#foxi

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“I specifically requested an escort for my trip to Bothawui, and you’re telling me no one’s available?” Senator Paulness asked, his watery eyes flashing in frustration.

Sithspit, Fox thought, looking down at his datapad. “Weren’t you sharing the transport with Senator Chuchi?”

Commander Fox stood on the landing platform between Senators Chuchi and Paulness and their respective entourages. Behind him a squad of clones stood at attention—enough clones for one senatorial escort but definitely not two.

“Senator Chuchi? When did I ever say anything about Senator Chuchi?” Senator Paulness said, hands on hips.

“Aren’t you both going to Bothawui?”

“Yes, but to entirely different cities on entirely different diplomatic missions! Do you think this one escort can be with both of us at the same time on two different sides of the planet, Commander?”

Fox looked back down at the datapad, his mind struggling to call back to his conversation with Senator Paulness from two months ago amidst the thousands of other meetings, councils, briefings, and requests floating around in his memory. Senators Paulness and Chuchi had approached him on the same day, requesting to go to the same system, but now that he thought about it, they hadn’t said they’d be going together.

“Eh, no, sir,” Fox said, already bracing for whatever ire Senator Paulness was about to unleash on him. “My mis-”

“I’m so sorry, Zinn,” Senator Chuchi said, approaching her colleague and taking him by the arm. “I told Commander Fox I’d be going with you when I made the request. When I first heard about your trip I thought we might travel together, then later I changed my mind and forgot to tell Commander Fox.”

Fox stared at Senator Chuchi like she’d grown a second head, though she had no way of telling on the other side of the helmet. She was lying. She was lying to spare his shiny ass.

Senator Paulness looked down at the blue arm hooked around his elbow, his eyebrows climbing up his forehead in surprise. “Oh, eh, well… It’s no problem, Senator Chuchi. An honest mistake.”

“I can get another escort together in a few hours,” Fox said, doing a few quick calculations on patrol schedules and outstanding favors on the inside of his visor. “Would that work for either of you?”

“Since it was my mistake, I’d be happy to take the later escort. Thank you for being so accommodating,” Senator Chuchi said, her composed features gracing him with an elegant smile. Fox resisted the urge to cough.

“Certainly.”

Fox got Senator Paulness sorted with his escort, then saw the transport off the landing platform and called in the squad who’d be taking Senator Chuchi. When all the logistics were finally done, he personally walked Senator Chuchi to the transport. He held a hand out to her to help her up the gangplank and she took it. 

“Thank you,” he said, just loud enough for the mic in his helmet to pick up and vocalize the message.

Senator Chuchi smiled down at him. “It was my pleasure, Commander.”

---

Fox’s second mistake nearly leveled the city. Fox stood on a platform overlooking the carnage the Zillo Beast had wrought, the sheer amount of work to do the only thing keeping him from boiling alive in a wash of guilt and anger. Over a hundred people, citizens and clones alike, killed by a beast that he and his men should have contained.

Chancellor Palpatine finished talking with the Jedi who’d helped subdue the beast, then joined Fox on the platform, the kindly face he always wore hardening just a fraction.

“Well, Commander. How did this happen? You told me this creature was secure.”

Fox tensed, his fingers flexing nervously on his blaster. Chancellor Palpatine represented the Republic in a literal sense, and failing him felt like failing Fox’s duty to the Republic. “We made it as secure as we could, sir. The beast was an unknown quantity.”

“There should have been contingencies. Backup plans! Ray shields on ray shields! Look at all these casualties,” Chancellor Palpatine said, his eyes misting over as they surveyed the smoldering city. 

Fox wanted to sink right into the duracrete below them and perish. “I… Sir, I… Did what I could-”

“Chancellor Palpatine, are you alright?” a soft, lilting voice said. “I heard you were trapped on an airship when the creature attacked.

Senator Riyo Chuchi joined them on the platform, her headpiece and elaborate hair dishevelled but otherwise unharmed. Chancellor Palpatine turned to her, his eyes widening and a weary smile rising to his lips.

“I am unharmed, thanks to the quick thinking of Anakin Skywalker,” he said.

“I’m so glad to hear it, Chancellor. And Commander,” she said, turning to Fox, “Please do not blame yourself for this incident. I saw that creature from the Senate building. There was no way to contain it, and it should never have been brought here in the first place.”

Chancellor Palpatine’s eyebrows rose and he leaned backwards, surprised by the Senator’s gentle, implied rebuke. And Fox… Well, Fox didn’t know how to feel. It was strange, having someone come to his defense, and this was the second time now. The deep well of guilt in his gut started to evaporate, if only a little, and his sense of personal responsibility for the carnage before him ebbed to a more manageable  degree.

“Well, ahem. Thank you, Senator Chuchi, for your concern,” Chancellor Palpatine said.

“Thank you, Senator Chuchi,” Fox said.

“No,” she said, reaching her hand out towards him. “Thank you for protecting our capital every day.”

He shook her hand, and even through his gloves he could swear he felt warmth.

---

The third mistake Fox made came very close to ending his life, but in other ways saved it.

He’d let the Jedi librarian—Jacosta Nu—go. She’d used her mind tricks on him and escaped. Fox wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do to apprehend someone who could warp his very thoughts, but excuses wouldn’t work on the Emperor, or on his new disciple, Darth Vader.

“The temple is sealed, Lord Vader,” Fox told the imposing man as he strode up the temple steps. “What are your orders?”

“Unless authorized by either the Emperor or me—no one enters, no one leaves.”

“Yes, sir.”

Vader swept past Fox, his long black cloak trailing behind him, and walked through the temple doors. Fox stayed behind, monitoring the comms and making sure the perimeter stayed clear. Then the shooting started.

“Sir, we’ve got another Jedi!” a trooper shouted frantically over the comm.

“Don’t let them escape! Apprehend them by any means necessary!” Fox said.

More shooting continued, then several screams. Fox lost one, two, three men.

“Commander Fox?” a voice asked, a voice entirely at odds with the current situation. Fox turned around and his heart rate spiked at the sight of Riyo Chuchi walking up the temple steps, ignoring the troopers waving her away.

“Ma’am, this area is not safe-”

“What’s going on, Fox? They’re saying that the Jedi have betrayed us, but that can’t be true! I can’t get a straight answer out of anyone-”

“Ma’am, I’m going to have to ask you to leave, right now,” Fox said, his teeth grinding in tension. She was not supposed to be here. Fox wasn’t allowed to have opinions about his orders, but one thing he did know was that he didn’t want Riyo Chuchi’s hands to be sullied by the kind of work he had to do now.

He signalled to Captain Dennet, and the trooper gently but firmly took Senator Chuchi by the arm and started to haul her away.

Fox checked back in on his comms, and everything was chaos.

“He got Sinkeye!”

“Ahhh!”

“Wait, wait! That’s not a Jedi-!”

Then Darth Vader himself descended from a broken window high up on the temple wall, his bulky body moving with a balletic grace. As the dark figure slowly advanced on him, it all came together in Fox’s head. The chaos from the comms, Vader’s orders, the cold anger in his voice—this was an even bigger mistake than letting the librarian go.

“Your men were shooting at me, Commander,” he said, coming to a stop right in front of Fox.

This will be the last mistake I ever make, Fox thought, his hands starting to shake in one final contradiction to the training he’d received on Kamino. Now, Fox knew with absolute certainty that clones could fear.

“I’m sorry, sir! They thought you were the Jedi-”

“Did you not provide your troops with my description?”

“I- I didn’t expect anything like this to happen, sir. I just didn’t think-”

Darth Vader raised his hand and Fox squeezed his eyes shut, somehow knowing despite having never dealt with him before that Vader’s hand was all it would take to kill him.

“Stop!”

Fox opened his eyes and all he could see was the back of Senator Chuchi’s cloak, the crimson hiding him from the murderous man before him.

“Senator, this matter does not concern you. Leave,” Vader said, his voice deathly still.

“I know that things are different now with the Emperor, and you may be his acolyte, but the Senate still exists. Are you going to murder me, too, to get to Fox? Because that’s what it will take,” Senator Chuchi said, utterly unbowed.

Beyond Senator Chuchi, Vader stood stock still, his mechanized breath slowly puffing in and out. He examined Senator Chuchi like he might a bug beneath his boot, and Fox felt sure that his mistake would now cost two lives instead of one.

“I will be telling the Emperor about this,” Vader said, then he whisked away.

Fox inhaled, the oxygen flooding his deprived brain. He didn’t even realize the power had left his limbs until Senator Chuchi caught him, her tiny frame propping him up.

“Commander Fox, you need to get out of here.”

“...But… We need to keep the perimeter secure…”

Senator Chuchi shoved him back so he was centered on his feet again and looked him sternly in the eye. Fox wondered somewhere in the back of his mind how she managed to catch his gaze through the helmet.

“If you ever see that man again, he’ll kill you. You need to leave.”

“I can’t leave,” Fox protested. “I’m Commander of the Coruscant Guard.”

“We both need to leave. I don’t know if this ‘Lord Vader’ will have much mercy to spare for me, either. If I can see where the wind is blowing, the Senate may very soon become powerless in the face of this new regime.”

“I can’t-”

“Sir,” Captain Dennet interrupted. “Sir, you should go with the Senator. She’s right—Lord Vader will kill you. Either way you’re no longer with the Guard, but at least if you leave you escape with your life.”

Fox looked around, and the other clone troopers nodded solemnly. His chest tightened at their support and concern for him, at the permission they were giving him.

Senator Chuchi held out her hand to him. “Come with me, I was already preparing a transport in case of emergencies.”

Fox looked down at the hand, the pale blue laced with indigo where her skin creased. She was so small and seemingly delicate, and yet she’d caught him each time he fell.