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Vishni Chuchi never understood how Commander Fox can make civilian clothing look like a uniform.
He's wearing a dark sweater, plain trousers, and soft indoor shoes Riyo bought specifically because he kept walking through her apartment in military boots. There are no rank plaques, no armor, no weapons visible beyond the compact blaster Vishni assumes is hidden somewhere on his person.
He still sits at the dining table as if awaiting inspection.
Back straight. Shoulders squared. Hands folded beside his untouched tea. Every movement measured, even when his mechanical eye blinks almost in time with the organic one.
Only the exhaustion gives him away.
That and the scar tissue disappearing beneath his collar.
Vishni dislikes looking at it for too long. Not because it makes him unpleasant to look at. Fox has never needed beauty to command a room, though she knows perfectly well that her daughter finds him beautiful.
She dislikes it because she remembers seeing him after the gala.
Unconscious. Burned. Breathing through machinery while Riyo sat beside his bed with one hand wrapped around his and refused to leave.
Now he is upright, medically cleared for active service, and apparently planning to return to battle.
Vishni already decided she will not discuss that until after dinner.
Possibly after dessert.
Possibly after she's hidden every military boot in the apartment.
Azen leans across the table and squints at Fox.
“You’re going to Anaxes?”
Riyo, setting down a serving dish, stops.
Fox looks at her younger brother.
Then, in the rough whisper he uses when his voice implant is switched off, he asks, “Who told you?”
Azen grins. “That means yes.”
“It means you didn’t answer my question.”
“You just answered mine.”
Fox’s expression remains perfectly flat.
Vishni watches her son beam with the reckless confidence of someone who has not yet learned that winning an argument with Fox usually means walking directly into a better one.
Riyo lowers herself into the chair next to her husband.
“He’s officially returning to operational duty,” she says. “The Anaxes assignment is unofficial.”
“Medical recovery,” Fox whispers.
“Escaping the press,” Riyo translates.
“Operational recovery.”
“Escaping senators.”
“Reduced political strain.”
Azen looks between them. “So, escaping the press and senators.”
Fox reaches for his water instead of answering. Vishni hides a smile.
She always liked him.
That surprised several members of the Pantoran Assembly, who apparently expected the blunt clone commander with no political family, no cultural polish, and no legally recognized childhood to offend her on principle.
Fox had certainly tried.
At their first private dinner, he informed Vishni that her security arrangements were inadequate, her household staff had not been properly screened, and one of her Assembly colleagues was likely selling restricted information.
He was correct on all three points.
He also brought Riyo home before curfew when they visited Pantora, stood outside the door until Vishni personally answered it, and looked at her daughter as though the entire galaxy had narrowed to one blue face.
Vishni decided then that she could forgive poor conversational technique.
Since the gala, she saw that devotion stripped of every defense.
Fox nearly died protecting Riyo.
Riyo nearly tore the Senate apart waiting for him to wake.
Neither of them knows how to love cautiously.
It's one of the few things they have entirely in common.
Dinner begins with Azen asking enough questions about the invasion to qualify as a military debriefing.
Fox answers what he can in whispers. He cannot project his voice without the implant, and the damage beneath it leaves every word scraped thin, but Azen leans closer rather than making him repeat himself.
Riyo keeps placing food on Fox’s plate whenever his attention shifts.
Fox keeps eating it without noticing.
Vishni notices.
She also notices that Riyo barely touched her own meal.
That's been happening since Vishni and Azen arrived three days ago. Riyo claims travel schedules disrupted her appetite. She excuses herself early in the morning, appears pale before breakfast, and developed a sudden hatred of a tea she consumed since childhood.
Vishni has raised two children.
She's not an idiot.
They nearly tell her after the main course.
Riyo opens her mouth, glances at Fox, and closes it again when Azen begins describing a professor who confiscated his datapad for researching military vehicles during a political-history lecture.
They nearly do during dessert.
Fox lowers one hand beneath the table. Riyo’s shoulders relax immediately, which tells Vishni exactly where his hand has gone.
Then Azen asks whether the Chief of Defense can legally order his professor to return the datapad.
“No,” Fox whispers.
“Can you make it look like you can?”
“No.”
“Would you?”
“No.”
Riyo takes a bite of sweetbread. “He’s considering it.”
“I am not.”
“You blink differently when you’re considering administrative abuse.”
Fox’s mechanical eyelid lowers once.
Azen points. “That blink?”
“No,” Fox and Riyo say together.
By the time Azen wanders into the sitting room to examine a model of the Senate Dome, Vishni’s patience is beginning to fray.
Riyo starts clearing dishes.
Vishni takes the plate from her hands.
“Sit.”
Riyo blinks. “Uma?”
“Both of you.”
Fox, who is already seated, somehow sits more formally.
Riyo gives him a look that clearly asks whether he committed a crime Vishni recently discovered.
He gives the smallest shake of his head.
Vishni places the plate on the counter and returns to the table.
“Well?”
Riyo’s gold eyes widen.
Fox looks toward her.
There is genuine uncertainty between them now. Not fear exactly, but something fragile enough that Vishni feels her irritation dissolve.
Riyo reaches for Fox’s hand.
He turns his palm upward immediately, fingers closing around hers.
“We wanted to tell you together,” Riyo says.
Vishni waits.
Riyo takes a breath.
“I’m pregnant.”
The room goes completely still.
From the sitting room, Azen drops something.
Nobody acknowledges it.
Vishni looks at her daughter.
At the faint nervous curve of her smile. At Fox’s thumb moving over her knuckles. At the way his body has angled toward Riyo without conscious thought, prepared to protect her from a reaction that has not come.
“How far?” Vishni asks.
“Three months.”
Three months.
Vishni counts backward.
Her gaze falls briefly on Fox’s scars.
Riyo understands.
“We found out after the gala,” she says softly.
Fox’s grip tightens around her hand.
Vishni imagines Riyo sitting beside a hospital bed, carrying this knowledge alone while machines breathed for her husband.
She reaches across the table and takes her daughter’s free hand.
“You’re certain everything is well?”
Riyo nods quickly. “The physicians say everything looks healthy. We’ve had several scans.”
“Several,” Fox whispers.
Riyo glances at him. “You demanded four additional consultations.”
“Conflicting species data.”
“The first three physicians agreed.”
“They could’ve shared a flawed source.”
Vishni stares at him.
Fox’s expression does not change.
Riyo’s mouth twitches. “He made Scalper review the equipment calibration records.”
“The readings varied by 0.03%.”
“Which was within the expected range.”
“It still varied.”
Vishni looks back at her daughter. “Has he slept since you told him?”
“Technically?”
Fox narrows his eyes at Riyo.
She smiles.
The happiness in that smile catches Vishni directly beneath the ribs.
Riyo has always been bright. Determined. Kind beyond what politics rewards. But for much of her life, that brightness was controlled by committees, family expectations, Assembly traditions, and the endless requirement that she represent Pantora perfectly.
With Fox, she is not performing.
She's simply happy.
Terrified sometimes. Furious frequently. Exhausted almost always.
But happy.
Vishni rises.
Fox’s posture changes immediately.
He recognizes the approach.
That doesn't mean he knows what to do about it.
Vishni rounds the table and embraces her daughter first. Riyo stands so quickly her chair scrapes against the floor and folds into her mother’s arms.
“My little star,” Vishni murmurs, pressing a kiss to her temple.
Riyo laughs shakily.
Then Vishni releases her and turns toward Fox.
He looks briefly trapped. It would be cruel to enjoy that.
Vishni enjoys it only a little.
She opens her arms.
Fox stands.
Even in soft civilian clothing, he rises like an officer called to attention. He allows her to embrace him, but his entire body stiffens on contact, shoulders locking beneath her hands.
Vishni has learned not to take offense.
“You are allowed to breathe,” she tells him.
He exhales against her shoulder.
Progress.
Vishni holds him more carefully than she once would have. His injuries may be healed enough for military service, but she can feel how much weight he has lost. How cautiously he moves beneath the illusion of control.
“You’re going to be an upa, a, what is it called, buir?” she says.
Fox goes still in a different way.
Not defensive.
Overwhelmed.
When he answers, his whisper is nearly soundless.
“I know.”
Vishni leans back enough to look at him.
His organic eye shines. The red mechanical one follows her with perfect precision, but it is the living half of his face that betrays him.
Fear.
Wonder.
A devotion so fierce it almost hurts to witness.
“You’ll be a good one,” Vishni says.
Fox’s jaw tightens.
“You cannot know that.”
“I know how you care for my daughter.”
“That’s different.”
“Not as different as you think.”
He looks toward Riyo.
Of course he does.
Vishni follows his gaze. Her daughter stands beside the table with one hand resting low against her stomach, watching them both.
Fox’s face softens.
There it is again.
The answer to every concern Vishni has ever had about him.
Not his rank. Not his strategy. Not the titles that have grown increasingly absurd over the course of the war.
That look.
Vishni pats his cheek carefully, avoiding the sensitive edge of the metal reconstruction.
“You will make mistakes,” she says. “All parents do. Your child will survive them and develop excellent material for future complaints.”
Riyo laughs.
Fox considers this with complete seriousness.
“That is statistically likely.”
Vishni releases him before he can turn parenthood into a casualty projection.
Azen appears in the doorway.
“So,” he says, with the strained casualness of someone who has clearly been listening, “am I supposed to pretend I didn’t hear that?”
Riyo looks at him.
Azen lasts two seconds before grinning.
“I’m going to be an avai?”
Riyo barely has time to nod before he crosses the room and hugs her.
Unlike Fox, Riyo does not stiffen. She laughs and holds him back, though she has to tell him twice not to squeeze so hard.
Azen releases her and turns toward Fox.
They stare at each other.
Azen raises both arms.
Fox looks at Vishni as though she is somehow responsible for this situation.
She raises an eyebrow.
He submits to the second hug of the evening with the grim endurance of a soldier returning to battle earlier than recommended.
Riyo catches Vishni’s eye over their shoulders.
Her smile is luminous.
Later, there will be questions. Names. Pantoran traditions. Medical plans. Security concerns. The matter of Fox leaving for Anaxes while his pregnant wife remains on Coruscant, which Vishni intends to discuss with the patience of an avalanche.
For now, Azen is talking fast enough for three people, Riyo is laughing, and Fox stands in the middle of the room looking stunned by the family forming around him.
Vishni watches him place one careful hand over Riyo’s when she reaches for him.
He may never become accustomed to outside cultures.
He may always make civilian clothes look like military attire.
He may spend the rest of his life bracing whenever his mother-in-law hugs him.
That is acceptable.
Vishni is going to be an umaia.
And, whether Fox fully understands it yet or not, he has an Uma now too.