New Fic: Follow Me Out of the Black
AO3 Link
Written for @sourfacedlemon in the 2024 Anakin-Clone Appreciation Exchange.
Fox/Anakin, Time-Travel fix-it, Kidnapping
Also I sent this discord message to a server I'm in
And was confirmed correct because reveals had sourfacedlemon tagging 'called it' lmao.
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Fox is not the most… personable of his brothers.
He’s not actively antisocial, or one of those clones who’s more comfortable with massifs than men, even fellow clones. He doesn’t have trouble meeting peoples’ eyes, or get nervous to hold a conversation. He’s not the best at people, but he’s not impeded by anything. He’s not incapable, just unwilling. A grump. Tired and a bit short-tempered.
That was before he spent the better part of a decade with his entire personhood filtered through the control chip that ARC trooperhad tried to warn them all about.
And, of course, before Darth Vader threw him out a window to his not entirely untimely death.
That, dying at Vader’s hand for a stupid reason that maybe would have been worth a demerit under a clone officer, is actually Fox’s last memory. In the moment, he’d thought it almost reasonable; his failure had led to the escape of a Jedi, at least momentarily, and then… who knows. Maybe Vader got her anyway.
He wakes up, and thinks wait, that’s a ridiculous reason to kill a high-ranking officer, and then promptly realizes he can think without something muddling him.
He stares at the ceiling, which does not contain several familiar scratches, and does contain some flimsi holopics taped where he can see them, which he distinctly remembers taking down after Order 66.
Which is an order that now does not make as much sense as it did at the time. Fox wasn’t close to any Jedi, but they were all unfailingly polite, and his brothers in high-ranking field battalions had largely had good things to say. Some of them loved their generals as much as a brother. They wouldn’t have turned as quickly as Fox himself had, and yet.
And yet.
Fox stares at the holopics, thinking about what he knows, about the Sith Lord that is the Emperor, about the Sith Lord that once was—is?—Anakin Skywalker, about how many of his brothers killed their Jedi despite Fox being quite certain they’d have rather died than do so. He thinks about the control chip he’s now fairly certain was an actual mind control device and not just an emotional regulator.
Fox stares, and thinks, and then gets out of bed.
Fox is not personable, and that’s okay.
He’s got other skills to rely on.
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It takes Fox four hours of planning, six hours of setting traps for Sidious, three days of putting together backups, and two weeks of waiting for Skywalker to be on planet and visit the old bastard himself.
It then takes him thirty seconds to tell Thorn that he’s in charge for a bit, two hours to arrive at the Senate building, and about three minutes to let Skywalker say goodbye to the Chancellor and get out of the man’s sight. It then takes some forty-five seconds to approach him, ask for help with something, and lead the man into a dark service hallway.
Three hours later, Skywalker wakes up in the interrogation room cum holding cell that Fox has set up about thirty levels below CoCo town.
“What’s going on?” Skywalker mumbles. He notices the Force cuffs before he’s fully awake, and jerks a bit as he tugs on them. It pulls him awake faster. “Wh—fierfek, what have you done to me? You can’t be a clone, they—”
“Chancellor’s a Sith Lord.”
Skywalker stares at him. Fox takes off his helmet to show his face, just so Skywalker knows that he is, in fact, a clone.
“…what?” Skywalker manages. “You—”
“Chancellor’s a Sith Lord,” Fox repeats. “I don’t have real proof. You are going to help me get it.”
“The Chancellor,” Skywalker says, slowly, like he’s convinced Fox is the crazy one, “is not a Sith Lord. The Jedi would know.”
“Jedi are busy, and Sidious is a good liar,” Fox dismisses. “You, he likes you. He wants to make you his next apprentice, after he has Dooku taken out. He’ll call you Vader. The armor is going to be stupid.”
Skywalker just stares at him.
“I’m not crazy,” Fox says, even though that does in fact make him sound crazy. “I’m from the future.”
That probably makes him sound crazier.
“The Chancellor is a good man,” Skywalker says. “I am sure this is all just some… massive misunderstanding, and if you let me go, I’ll get you to the mind healers and we can figure out what put these ideas in your head.”
Fox smiles. The word ‘mirthlessly’ comes to mind. “Nobody put ideas in my head until a Sith Lord activated a mind control chip, and then the idea was ‘kill all Jedi.’”
Skywalker stares at him.
“Including the babies.”
Skywalker keeps staring.
“But you—Vader—did most of the baby-killing, or so I heard. I was busy keeping the better members of the Senate from trying to investigate. Organa was a hard sell.”
“I would not—why would I kill Jedi?”
Oh good, he’s responding. “I don’t know. You joined Sidious for power, or something. Amidala was pregnant when she died, that was all over the news. I wasn’t listening to gossip, because my brain was all work, all the time, because of the mind control, but I guess it could have been yours.”
Fox doesn’t know what Skywalker and Amidala’s relationship is. Could be a one-night stand, for all Fox knows, but he thinks they’re close friends, at least.
“She’s pregnant?” Skywalker asks. He sounds a little broken. Plaintive? Is that the word?
“No,” Fox says. “She’d have gotten pregnant… a few months from now? I don’t know exactly how far along she was, or how natborns progress. She looked pretty big, though.”
Skywalker stares at him some more. Man, the guy’s got eyes like a holostar, or one of those cherubs on the Corellian churches. Fox bets he’d look nice crying.
“All of this hit the fan about a year from now,” Fox tells him. “We have time, but not much. Also, Sidious has a million backup plans, so we need to act fast, and be unpredictable.”
“So you had to kidnap me?” Skywalker demands.
“Of course,” Fox says. “He’d be suspicious if I just started palling around with you, or whatever it is the shinies call it.”
“You are maybe two years older than them,” Skywalker points out.
“More like twelve,” Fox corrects. “But that’s not the point. I also had to get you somewhere I could make sure he wouldn’t be able to spy on us, and where you couldn’t storm out because you were mad that I was telling you you’re destined to be a baby-killer or that your precious Chancellor is a Sith.”
Fox is pretty sure the only reason Skywalker isn’t doing that already is because he’s convinced Fox lost his mind and just needs to come down from the drugs or whatever. Fox can understand; he’d be tossing anyone saying this banthakark into a drunk tank or to the medics, himself. He certainly hadn’t taken that ARC seriously.
“Why me?” Skywalker asks.
Fox shrugs. “It had to be you, obviously. All else aside, getting you in my corner instead of another Jedi gives me an edge, because you are the one Jedi that Palpatine might hesitate to kill. He’s put a lot of time into making Vader happen, even already, and he wants to get you to be his Sith apprentice. That means he wants you alive, and on side, and maybe he'll try to talk you into joining him before going for the kill.”
“I won’t join a Sith.”
“You will,” Fox says, simple as syrup, “given the right pressures, you will. Our goal here is to make it so those pressures don’t come to pass, and that means cutting the head off the snake and sweeping the legs out from under the devil.”
Fox has, perhaps, read a few too many Corellian novels recently. He likes the ones about this ‘hell’ place. Seems cozy.
“If I let you go, will you hear me out?” Fox asks. He’s not planning on actually letting Skywalker go, but he can let the man stand. The cuffs stay on. “I’m going to get this chip removed now, while you’re here, so I have at least some evidence for part of the story. That way you can check it yourself for whatever code dictates the orders.”
“The chip. In your head.”
“I wouldn’t have brain surgery on a whim,” Fox confirms, “so I think it makes for a good proof that I’m not just staging this somehow.”
Skywalker actually gapes this time.
Fox waits.
“Fine,” Skywalker finally says. “I’ll stick around long enough for the brain surgery, and to decode the chip, and then we can… reassess or what have you.”
“Great.”
“Can I at least call Obi-Wan to tell him I won’t be making it to dinner?”
Fox waves a hand. “No, no, I already took care of that.”
The look he gets is almost insulting. It’s almost like Skywalker forgot that Fox is a highly trained military police officer with top-level security codes and the legal right to invade peoples’ privacy.
(Continue on AO3)
