Chapter Text
Commander Fox had been up since 0300 Galactic Standard Time.
That was when Lieutenant Thire knocked on his office door, bringing with him a report of a shootout on the lower levels of the city. Normally an occurrence that would have been the jurisdiction of the Coruscant Security Force, it became Fox’s problem because some minor dignitary had been idiotic enough to be nearby (for what reason, he didn’t really want to find out). It didn’t help that he’d only snatched a measly three hours passed out on his desk before that. The after-action report for Ziro the Hutt’s arrest was a killer.
As the sun inched over the horizon, seeming to light the tops of the buildings on fire, Fox took his first sip of caf and thought,
Today, I will be positively cheerful.
That lasted approximately two minutes. Then Sergeant Ord walked in and informed him that Republic supply had denied his request for medpacs for the third time that month.
Violet Curie had just barely managed to be up by eight o’clock, fresh off a late night of study in the Archives. Her initial enthusiasm for the work was running dry; her continued search had turned up no results as of yet, even with the extra set of eyes that was Aledi Krazesh. Who, incidentally, was about to be sent off on a mission.
Stumbling about her room in a slowly waking haze, Violet grabbed a fresh set of clothes and headed to the shower.
She had slowly been acquiring possessions over the—had it really been a week already?—that she’d been trapped here on Coruscant, but the room still barely managed to look lived-in. A datapad sat askew on her bedside table. A pair of socks lay discarded on the floor where they had been thrown last night. She now had a decent wardrobe, at least: two identical shirts, two pairs of identical trousers, and a too-big pair of boots that she only wore when absolutely necessary.
Oh yes, the wardrobe of my dreams, she thought dryly, slapping on some of Aledi’s smelly-but-effective face oil. She examined her reflection in the mirror. It hadn’t taken long to get used to the lack of makeup, and Aledi also lent her some Iridonian all-purpose haircare that looked like chewed bubblegum but somehow turned out to work wonders for her curls. In any case, it was a vast improvement over the unbrushed tangle she had kept it in for the first half of her stay.
“We need to get you some better clothes,” she remarked, still directed at her reflection, while carefully squishing the water out of her hair. “You’re telling me you live in the Star Wars universe now and all you’ve worn is a sad beige undershirt and sad beige pants? How do you expect to get yourself a blaster-wielding space pirate boyfriend dressed like this?”
It was either make jokes or have breakdowns, so most of the time she chose the former.
Half an hour later with air-drying hair, Violet was out the door of her quarters, datapad clutched under one arm (just in case) and boots on (reluctantly). She tried to squash down the nerves wriggling in her stomach at the thought of finally leaving the Temple.
You’re just seeing them off, not leaving to fight in the war yourself.
Aledi and her master, Knight Fyr, met her at the entrance to the Temple. Violet recognized Aledi’s distinctive horns at a distance even before the pair spotted her. The other girl was bouncing almost imperceptibly on her toes with anticipation, dressed for a full mission with her lightsaber at her hip and a pack slung over one shoulder. Violet had sat on Aledi’s bed in her quarters while she agonized over what to put in that pack.
“Medpacs?” she had asked, as if Violet knew anything about missions.
“Oh, definitely,” Violet responded, as if she knew quite a lot about missions.
“I should take twice as many ration sticks, just in case, right?”
“Right.”
“Violet!” Seeing her approach, Aledi waved her over with uncharacteristic vigor, probably a result of nerves. Violet greeted her warmly and Fyr politely; the latter acknowledged it with a nod. As soon as she caught up, they made their way to the landing platform while Fyr explained,
“The Diplomatic Escort Group insisted on sending a couple of troopers for protection. The transport should be here within the next few minutes.”
Violet wondered if the escort would be someone she knew, although the likelihood was low. Out of all the troopers in the Guard, she’d met only four on her trek to the Jedi Temple a week previously. Besides, it could be dangerous. You don’t want them to die, do you?
She turned to Aledi. “By the way, don’t die, okay?”
Aledi smirked in return, tugging on her Padawan braid. “It is just a diplomatic mission.”
“Yes, but...” Violet pointed a finger accusingly at her. “You know how those tend to go.” She herself knew all too well, if the TV show was to be believed.
Fyr’s wrist comlink pinged with an incoming transmission, and the conversation halted as both Violet and Aledi turned curious eyes on her. She took a few steps away to listen privately, and when she returned she was frowning.
“Commander Stone has informed me that due to, and I quote, ‘unforeseen circumstances involving an angry Kuati diplomat,’ our presence is requested at the Guard barracks if we would like our transport to be available at all.”
Aledi covered her mouth to hide a snort. “Imagine being angry enough to hold a transport hostage,” she murmured under her breath to Violet, who had to bite her lip to avoid smiling.
“Imagine being angry enough to hold off the entire Guard,” she pointed out. Aledi snickered, and the pair followed Fyr’s lead as she directed them to a speeder.
No one asked if she wanted to stay behind at the Temple, and Violet most certainly did not bring it up. How could she miss an opportunity to see the entire Guard barracks and a real transport ship?
It was only halfway through the short trip there that she started to wonder if there were any arrangements to get her a ride back. Great. Just great.
Internal panic aside, they arrived at the barracks without incident. Violet trailed behind Aledi, who in turn followed Fyr, as they made their way across the landing platform.
Ducklings.
Actually, Violet had begun to feel as though Aledi had adopted her, rather like a stray cat pulled out of an alleyway trash bin. Which, all things considered, was sort of true.
The platform buzzed with activity, and Violet nearly stepped on Aledi’s heels multiple times, too busy peering side to side as she tried to take in everything.
It was loud. She should have expected it, but the roar of transports taking off and landing made every conversation into a shouting match. She spotted a LAAT/i landing and unloading a few squads of red-and-white armored troops. Others looked to be under maintenance, a mix of both clone and nat-born mechanics up to their elbows in grease and exhaust soot beneath and around the ships. Stacks of crates sat ready for loading, clones weaving in and out among them. Some carried boxes, others seemed to be leaving on assignment or arriving back from one. All were in full armor, and most were helmeted as well.
On today’s episode of Canon or Fanon: do the Corries, unique of all units, wear their helmets constantly, or is that common GAR practice?
Unfortunately, it would probably require going off-planet to gain an informed answer on that matter.
Fyr made a beeline for a smaller ship docked close to the building itself. That must be it. Violet’s assumption was partly informed by the two clones who stood at ease beside the loading ramp. And also partly by the apparent quarrel going on nearby. A man—presumably the aforementioned Kuati diplomat—was vehemently gesturing at a clone who stood with his arms crossed, looking for all the world like a brick wall.
The red really adds to that impression, Violet mused, watching the inaudible but evident argument with some fascination.
“Looks like old Fox is keeping him occupied,” Aledi muttered, leaning out from behind Fyr to watch as well.
Fox?
Oh. Violet did a double take. She should have known from the kama. And the posture.
She bit down hard on her tongue to keep herself from saying something catastrophic.
Biochips.
I only wanted to do my duty.
Can't say I blame you, Commander Tano, but all the same...
Did my part—all the clones did.
Shoot to kill.
The taste of iron flooded her mouth. Violet’s throat closed and she just managed to choke out a half-hearted “yeah.”
How am I supposed to say nothing?
She’d been very successful so far at blocking out all of it: don’t think about what’s going to happen, don’t think about who will die, just focus on getting home. But it was hard to ignore when a key player was standing not ten yards away.
This is not your world. These are not your people. You are not responsible for the ending.
She took a deep breath, bandaged a smile over the stabbing pain under her sternum, and returned to the conversation at hand.
“--managed to convince him otherwise,” Fyr was saying, having presumably just returned from moderating the argument. The diplomat was in the process of storming off, and Commander Fox had turned his cross-armed survey on the docking platform activity.
Aledi, who had watched the interaction while Violet zoned out, turned to her now.
“I suppose this is it.” She shrugged, seeming a little lost.
“Don’t--” Violet began, then amended, “Be careful.”
“Don’t be careful?” Aledi gave a half-smile.
“You know what I mean.”
Both girls hesitated. It hit her suddenly that this friendship—unexpected and strange and tentative as it was—had been a sort of rescue for her. Abruptly, Aledi pulled Violet into a hug, tighter than she’d expected. Violet hugged her back.
“When I get back, I will hunt you down and figure out what mystery you’re hiding from me,” Aledi said as she pulled away.
“You can try.”
Violet backed up a few steps, waving as the pair of them disappeared behind the rising gangplank. A blast of hot air followed, tossing her hair wild about her face, while the ship rose into the air. Then the engines roared, and the ship disappeared into the roving maze of Coruscant traffic within a minute. Violet stayed staring at the spot they’d disappeared.
Nothing that happens to her is my fault. I don’t know her story, she reminded herself.
She glanced at the clones that milled all around her, filling the spaces between ships with the glint of armor and the clack of boots.
But I know theirs. She swallowed hard, willing herself not to think about it. Nothing I could say or do would change anything anyway. Look at what happened to the ones who tried.
It didn’t really make her feel better, but she was forced out of thinking about it when a soldier carrying a stack of crates higher than his visor ran into her.
Packages flew everywhere.
“I’m so sorry!” Violet gasped, at the same time as the formerly crate-bearing clone swore emphatically.
She scrambled to help pick up the scattered silver packages, dumping them haphazardly back into their boxes. They were labeled in Aurebesh but had small icons on the labels that looked like depictions of food, which hopefully meant they were ration packs.
“These aren’t anything valuable, are they?” she asked, peering nervously up at the clone, who was busying himself restacking the crates.
He sighed audibly through the breath filters on his helmet. “No, just ration packs.”
Thank goodness. “I’m so sorry about this,” Violet repeated, handing him the last box.
He shook his head. “My fault anyway. I should have been watching where I was going.” He dusted his hands together, then held out one to shake. “Thanks for the help.”
“It’s the least I could do.” Violet gave him a cautious smile and shook his hand. “I’m Violet, by the way.”
“Rib.” He nodded briskly and was off into the building with the boxes before Violet could even open her mouth to ask about transport.
Weird. But whatever.
“Time to get a ride out of here.”
Violet glanced at the busy clones, then to where the Commander had stood. She caught the tail end of him disappearing inside the barracks. No one paid her any mind.
She promptly decided she’d rather die than ask anyone for help. And then remembered that if she had to walk back to the Temple alone, that was a legitimate possibility. Closing her eyes briefly in silent preparation, she straightened her spine and marched toward the door through which both Fox and Rib had disappeared.
Confidence.
You know exactly what you’re doing.
She did not. Once inside, she found herself hopelessly clueless as to the layout or who to ask. A long corridor stretched out before her, the low, slightly claustrophobic ceiling lined with harsh artificial lighting panels. Doors and secondary hallways branched from it, leading off to who knew where. Violet froze for a few seconds. Footsteps echoed from somewhere further down. She made one last attempt to straighten her misplaced curls from the takeoff blast, and then, choosing an open door at random, marched through it.
Oh no. The confidence lied.
Violet’s quick glance took in a cramped office lined with cluttered shelves and a desk surface buried by equipment and holoprojectors. And there, like the embodiment of all her guilt, the blank mask of Commander Fox’s helmet stared back at her from behind the desk. Though identical to every other trooper she’d met, the invisible eyes of his visor felt more like a calculation, blue-lit holograms glinting off it like ice fragments.
“Please remove yourself from my garrison before I have to file another incident report.” Despite the polite wording, it carried an unmistakable bite.
The camel’s back broke. Violet bit back. “Your armor looks like a Wampa’s kill-site.” Oh, wonderful. Truly fantastic. That’ll show him. She really needed to work on her comebacks.
His tone carried a level of flat disinterest that only a tactical droid could have rivaled. “Is that supposed to be insulting?”
The irritation under Violet’s collarbone tightened, and she lifted her chin, slapping a hasty guise of defiance over the flush that tried to rise in her face.
“Yes.”
“You need to work on that.”
She took a deep breath. Just get it over with. “What I need is a speeder.”
He picked up a stack of flimsi, jogging it briskly against the desk. “Absolutely not. You fly worse than a Hutt sprints.”
“How would you know?”
The expressionless gaze he leveled at her had all the warmth of Orto Plutonia itself. She could see her own overly bright-eyed reflection glaring back at her in the T-shaped chromium.
“A wild guess,” he replied, derision bleeding from each word.
“Excuse me?” Violet let out a disbelieving laugh. It was surprisingly convincing, even to herself. “I’ll have you know I am an extremely competent flier.” Liar. So, we’re just saying things now?
“Is that so.”
The brittle sarcasm lodged under Violet’s skin and itched. She dug her fingernails into the palm of her left hand. Her right clenched harder around the datapad. Stay calm. Get back on track.
“Okay, well, could someone else--”
“No.”
It was like arguing with a brick wall.
“I just need--”
“No.”
“Would you stop interrupting me?” Her voice came out louder and higher than she intended. She wondered distantly how much pressure datapads could withstand.
“Would you stop wasting my time?” He finally sounded as though he’d passed beyond apathy and into true annoyance. He’d stopped multitasking. She had his full attention now.
Good.
Since when is that a good thing?
“How do you expect me to ‘remove myself’? In case you hadn’t noticed” --she waved the datapad at their surroundings-- “I’m stuck here.”
“Walk. Run. Take a tauntaun for all I care.” He crossed his arms across the Galactic Senate symbol on his chest plate. Something about the posture was infuriating. “Not my department. Not my problem.”
“It’ll become your problem if I die.”
“Less work than a speeder.”
The Fox apologists were wrong. That singular sentence made it through her blurred thoughts, and she narrowed her eyes.
“Isn’t this your job?”
There was a slight shift in the set of his shoulders, only made visible by the armor. “Contrary to popular opinion, I’m not a babysitter.”
“Good, because I'm not a baby.”
“Could've fooled me.”
Violet’s heart was practically smacking against her ribs. She could feel sweat trickling down her spine, and not just from the stupidly inadequate air conditioning.
She fought to level her voice out. “Would it kill you to just be nice for two-and-a-half seconds?”
“It might.” His tone was that of someone who had calculated the exact exchange rate of kindness in his world and found it unprofitable. “Besides, you're still alive and well. This is me being ‘nice.’”
“Someone’s in a bad mood,” she said acidly. It was impressive how many retorts she’d managed to come up with thus far, but her brain was running out.
“Yes, well, ‘someone’ doesn't have time to deal with idiots.” It sounded as though he was clenching his teeth around the words, and Violet was glad.
It shouldn’t have been insulting. It was. “Are you calling me an idiot?” She mirrored his posture, crossing her arms as well. Her face felt hot.
“Yes.”
“Why are you so rude?”
“Why are you still here?” This was going nowhere. Violet threw her hands in the air.
“Fine. Just sit there like the useless” --she wound her anger tighter with each word-- “insufferable plastoid boy you are.”
The Commander leaned forward and braced his hands on the desk. The helmet made him completely impassive. Each syllable was perfectly enunciated. “I don’t know why a ragged womp rat like you decided to crawl into my office, and frankly, I don’t care. Get out before I arrest you for trespassing.”
“Fine.”
“Good.”
“Yep.”
She could practically hear his glare as she gathered what was left of her dignity and swept out of the room, slamming the door behind her. Or at least, that’s what she would have liked to happen. In actuality, she sort of turned around abruptly, and unsatisfyingly slammed her hand on the button, causing the door to slide shut slowly.
She made it about halfway down the corridor, ignoring the startled expressions of the guardsmen who had no doubt overheard everything, before she realized she was going the wrong way—deeper into the garrison instead of out. The nausea pooling in her stomach that she’d been pushing down hit her all at once, and she doubled over, deflating against the wall. She willed her heart rate to slow down and the jittering adrenaline to leave her muscles.
What a...what a... she grasped for a scathing enough moniker. Hands shaking, she slid down the wall to the floor and dropped her head onto her knees.
What just happened?
She blinked rapidly, trying to analyze her own motivations and coming up with nothing but a lingering sense of fury and, strangely, a sadness that she couldn’t quite get the bottom of. The audacity of it—to burst into the office of the commanding officer for the entire Coruscant Guard and insult him to his face—astounded her. Violet Curie was the type of person who would rather take her feelings out on a patch of rock-hard soil with a trowel than argue with another person. You’re insane.
Slowly, her muscles began to relax as the initial rush passed.
I did that. I did that.
And then she began to laugh, her body finding the only viable way to release the tension. It didn’t make the whole incident any less embarrassing, but at least she wasn’t crying. When she finally got to her feet, there were two troopers standing a little off to the side, watching.
A few long seconds passed while she looked at them and they looked at her. Neither party seemed particularly eager to address the bantha in the room. One of them held out a small, cylindrical package, armor creaking noticeably in the silence.
“You want a ration stick?”
Violet laughed a little breathlessly. “Yeah, actually I do.”
She took the proffered bar and watched the retreating backs of the troopers as they turned the corner. Maybe it was because he represented everything that she knew would go wrong. Or maybe it was just because he was an annoying, stuck-up jerk of a person. But Violet decided then and there that Commander Fox deserved every bit of the hate he got.
Well, looks like I’m walkin’.
Commander Fox groaned and dropped his forehead down onto the desk. His helmet made a dissatisfying clunk against the plasteel. He would much rather have been able to press his actual skin into the cold surface, if only as a reminder that he existed.
A pretty woman—a civilian—just happened to waltz into his office, and what did he do? He certainly didn’t flirt; he didn’t even try to be accommodating. No, of course not. Instead, he’d spent the last quarter of an hour insulting the ever-living kriff out of her, as one does.
What was wrong with him?
At least anger was better than the suffocating apathy he’d been existing under for the past week and a half. He wondered how long he could ride the adrenaline high before another cup of caf was needed to keep him on his feet.
Cheerful, you said.
Shut up.