brunt of it himself. It’s not worth Quinlan getting hurt.

“No,” Quinlan says, face set. “I have to do this.”

You don’t, Fox wants to say. You don’t have to prove yourself to anyone. Whatever mistakes are in Quinlan’s past, whatever got him in trouble with the Order, it’s past now. Fox refuses to believe anyone could look at Quinlan－ kind, devoted, sarcastic Quinlan－ and see Darkness.

But he keeps his mouth shut. Maybe the person Quinlan needs to prove himself to is Quinlan himself.

He reaches out and grabs Quinlan’s hand, squeezing gently. Quinlan squeezes back, and the tiny smile he gives Fox makes it easy to ignore Hound’s excited thumbs up in the background.

“We’re with you.”

“I know,” Quinlan says, simply. He squeezes Fox’s hand again before reluctantly letting go. He walks to the other side of the entrance, where the first vase’s twin sits, fingers already outstretched.

Knowing what’s coming doesn’t make it any easier. Fox stands at almost painful readiness, tension stringing his muscles as taut as durasteel. The others are no better, practically vibrating with the need to move, to do something. Fox forces his hand away from the grip of his blaster, sees Thire have to do the same. Their blasters are useless here－ there’s nothing to fight. Nothing they can do.

There’s only Quinlan, fingers wrapped crushingly tight around the vase’s handle, breath coming in labored pants as he relives whatever horror lays trapped beneath the vase surface. As he fends off the lingering tendrils of the Dark side, alone.

There’s nothing they can do.

After a small eternity, Quinlan releases the handle with a gasp, the vase wobbling with the force. It manages to stay upright, and so does Quinlan, leaning against the wall while he gets his breath back.

“I’d like to introduce you to our Sith’s former Master. Or what’s left of him, anyway,” Quinlan pants, managing a theatrical little wave toward the vase－ or, urn, Fox supposes.

“Ugh,” Hound says, and for once Fox agrees wholeheartedly.

“How’d he get into the Chancellor’s office?”

“He’s a sort of… trophy. The Sith in the black robe killed him,” Quinlan says, grimacing. “But I still can’t－”

He trails off, but Fox knows what comes next, even before Quinlan pushes himself off the wall and starts toward another display case.

The next artifact is a… thing. Dark metal like the urns, crimson accents streaking across the surface. It looks like a combination of a caf pot and a satellite antenna, flanked by four sweeping fins that don’t seem to do much except add an air of general menace. Quinlan breathes in deep, bracing himself before reaching out and laying his hand on one of the decorative wings.

It’s worse than the others. Quinlan goes rigid immediately, dropping heavily to the floor even as his grip spasms, fingers clenching around the metal fin and refusing to let go. The others start forward, alarm in every line of their bodies, but Fox is faster, falling to his knees beside Quinlan and wrenching the metal out of his hand.

It’s not easy. Quinlan clings, lost in whatever nightmare vision he’s experiencing but unable to let go. Fox pries his fingers up, one by one, until the thing falls free and he can kick it violently across the floor.

“Quin,” Fox breathes. He still hasn’t opened his eyes. The artifact is gone and he still hasn’t opened his eyes.

“Is he－ ” Thire starts. Trails off.

“He’s fine,” Fox snarls. He has to be fine. He said he was fine. “Quinlan, wake up.”

Nothing happens. For a long, heart-stopping moment, Quinlan lays unmoving, his head cradled in Fox’s lap, face paler than Fox has ever seen it. Fox strokes one hand over his hair, past caring if the others see, the unsteady rise and fall of Quinlan’s chest the only thing he can focus on.

Seconds tick by. At last－ thank fuck－ Quinlan gives a shuddering gasp, eyes snapping open to meet Fox’s. “I’m awake,” he rasps. His gaze is hazy and distant, but it’s there. “Hey, Foxy. I’m okay.”

“You absolutely are not fucking okay. What was that?”

Quinlan grimaces. “I saw him. I saw him using it. It’s Palpatine. He’s the Sith－ he’s Darth Sidious.”

Whatever answer Fox could make to that is cut off when the office door slides open, revealing a single figure in heavy brocade robes. Black robes.

“Ah, Commander Fox,” Darth Sidious says, cold eyes landing unerringly on Fox. “This is a surprise.”

Chapter Text

Fox climbs to his feet, pulling Quinlan up beside him, as the others close ranks around them. “Chancellor Palpatine, you are hereby under arrest for treason against the Republic.”

“That’s a very serious accusation, Commander,” Palpatine says mildly, not bothering to sound surprised or even more than vaguely disappointed. He doesn’t sound particularly concerned, either, and the realization sends a shiver of dread down Fox’s spine. “I’d like you know what evidence you have.”

Fox would like to know, too. He believes Quinlan. Wholeheartedly and without question. But will the other Jedi? Will they be able to see whatever vision Quinlan saw when touching the artifact? Will they believe one grounded Jedi and a handful of rogue Guards?

It’s a little too late to ask.

“You can hear it from the judge at your arraignment,” Thire informs him, all professional briskness and obfuscation. Beside him, Hound steps forward, a pair of binders already in his hands.

Palpatine’s eyes narrow. “No need. I believe I can guess－ you are Master Vos, are you not?” He turns to the Jedi, dismissing Hound and the rest of them like they aren’t even there. “I’ve heard so much about you. Dooku’s failed apprentice.”

Fox freezes, several puzzle pieces snapping abruptly into place. Quinlan’s reluctance to speak about the Dark side. Being grounded from missions. His expertise.

Hound also stops, binders still extended. Stone has gone still, and Thire’s helmet tilts, barely noticeable, toward Fox. Anger coils in his gut, but he can’t blame them, not really－ they don’t know Quinlan the way he does. He takes a step toward Quinlan, shoulder to shoulder, and sees the way the others refocus on the Chancellor, trusting him the way he trusts Quinlan.

“I’m not Dooku’s anything,” Quinlan says through gritted teeth. “I am a Jedi of the Order.”

“Such a shame. You could be so much greater.” Palpatine’s head cocks to the side, as if the idea were only just occurring to him. “The Dark side is strong in you. I could teach you.”

“There’s nothing you can offer me except your own surrender,” Quinlan says, but his eyes flash to Fox, wide and panicked. Fox wants to scream at him to pay attention, to focus on the real threat here. You know, the Sith Lord currently trying to sway him to his side.

Back to his side.

“No? Not even the chance to kill Dooku? I can feel your anger, your hate toward him, even now,” Palpaine says, voice soft and poisonous. “Join me, and I can help you.”

Fox had suspected. Not Dooku’s apprentice－ that’s a little dramatic, even for Quinlan－ but something similar, some past experience with the Dark side that left its shadows on the Jedi still.

But he’s also seen how Quinlan has thrown himself into helping a clone he didn’t even know solve the galaxy’s dumbest case. He’s seen how gently Quinlan holds Fox Junior, and felt those same hands on his own, even if only briefly. He’s seen Quinlan laugh at his stupid jokes and go out of his way to make sure Fox was never uncomfortable with him.

If Quinlan were ever Dark, he’s not now, and Fox knows that with the same bone-deep surety he knows his own name.

Fox steps in front of Quinlan, meeting Palpatine’s gaze squarely, and says, “Get fucked.”

Quinlan barks a startled laugh, and Fox  has just enough time to think he should maybe up his standards for witty one-liners before Palpatine snarls, flinging one wrinkled hand out toward Fox.

It feels like being hit by a speeder. Unseen force crashes into Fox’s chest, sending him flying backward into the wall. Something cracks in his helmet as it collides－ he hopes it was his helmet, and not his skull－ the impact leaving his ears ringing.

“Fox!” Quinlan cries, but Palpatine is already moving. A gesture of the same hand lifts Quinlan into the air, choking on nothing as invisible hands wrap around his throat.

Fox fumbles for his blaster, the room still spinning around him, but the others are faster. Blaster fire rains down on the Chancellor－ not a single one on stun settings, a distant part of Fox’s brain notes with vicious satisfaction. Palpatine whirls, Quinlan dropping heavily to the floor as the Sith produces a crackling lightsaber from somewhere within his robes, red as blood.

Well, okay. That’s going to make it a lot easier to convince the Jedi, at least.

Palpatine’s lightsaber sends the blaster shots ricocheting back towards the clones. Thire and Hound dive for cover, but Stone drops with a sudden grunt of pain. Something shatters behind them.

Fox slaps the controls for his helmet cam and throws himself forward, trying to reach Stone. The vitals on his HUD confirm he’s alive, but he’s down and not getting up and Fox needs to get to him, needs to get him to safety before Palpatine－ Sidious－ realizes he’s exposed and alone.

Across the room, Quinlan rises to his feet, drawing his own lightsaber but not igniting it yet, face set and hard.

“Join me,” Sidious says again, turning to face Quinlan. “I will give you power beyond imagining.”

“Fox already gave you my answer. Get fucked.”

Sidious laughs. “Ah. You care for the clone?” he says, the words sliding like ice down Fox’s spine. “You could save him. The power is there, within your grasp. All you have to do is reach out and take it.”

Fox’s head snaps up, eyes meeting Quinlan’s. Quinlan stills, his gaze trailing over Fox’s helmeted face, like he’s trying to memorize Fox’s features through the plastoid.

“No. Never again.” He ignites his weapon, a snap-hiss of green pulsing energy. “I’m sorry, Fox.”

“So be it,” Sidious spits. “Commanders, execute Order 66.”

The world goes quiet and far away. Distantly, he thinks that his head hurts. And Fox－

Fox－

*****

The traitor is yelling.

CC-1010 ignores it, concentrating only on the steady firing of his blaster pistol. The Jedi traitor deflects every shot, but he’s limited, bound by his inexplicable insistence on fighting defensively. The green blade sends the shots away into the walls or floor or towards the Emperor, but not a single one rebounds towards the troopers, even though it would be to the traitor’s benefit to eliminate the threat.

Fool.

The traitor deflects another shot, and something shatters, covering CC-1010 in a rain of glittering transparisteel. The office’s giant windows are blaster-proof, technically, but they’re not meant to withstand more than a handful of hits, and the last redirected shot must have proved too much for it.

Pain blossoms across CC-1010’s back－ a shard of transparisteel, caught beneath his armor. Hot blood wells up where it slices into his skin, rolling down his back under the plastoid. CC-1010 dismisses it, and the window. Tactically unimportant.

The Emperor laughs, closing the distance between himself and the traitor while the Jedi is distracted by the blaster fire. Their blades clash, hissing and spitting.

CC-1010 watches, and waits. The traitor’s blade locks with the Emperor’s, both struggling for dominance. The traitor is younger and stronger, but still no match for the Emperor’s sheer power in the Force. Sweat begins to run down the Jedi’s forehead.

CC-1010 aims. Fires.

The shot strikes true. CC-1010 has always been an exemplary marksman. The traitor cries out, his leg buckling where the blaster shot burns into skin and muscle. The air stinks of burning ozone and charred flesh, even through the filters on CC-1010’s helmet.

“Fox,” the traitor gasps, barely dodging another sweep of the Emperor’s lightsaber. “Please. Whatever he did to you, you can fight it!”

Fox. CC-1010 likes the way the word feels, in his mind. It’s… nice. It feels… familiar, somehow.

But it’s a distraction. CC-1010 aims, and fires.

The traitor blocks the shot, stumbling to his feet just in time for CC-4477’s shot to take him in the shoulder, throwing him backwards into the Emperor’s desk. He hurls himself to the side just as the Emperor’s lightsaber comes down, splitting the desk into two sagging halves, the metal molten and bubbling where the plasma blade had passed.

“Enough,” the Emperor snarls. He raises a clawed hand, lightning spewing from his fingertips－ he can do that? a distant part of CC-1010’s thinks, before he crushes it down again－ to slam into the traitor, twisting his body in painful contortions as the electricity courses through him. The Emperor stalks forward, lightsaber raised. CC-1010 angles his blaster down, seeing the other two troopers do the same, unwilling to risk hitting the Emperor.

“You could have had power,” the Emperor says, staring down at the traitor with poisonous yellow eyes. “Unlimited power. But you are a blind fool, and now you will die.”

He raises his blade, red light spilling over the floor like blood, when something grayish and unidentifiable comes hurtling through the gaping hole of the broken window, slamming into the Emperor’s chest. Sidious recoils, hands coming up to ward off the new threat, but it’s fast, darting around his feet and plucking at his heavy robes with a hiss like a defective lightsaber. CC-1010’s blaster snaps up, but the thing is too small, moving too erratically to risk a shot.

Sidious looks down, a split second of distraction, and the Jedi lunges.

The green blade punches through the Emperor’s back with no resistance at all.

“Wark,” says the thing from the window.

“Blast it,” CC-1010 commands. The other troopers obey instantly, blaster fire pouring down on the traitor and the… creature. The Jedi deactivates his lightsaber, blade disappearing from the Emperor’s body with a popping hiss, reactivating it just in time to deflect the first hail of bolts. He wraps one arm around the creature, flinging them both into cover behind the mangled desk.

The Emperor’s body slides to the floor with a soft thud.

Pain spikes through CC-1010’s head, sending black spots dancing across his vision. He has failed. The Emperor is dead, killed on his watch. The orders etched into his bones, into the very fabric of being, demand that he take the blaster in his hand to his own head, end his failure before it can harm the Empire any further. But the traitor－ the Emperor’s killer－ is still alive, and CC-1010 has his orders about traitors. Good soldiers follow orders.

“Fox,” the traitor calls, from behind the desk. That word again. It makes CC-1010’s brain itch beneath the pain, somewhere deep inside his skull. “He’s dead. Whatever he did, you can fight it. You have to come back to me. Please.”

CC-1010 signals to CC-4477 and the ARF trooper, directing them to flank the desk. The Jedi is injured and desperate. They will eliminate the threat, and the creature, and then CC-1010 will transfer command to CC-4477 and blow his own brains out. For the Emperor.

He creeps forward, the others mirroring his steps across the room. Three meters. Two. His finger tightens on the trigger. The pain in his head is overwhelming now, pounding in time with his heart and blurring his vision.

He shakes his head, trying to clear it, and that’s all the opening the traitor needs. Force explodes outward, knocking the troopers and everything else still standing in the office to the ground with a muffled boom.

The ARF disappears from CC-1010’s vision while CC-4477 crashes through the remains of a display case in a shower of transparisteel. CC-1010 feels himself slide across the floor until he collides with CC-5869’s prone form.

“I’m sorry,” he hears, from very far away.

Everything goes black after that.

Chapter Text

“Wark,” something says, from somewhere on top of his chest.

Fox blinks back into consciousness, squinting in the sudden sunlight and regretting being alive. His skull is a white-hot flare of pain, like it’s being repeatedly stabbed with a vibroblade that is somehow also on fire.

There’s a duck on his chest.

“What the fuck,” Fox says softly, with feeling.

“Oh, you lived,” a familiar voice says, and Fox looks over to find Hound sitting in a low chair nearby, out of armor and wearing some bizarre blue robe. There’s a large bacta patch across one of his temples, covering what must be a pretty extensive shaved spot in his blond curls.

“Your hair looks stupid,” Fox tells him, because mocking Hound is a constant in his universe, even if he has no idea what else is going on.

“Right back at you, asshole,” Hound replies easily, pointing at Fox’s own head. Fox tentatively raises a hand and discovers another bacta patch, in the exact same place as Hound’s. It twinges under his exploratory prodding, but it’s nothing compared to the stabbing coming from inside his head, so he ignores it for the moment.

“What happened?”

“What’s the last thing you remember?”

It comes crashing back, all at once. The Senate Dome. The investigation. Palpatine－ the Emperor. A flashing memory of red and green blades colliding and the smell of ozone. Stone, unmoving on the office floor. His own blaster, firing at－

“Quinlan,” he chokes out. “Stone?”

“Both fine,” Hound says, immediate and with none of his usual fucking around. “Stone has a punctured lung, so they’re keeping him in bacta for another day. But he should make a full recovery after that. Thire’s asleep in the other room, and your Jedi is in some big Council meeting, but he’s supposed to be back soon.”

Relief hits like a punch, flooding through his system so fast he’s dizzy with it. He sags back in the bed, and Hound is decent enough not to comment on the shaky breath he lets out.

“Where are we?” he asks, partly so he doesn’t have to think about Hound’s your Jedi. Maybe that was a possibility once, before, but it isn’t any longer. He shot Quinlan. Tried to kill him.

He doesn’t… understand why. The memories are razor-sharp but distant, like watching through someone else’s eyes. But he remembers. It was his hand on the blaster.

“The Jedi Temple,” Hound says, which explains the robe. Sort of. “Their version of a medbay. They call it the Halls of Healing.”

 “Oh,” Fox says. There are more questions he should ask. He knows there are. But all he can think of is the noise Quinlan made when the shot hit, and his blood on the Chancellor’s floor.

The bird on his chest－ how the fuck did Fox Junior get here? And how the fuck did she get into the Chancellor’s office? － warks unhappily, stretching her snaky neck out to nip at his chin. It jolts Fox back into the present, the memories of his hand on the trigger fading under the unexpected onslaught of avian annoyance. He strokes a hand over her downy back, bizarrely grateful.

“Your stupid bird saved all our asses,” Hound adds with a nod toward said stupid bird, watching Fox’s hand scritch against her feathers. He takes a deep breath, pointing at the bacta patch on his head, not quite touching it. “Turns out there were… chips, in our heads. To makes us follow Palpatine’s orders, no matter what. The Jedi didn’t know. That’s why… in the office. They overrode… everything.” He trails off, searching for the right words. “Well. You felt it.”

He felt it. Order 66, he thinks, cold seeping into his gut like ice water. His hand on the blaster. His voice, giving the order to fire. The room begins to spin again, the edges of his vision turning black－

Fox Junior pecks him firmly on the nose and he yelps, darkness receding as fast as it appeared. Hound cackles.

“The bandages?” Fox asks, when he has his breathing at least marginally under control again.

“We’re all proud survivors of emergency brain surgery now. Officially chip-free,” Hound confirms, and Fox has to close his eyes again against the woozy rush of relief. “I gave the head Jedi medic Thorn’s comm info, and they’re already working on plans to get the rest of the Guard dechipped. Lucas is furious.”

Fox leans over, halfway to falling out of the bed, and Hound meets him partway, bringing their foreheads together in a gentler-than-usual keldabe. He’s not normally one for physical affection, but the feel of Hound, warm and breathing and alive, soothes something in him the way nothing else could. They lived. They all lived. He clings to Hound’s idiotic robe and just lets himself breathe. “Good work. I think there’s a promotion in your future.”

“Oh yeah?” Hound grins. “How about sergeant?”

Fox snorts, shoving him back into the chair as the door to the room slides open.

“Hey. Am I interrupting?”

Quinlan. Fox’s breath catches, hitching painfully in his chest. The Jedi looks… exhausted, dark circles ringing his eyes like bruises, making the gold of his face tattoos stand out even starker against his skin. He’s in the same blue robe as Hound－ and, Fox abruptly realizes, himself－ bandages peeking out from under the collar. No doubt there are more around his thigh, where Fox shot him.

But he’s upright and alive and smiling, tired but genuine.

Hound stands, waving Quinlan graciously toward the chair. “I was just leaving, actually.”

“I don’t think you’re supposed to be out of bed yet at all,” Quinlan points out, but Hound just smirks and delivers the sloppiest salute in GAR history before disappearing out the door.

Quinlan sits, and they stare at each other in excruciating silence. Fox can’t stop tracing the lines of Quinlan’s bandages with his eyes, cataloging every hurt that’s there because of them. Because of him.

“Quinlan, I－ I’m so sorry.”

“It wasn’t you,” Quinlan says, like it’s fact. Like Fox isn’t responsible.

“It was,” Fox counters, immediately. “I did it. I remember doing it. I pulled the trigger.”

“Not by choice.”

“Does it matter?”

“It does to me.”

Fox… can’t actually think of anything to say to that. He closes his mouth with a snap, scowling.

Quinlan smiles, leaning over to scratch Fox Junior’s chest while giving Fox Senior a chance to process that. After a moment, he says, “Palpatine is dead. Thire helped us get the cam footage from your helmet, so soon the whole Republic will know he was a Sith. The Darkness is already clearing. Master Yoda says the Force is the lightest it’s been in decades.” He pauses, waits for Fox to look up and meet his eye. “Fox, we did it.”

They did, didn’t they? Somehow. They found the source of the corruption and saved the Republic, and somehow none of them ended up dead doing it. And－

“I can close the case,” Fox realizes. He’s not sure he technically has a job, anymore－ he’s not really sure where helping to kill the Chancellor falls on the scale of things the GAR will decommission him for when the Chancellor in question was secretly a Sith Lord－ but at least he won’t go out having failed to solve the Guard’s first and only case of bird murder.

“You sure can,” Quinlan agrees, smiling crookedly. “Listen, Fox. There’s going to be a lot of investigation in the near future. Into the chips. Into the Chancellor. There’s still a lot of work to be done. But I meant what I said back in the Senate Dome: I like you. I wanna date you, if you still want that.”

Fox stares at him, dumbfounded. “I tried to kill you.”

Quinlan shrugs. “We’ve been over that. It wasn’t your fault. Not a deal-breaker.”

“Get better standards,” Fox says, without meaning it.

Luckily, Quinlan just rolls his eyes. He holds his hand out, offering it for Fox to take, wiggling his fingers invitingly. “So what do you say? We can go as slow as you need.”

Quinlan’s hand is warm against his own, rough where years of lightsaber use has written itself into his skin. Their fingers twine together like two pieces of a puzzle, fitting perfectly, the touch lighting up every nerve in Fox’s body with fluttering heat.

Quinlan shouldn’t want this. He can do so much better. But he does, somehow, and Fox can barely breathe around the knowledge of how lucky he is.

“I don’t want to go slow,” he murmurs, and pulls－

Quinlan goes easily with the motion, other hand coming down to brace himself on the bed as he settles over Fox, a blanketing warmth that makes heat curl in Fox’s abdomen. Quinlan is everywhere, pressing himself into the space between them until there’s no space left, his breath hot against Fox’s lips－

“Waaark,” Fox Junior protests, wriggling out from where she had ended up crushed between them. She glares at both of them with beady disappointment before hopping off the end of the bed and waddling over to a patch of sunlight on the floor, settling down with an air of injured dignity. Fox starts to laugh, helpless, and Quinlan groans theatrically, pressing his face into Fox’s shoulder.

Fox smooths a hand down Quinlan’s back, because he can, delighting in the sensation of warm muscle through the thin fabric of their robes. “You want to try that again?”

“I could be convinced,” Quinlan says, raising his head with a grin that lights his face, chasing away the shadows of the past day, leaving only relief and sharp joy in its place. He tips his head up, and this time－ finally－ Fox meets his lips with no interruptions.

The kiss is soft, all gentle pressure and slow syrupy desire. Fox sinks into the sensation of Quinlan’s lips on his, the sweet slide of their mouths, sparking down in spine in a way that makes his breath catch and tangle in his lungs. It is everything and nothing like Fox imagined.

“Okay?” Quinlan whispers against his mouth, breath uneven in a way that makes Fox feel extremely smug.

Instead of answering, he presses back in, catching Quinlan’s lips in another kiss.

Quin’s smile tastes like sunlight.