#ct1010

I’m thinking about towards the end of the war his troopers conspired to force him to get some sleep. If he was up for more than three days in a row they would find a way to pump him full of sleeping pills. There was no reliable way to pull this off. Sometimes they successfully slipped it into his morning caff but every so often their medic would have to jump him and shoot him full of tranquilizers. Then someone would borrow his armor and pretend to be Fox for the day.

Fox has not agreed to this but his officers are determined to get him some sleep.

The result of this is that when Darth Vader marches on the temple Fox is at sunset of his fourth day without sleep. It’s been so hectic he’s dodged every attempt so far. Four dosed cups of caff in a row were discarded before he could even have a sip, interrupted by some emergency. Someone was roundly mocked for trying to dose a breakfast burrito as none of them had ever seen him eat more than a protein bar before midday. Finally the Guard’s CMO tricked three shines into causing a distraction and shot Fox full of tranquilizers directly.

Thus, Fox was on an undisclosed 24 hour medical leave when Darth Vader made an example of someone wearing his armor. It’s not their fault, they had no way to know what was coming and it was more important to keep Fox healthy than to anticipate the end of The Republic being spun into some kind of victory even if it did mean the end of the war. By the time things kicked off he was drugged so hard it would have done more harm to wake him.

He missed Order 66. So deeply asleep it doesn’t register. He wakes confused and annoyed. He knows they’ve been drugging him. This ain’t the first time they’ve pulled it off. He tried to avoid it but he doesn’t blame them. He’s really not clear on why the Jedi are traitors and he’s not Super Jazzed about now working for an Emperor. But he did just die very publicly so he doesn’t have to run things anymore. And if he’s being honest he’s more than a little concerned about his troopers and all that Jedi genocide but they all seem pretty convinced.

He feels really bad that someone else died covering his ass. Really bad. For a long time. Eventually he starts to accept that he wasn’t to blame. He had been drugged against his will and if hed taken better care of himself… well that’s not something he can change now.

He resolves to do better. To take care of himself and still help his brothers as much as he could. Maybe try to get a coherent explanation on why exactly the Jedi had turned traitor. No one is super clear on why even the little ones had to die.

Fox takes a demotion. He’s now a rank and file Coruscant Guard trooper. He gives advice to his brothers when they ask. He takes crap duty in the detention center because no one will look for him there except the officers who know he’s alive.

Also because Barriss is there. Still. They’d struck up a Relationship of sorts after the trial. Nothing inappropriate but before that day they’d gotten friendly. They’d have conversations when he was procrastinating making reports to Palpatine. Sometimes face to face, sometimes over the comm in her cell. He was the Marshal Commander of the Coruscant Guard. No one questioned it. For a kid she was good company.

It was good to find someone else who was a bit disturbed by what had happened. She’d lost her entire family. Again. And very permanently. His brothers had all gotten a bit odd. Some more than others. She was afraid. He was worried.

Then one day she disappeared.

Then he heard rumors of a classified arrest warrant and a secret bounty on her head.

He asked himself why, if she was already a traitor Jedi, did the warrant have to be classified?

Why did they want to keep her treason a secret now?

He leaves.

He’ll find her.

He down right exhausted at this point

-we will never be the heroes in this story

-sharing some reference pictures I took this morning for some fox bucket helmet practice. I need to get an all black compression shirt for this in the future

it’s our sad caf clone commander