#Fox forces them all into the same vod pile

[varpusvaras]

You all know the trope of the Corrie Commanders becoming increasingly closer and protective of Fox as the war goes on, and sometimes become even hostile towards the rest of the CC's.

That, but they are really just competing over who Fox likes more. Thorn and Cody have a fistfight about it on the streets.

[chiafett-moved]

Hello Mikey! It's me, the greedy greedy asker here with another prompt. 20 from the sickfic drabble prompt with Cody and Fox perhaps?

Hi Willow! I scraped this short thing off the bottom of finals week brain. Hope you enjoy!

“Not that I’m complaining, but are you always this warm?”

Fox is pressed against Cody’s side, so close they might as well be wearing the same blacks. He’s got his face pressed into Cody’s neck and his bony fucking knees knocking into Cody’s hips and if he weren’t so godsdamned tired, Cody might do something about it. It’s been a long week, though, and he doesn’t want to disturb the vode on either side of them, so all he does is pull the blankets closer to them and say, “Yeah, you’re just fucking freezing, vod.”

Fox sticks his hands under the hem of Cody’s shirt and Cody does not squeak even a little bit, even though it would be fucking justified, Force fucking “Fox!”

“What?” Fox bats innocent tooka eyes at him. “You’re going to wake everyone else up if you keep complaining.”

Cody huffs, grabbing Fox by the wrists and shifting to flip them—

“Shut the everloving fuck up,” Hemlock snaps from the far side of Fox. “Some of us are trying to sleep.”

Cody freezes hovering over Fox. For a silent moment, they both stare at each other. Then, they burst into the breathless giggles of cadets caught up after lights out. Cody falls on top of Fox, Fox knees him in the balls, and both of them clap their hands over their mouths, shaking with silent laughter as Hemlock bitched under his breath.

Finally, the urge to laugh fades to something tolerable and Cody’s sides are no longer cramping like stab wounds and he settles down half-on-top of Fox to try and get some actual sleep.

He’s never been part of a Guard vodepile before. It’s smaller than the typical Ghost pile, but just as tightly packed, and there is an overabundance of decidedly non-standard blankets and pillows mixed in with the rest. Holly and Hemlock mark the center and the origin of the pile, lying back-to-back with their heads on a massif-shaped pillow. Holly’s feet are on someone’s ribs and Hemlock has a hand around Fox’s wrist. It’s cozy, cozier than anything else Cody has seen on Coruscant. It’s warm and safe and he’s here with his vode and really, considering the week he’s had, can anyone blame him for falling asleep so quickly?

Fox blames him for drooling on his blacks.

[detroitbydark]

Fox and Mouse Finale 1/2

Characters: Commander Fox x Mouse (reader), and more Jedi/clones/politicians than you can shake a stick at.

Summary: Fox makes plans and then remakes them...

A/N: Ladies and Lads this is it! A chapter so stupid long it required it be split in two pieces. I'm not going to make you wait and I'll be posting both this evening. I'm feeling really sentimental because this is the longest thing I've ever written and completed. I couldn't have done it without y’all. Your support and comments have helped me get through the tough periods of writing and the stress in my life as of late. This is for you guys! Thank you. I love you! 

Special thanks as always to @skdubbs and @crimson-dxwn for being there to listen to me and help me every step of the way. You are both absolutely amazing!

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The crick in his neck is the least of Fox’s worries when he wakes. It wasn’t like he could call the tossing and turning he’d done for the last six standard hours much of a rest. After returning to his room, tail tucked between his legs, Fox hadn’t been able to unwind. He couldn’t lay his head down without a million thoughts racing through his head.

He loved her. 

Yes, it was something he’d known for a while, maybe even longer than he was willing to admit. He loved her more than he loved himself. For a long time he’d thought that’s how love was supposed to work. You sacrificed yourself for the things you loved. Now he’s not sure.

Mouse loved him. It was something he hadn’t hoped for, but after being near her, feeling her lips against his own, seeing the depth of emotion in her sad eyes as she’d kicked him out of her room - he didn’t question it. The issue he finds himself struggling with is hard to put into words. If he couldn’t love himself, if he didn’t think he was worthy, could he truly love her? Mouse was willing to accept him at his most broken, for his flaws and his lingering self doubt. If he couldn’t do the same for himself-

The thoughts kept him up the better of the night. He’d lost count of the times he’d walked to his door intent on barging into her room… and doing what? That’s where the plan got dicey and inevitably where he decided against any further action until first light.

Of course, by the time he’d fallen asleep he’d been so exhausted that he’d missed first light. It wasn’t until a pair of noisy male tik-tak birds jostled for the affections of a female outside his window that Fox woke.

His first thoughts were of Mouse as he shooed the noisy creatures from his open window.

He didn’t enjoy the smell of failure -or sweat - that permeated the air around him. He took a sonic shower so fast he would have set a record back on Kamino. 

He focused on the words he’d say to her. The words that would make her see that he was sorry. That his shabla behavior was a fluke that he could and would correct. That he would spend the rest of his life making it up to her if she’d just give him one more chance.

 He pauses as he slips into his armor.

The rest of his life.

He didn’t want her for a moment in time. He wanted her for all time, at his side through whatever life would throw at them. Resolve settles over him, the kind that a lifetime training for battle honed. There’s a certain peace to it.

Darasuum.

Like any good soldier he makes a plan. When she fails to answer her door when he knocks, he goes to plan B. He knocks again. Louder.

When that doesn’t work, he moves on to plan C.

There’s a small cadre of Jedi and Clones eating a quiet breakfast on the veranda. The sun is just peeking over the waterfalls in the distance. Cody and General Secura are speaking in quiet tones over two cups of caf. General Kenobi sits nursing a cup of tea staring out over the placid lake. Like, a sore thumb, Bly sticks out, devouring whatever pastry and fruit had been piled on his plate like he was a cadet late for morning exercises. He looks up in time to see Fox and give him an encouraging smile and a wave over before taking a bite of some sort of plump sausage even Fox found to be too large.

“Vod!” The golden yellow hues of Bly’s facial tattoos seem to glow brighter in the sun. “Su cuy’gar!” he greets happily.

Fox pauses, then pulls out a chair, grabbing a cheese filled pastry from his batch mate’s plate. “Su cuy’gar,” he greets in return. “After the sounds I was hearing last night I wasn’t sure I’d see you in one piece this morning.”

“Don’t be fooled. I’m held together by the Force and a prayer. My Aayl’ika does nothing in halves.”

Fox, even with the pressure of his impending conversation with his own love weighing on his shoulders, can’t help but chuckle as he steals the other Commander’s mug of caf. 

“Oya!”

Bly snatches the mug back and hot caf sloshes over the edges. The commander of the 327th makes a grunt of discomfort before leaning in and sucking the drops of spilt caf from the space between his thumb and index finger.

Fox smothers a laugh with a large bite of pastry. Bly raises an eyebrow before his eyes narrow in on Fox’s mouth.

“I know red is your color,” Bly grabs a napkin and tosses it to Fox, who catches it easily, “but I didn’t believe you were a lipstick man, regardless of color.”

One swipe across his mouth brings back a small smear of star cherry red lipstick. Mouse’s lipstick. He must have missed it in the shower.

“Since I don’t see the lovely dal I’m taking it either went very well or very poorly.”

Fox takes another swipe and places the napkin down when it comes back clean. “It’s a work in progress”

Bly gives him a serious look, the easy going manner from a moment ago pushed to the back burner.

“Tell me, vod. How do you and General Secura-“ Aayla glances up when she hears her name. Fox offers a tight smile. Bly shoots her a wink. “How do you do it?”

“Well you see Fox’ika, when a clone loves a Jedi-“

“Fierfek! Bly I’m being serious!”

“We’re honest with one another” Aayla’s smooth Ryl accent interrupts whatever comment Bly was getting ready to make. She moves gracefully over from her previous spot near Cody. The Marshal Commander has now joined his Jedi staring peacefully out across the water. Fox doesn’t doubt he’s listening in.

He isn’t sure whether he should be thankful for Secura’s intervention or not. Never having had a Jedi of his own, he still has moments where he finds their presence overwhelming. Aayla looks about as intimidating as a loth kitten this morning in leggings and a loose tunic, somehow looking incredibly chic and supremely comfortable all at once. Her eyes find his, searching for something as she sits down next to her Commander. “We’ve had to learn the finer points of communication.” She looks to Bly. Adoration is written across her delicate features as her lekku twitch happily. “We have to be able to trust each other.”

“It’s work,” Bly says, taking Aayla’s hand and placing a soft kiss along her knuckles ,“but we make it work.”

“And after the war?”

Aayla sighs. “We will cross that bridge when we come to it, but I don’t know if my loyalty can remain with the order alone. Once the Force has shown you something-“ she pauses and smiles softly at Fox, “The Force works in mysterious ways, would you agree?”

“General Secura.” Cody’s voice comes from across the veranda because - of course - he was listening, “I believe you forgot to mention respect.”

Aayla smothers a smile. “Oh yes, respect is quite important.”

Fox is very quickly beginning to feel the nonexistent walls close in around him. “Yes. Yes. “ he grumbles, “I’m a lousy di’kut.”

“You said that - not us - Commander,” General Kenobi chimes in without turning his head away from the lake spread out before him.

“Beg your pardon Generals, Commanders, but I don’t need the Force to tell me that I made a fool of myself last night.” He pushes up from his seat, stealing the caf back from Bly and finishing off the dregs. The other Commander makes a disgruntled sound. “Now, if just one of you could point me in the correct direction I have some-

“Groveling?”

“Pleading?”

“Apologizing?”

The voices all mingle together as they chime in and Fox sighs, rubbing his temple.

“Yes, all of that and then some. Just-“ he lets out an exasperated sound “-has anyone seen her?”

——-

Mouse hadn’t meant to fall asleep. Really, she’d just hoped to get away for a bit. She needed to separate herself from the faces that looked so much like his and the sad looks they’d given her as she’d picked at her breakfast.

She needed to know that Fox wasn’t just a few easy steps across the hall. She’d stood with her hands flat against the door too many times for her liking last night. It was only a few steps and she could be wrapped up in him, repercussions be damned.

Mouse wanted to pretend that her ultimatum may not end with a choice she wasn’t happy with. If Fox decided he couldn’t - or wouldn’t - do what she’d asked, well, she wasn’t sure how she’d handle it.

The field, nearly half a klik from the estate, had become a favorite over the last few months. Close enough to the waterfalls to hear the rush of water over the edge - and catch some mist on a windy day - but rarely visited by locals. It was peaceful. 

The summer grasses had easily surpassed the height of her knees weeks ago and - with a little more rain and sunshine - would soon be at her waist. For now it was just long enough to make a makeshift nest when she lay a blanket down. The green stems stood proudly around their brothers and sisters squashed by the worn quilt she spread out. 

The sun shone softly through a sea of gossamer clouds, its rays warm and soothing as she lay down with a datapad to review Padmé’s personhood bill in its entirety. Mouse couldn’t help the pull of sleep. The legalese of the document and warm kiss of sun paired with the sleeplessness from the night before had her first drowsing then, finally, blessedly sleeping sheltered from the world and her problems that lay outside her ring of softly swaying pastoral grass and millaflowers.

Her dreams begin as nothing in particular. Another blessing in disguise. Nothing bad troubles her sleep, though nothing good brings tenderness either. Instead she catches glimpses of Coruscant, of Fox and the other boys of the Guard, of a tiny green-skinned twi’lek girl. Images of Luke and Leia older and toddling around with their mother and father laughing and following behind them. Slowly, the boys are filtered out, then the Amidala-Skywalker clan, even little Me’kar fades away. All of it is gone and Mouse finds herself alone in front of a tiny cottage. It has a vegetable garden along one side and rows of flowers along the other. She hears her name whispered softly, the warm rumble of it so familiar.

“Mouse.”

“Mouse”

“Mouse.”

Her eyes flutter open, and she squints into sun spilling around a vaguely humanoid shape while her eyes attempt to adjust to the sudden change. 

“I’ve been looking all over for you.” 

Fox.

She’d know his voice anywhere. Hope springs to life in her chest. He’d come to find her. Surely that had to be a good thing, right? She moves to stand, getting as far as sitting before he makes a disgruntled sound and angles himself down and onto her blanket. She watches him look around, his head barely above the tall grasses surrounding them. His gaze moves to her discarded shoes and bare feet, slowly traveling up over her calves where her dress has ridden up in her sleep. She blinks, trying to push the residual fog of sleep from her head. Fox’s gloved hand reaches out and skims over her ankle. That electric spark she’d felt at his touch last night is still there.

“Fox?” He won’t look her in the eyes. The feeling of his touch is missed when he pulls his hand away. “Fox-“ she tries again, hiding and failing to hide the slight quiver in her voice.

He holds his hand up. “I have things to say and I need you to listen to every one. I’m- I’m not sure if you’re going to like what I have to say.”

Mouse nods slowly. He’s more his namesake now, more animal than she’s ever seen him. She moves slowly to rise to her knees, afraid the wrong move, a sudden quick one, will see him breaking away.

“I can do that,” she offers slowly. Fear at what he has to say leaves a thick knot in her stomach. “If we’re going to do this, though, I need to see your eyes. Ok?”

Fox makes another sound, a small grunt of assent as she rises on her knees and puts her hands to either side of his bucket. She releases the locks, hears the gentle hiss of release. His features are schooled when she lifts it off, but she knows her Fox. Whatever he has to say is eating at him. She can see it in the dark circles that rest underneath his eyes, the exhaustion that looks almost permanent in the soft brown eyes she adores so much. Always the caregiver, she fights the urge to pull him down, make him lay his head in her lap. She wants to card her fingers through the new growth of hair, brush through the locks that were just beginning to curl and swirl at the ends until he falls asleep. 

But she also needs to know what he has to say. She needs her answer so her heart can shatter or mend because whatever it is, there will be no in between. Not with him. Not with them.

She watches him swallow, look at the sky and the soft clouds above them before bringing his attention back to her.

“I’ve made mistakes in my life,” he begins, “Some of them widely known. You- you are the mistake I regret the most.”

Mouse attempts to turn away, but she can’t. His words- it feels like she’s watching a hover train come off the rails in slow motion. Fox glances down at his hands, squeezes them into fists.

“I-“ his eyes travel back to hers, pinning her in place “I’ve called you my precious girl more times than I can remember, because to me you are the most precious gift the maker has ever deemed fit to give me. But you're not a girl. You’re a woman,. A smart, strong, caring woman and I called you a girl. When things got hard, I treated you like one, like I had never made a mistake, like I knew what was best for the both of us.”

Mouse can see it in the little ways he moves, the clench of his fingers and the way his eyes trail to her shoulder, the scar covered by the thin summer dress, that it is taking everything for him to muscle through this.

“Fox, why are you saying this?”

“Because I need you to know.” His jaw is set in a sharp line. “I need you to know that I’ve thought about you every day since you left Coruscant, that I dream about you every night. I need you to know that I’m afraid to be around you, that even with the chip gone and that- that hut’uun,” spitting the word out as if it tastes bad in his mouth, “dead, I’m scared that it’s not enough, that someone is going to say the wrong thing and I’m going to do something you won’t come back from - and there’ll be no field of wildflowers for me to find you sleeping in, because you’ll be dead and it will be my fault”

Mouse grabs his hand, forces her fingers between his until he relents and lets her hold it. Her other reaches up, strokes along his right temple and feels the telltale ridge of scar under her fingers.

“Listen to me.” It’s a firm order and his eyes go a little wide. “You are not a bad man. You never have been. You never will be. You are the reason I’m alive. Your will, your strength kept you from making a shot I know for a fact you could make in your sleep. The scars I bear are your love brought to life.”

Fox shakes his head quickly. “That is sick, cyar’ika, you were-“ 

It’s Mouse’s turn to make a sound of discontentment as she pulls at the collar of her dress, stretching it out and down around her shoulder. “Look at it,” she demands. When he hesitates, she places his hand on it, holds it down with her own. “It’s just skin, just flesh over bone. Do you think Palpatine would have allowed me to live even if you hadn’t been the one to do it?”

Her hand slides his down to her chest where she holds it high on her left breast. “This has always been yours. Do you feel it?”

Fox’s fingers twitch over her racing heart. She had to make him see. Even if this was the last moment they were ever together, he had to leave without the guilt. “This has always been yours,” she repeats again, “You protected it and I’m alive because of it.”

Fox pulls away from her with a rough exhale, shaking his head. Mouse lowers herself, sitting on her feet, pretending she doesn’t feel the pins and needles building in them. He won’t look at her as she adjusts the neck of her dress back. She’s failed. The sudden realization hits with such certainty. She was going to lose him for good.

“You are so warm. You draw people to you and take them in, claim them as yours and care for them. You’ve never seen myself or any of the other Guard as just clones. From day one you spoke to each and every trooper you met as an individual. You’ve always tried to help and for some reason I was the one lucky enough to have you helping me. Even when I was acting like osik. Even when I was gruff and dismissive. You dealt with me-“

“-And I loved you” 

Love her head screams at her to correct but she doesn’t. Fox nods.

“Someone else will come along and they’ll love you with everything they have to give.”

Mouse feels a sharp pain in her chest and tries to turn away. Fox’s curled finger catches under her chin and brings her eyes back up to his. Mouse sees something steely in their warm depths.

“They’ll give you the world. Everything I can’t. But you know what?” He lets the question hang in the air for a moment. “I don’t want anyone else to love you. That’s my job. I don’t want to lose you and I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I ever put you in a position to think otherwise.”

Relief, warm and fluid fills her veins as tears threaten at the corners of her eyes. Fox watches with slow building panic.

“I- please don’t cry.”

Mouse laughs then and leans up, capturing his lips in a chaste kiss that he doesn’t respond to immediately. When she pulls back, he looks pleasantly bewildered.

“I’m not sad.” She wipes aggressively at a tear rolling down her cheek. “These are happy.”

Fox’s hands cup her cheeks, his thumb brushing away another stray tears. “Well if that’s all…”

 He leans in and captures her mouth in another sweet, delicate kiss, pours his love into it until it’s spilling over and Mouse thinks she could happily drown in the feel of it. 

When she attempts to deepen the kiss, he pulls back. Mouse bites the inside of her cheek to stop a whine from escaping.

“My self control is negligible at this point.” Fox manages a strained laugh while he cradles her face. “I don’t want to rush-“

Mouse presses forward and kisses him hard, sharp teeth nipping just this side of painful along his lower lip. The growl she’s missed over the last few months rumbles in his chest.

When she pulls back, letting his lip slip between her teeth, she can’t help but appreciate the way his eyes have darkened. His hands fall down to her hips and he stares. Just stares into her eyes, searching for something. Mouse doesn’t look away.

“You want to do this right here?” His voice is thick with the familiar gravel of lust and Mouse feels a wave of heat ripple through her body. Right here, on the blanket in the warm sun where anyone could see. There’s a certain thrill to that thought. She swallows thickly. 

“We need to slow down,” Fox repeats.

“Are you saying that for you or me? Because I’ve been waiting months to touch you,” she admits. If possible, Fox’s eyes darken more at the admission. She’s always loved his durasteel will, but right now Mouse found it more than a little irritating. 

“Cyar’ika.” His tone is warm, but the warning underneath is very clear. Ok. Fine. She could go a bit longer. 

“Can I show you something?”

A smile pulls at the corner of his mouth as his thumbs brush small light circles over her dress. 

“I suppose it depends on what you're trying to show me.” 

Mouse leans forward and the pair meet in a slow kiss, just a soft press of their mouths that neither can seem to deny. She murmurs against his lips when she pulls back. 

“Come with me.”

——-

Link to part 2/2 here

[soundwavefucker69]

For Baby Tal'ika: Fox and Mace talking about their kid, and how precious they are.

Oooo this brings up another thing I was thinking about that I should answer so I'm gonna do two birds one stone

----------

It took a lot of bribery and frayed tempers before Fox managed to personally drag Tal'ika back to the Temple. He was going to be a responsible vod and take this confused initiate in a safe and reasonable two seater speeder with edges and seatbelts, but the only way to talk the little demon down was to promise a ride on his own personal speeder bike, which was probably the most nervewracking ride of Fox's life. It was beyond relieving that it was a short ride.

Which led to now. Carrying the kid up the steps of the temple to deliver them to the guards. Except that didn't go the way it was supposed to go, because the guards informed him High General Mace Windu was needing to speak to him.

It was Fox's humble opinion that he had entirely too much paperwork to be dealing with any of this osik. But he wasn't going to say that in front of the kid he had perched on his shoulders. So instead he followed the guard into the depths of the temple, where the councilors had their own quarters.

General Windu was there, piled up to his ears in datapads and what looked like expenditure reports. He looked a little worse for wear. There was a massive purpling bruise across his face and his arm was in a sling. Tal'ika, however, did not seem to care in the slightest, because the first thing they did was wiggle down from Fox's shoulders and dart to Mace's side to covertly whisper in his ear.

"The Emperor is all in buir's head," they hissed in his ear. "I think you gotta fix it."

"I'm not your buir," Fox said tiredly, for the millionth time. "And there is no Emperor."

"Not yet, anyways," General Windu supplied, and frowned down at the mess that had become of their hair. "You got all the way to the Senate without anyone seeing you?"

"I did!" Tal'ika declared, probably a bit too proudly. "All the way to his office."

"You could have just asked me to call him over, Tal'ika," Windu said tiredly. "We'll be talking about this later. You had the whole temple in shambles trying to find you."

"Well, the temple needs better security," Tal'ima replied boldly, and Windu stared down at them with dead eyes.

"What if someone snatched you?"

"If the temple guards can't even see me when I don't want to be seen, who can grab me?" Tal'ika demanded, and Fox had to wonder just why he was here to deliver a child personally to the Grand Master of the entire karking Order.

"Droids. Droids can grab you, Tal'ika. Please go into the living room. I need to speak to Commander Fox."

Tal'ika's eerily familiar amber eyes turned on Fox, and they pointed at him imperiously.

"This is still a rescue!" They declared in perhaps the most threatening way he had ever heard out of a seven year old child, and then they were stealing away into the living room and leaving Fox alone with the general.

"Sir, I'm not sure why they---" Fox started to say, but Mace cut him off with a wave of his hand.

"No sirs in here. I need to talk to you as a parent."

An awkward silence spilled out, and Fox blinked multiple times as he tried to reason Mace's complexion with the red hair and golden skin of the child. The coloring did not seem right. And the kid was way too damn cute, almost unbearably so, to be Mace Windu's. The temperament was just not something he could ever associate with the general.

"So, Tal'ika seems to have accidentally time traveled to perhaps six to eight years before they were even born, and just confirmed that you are the clone parent we've been looking for. Obi-Wan is perfectly fine with them being raised in the temple as he was, but it would be downright wrong of us to not extend the same offer to you. I know with the war and your current legal status, a child would not be ideal in the slightest, so I'd like to extend the temple's upbringing to Tal'ika until you're in a spot where you have all of the resources to make a decision regarding their future."

Fox stared at Mace, and Mace stared back impassively.

"Of course, this would be after we arrested the Chancellor for crimes against the Republic."

"... Sir."

"Mace, for this topic of conversation. Please."

"Mace."

"Yes, Fox?"

"That was a lot of information. Can we please track back to the time traveling seven year old child that's apparently mine?"

"Of course. Child is a bit of a rocky area, because near as we can tell, they are definitely the product of Kaminoan genetic experimentation, and as for the time traveling... Ah, they were hidden in a Zeppho temple, and the Zeppho did a lot of things with the Force they probably shouldn't have. They're a blend of your DNA and Obi-Wan's, I believe. We were trying to figure out where they got the red hair from... the mutation from your strands makes more sense now."

".... That adorable child that just got through seventeen layers of security and broke into my office is mine?"

Mace's lips twisted only slightly, and then he grimaced, probably at the pain of his swollen face.

"Yes. The adorable child that made my temple guards and your coruscant guards look like amateurs is definitely your child."

Fox wasn't sure if he should be proud or start wondering when the appropriate age to make a child run suicides for punishment was.

Wait. He had a Jedi child?

"... You'll let me make a choice later?" He asked faintly and Mace nodded.

"Yes. Either way, we think it would be in yours and theirs best interest if the protocol regarding family separation was bent a bit. It has been before and ended terribly, but... Well. They spent the first seven years of their life surrounded by vode and not in a temple, and they're extremely well adjusted, all things considered. In fact, I don't think they would be half as well off if they didn't have their, ah, as they call it, bavodu'e, around."

Fox felt like the world had been yanked out from under his feet. All he could do was stare at Mace as he tried to figure out what was left and what was right and what was happening.

".... Arresting the Chancellor for treason?"

"Commander Cody has put together an impressive dossier, and Tal'ika's crechemaster has agreed to let them stay for latemeal. If I pull you from the remainder of your shift today, would you like to look over it over some curry?"

Was Mace offering to let Fox spend time with his child? While plotting a legal coup? Counter coup? What was going on?

"... What kind of curry?"

"Korun curry. Not nearly as spicy as regular Mandalorian cuisine, but Tal'ika likes it."

"... My kid broke out of the Jedi Temple and into the Senate building and you're planning to arrest the Chancellor." He might actually faint.

"Younglings have a lot of opinions and a variety of places where they can put them," Mace said seriously. "Now, Fox, yes or no to latemeal?"

He had a damn kid, and the kid liked Korun curry and speeder bikes.

"... Yes."

"Excellent. Would you like to help with chopping? I've only got one arm until tomorrow, unfortunately."

"... Yes."

"Tal'ika, you can stop eavesdropping!" Mace called, and a head full of red curls popped out from behind the door. Big amber eyes pinned Fox in place, and he stared at this utter gremlin of a child, and wondered just what the hell his life had become.

Fox was a loyal man. He was loyal to the Republic, and he was loyal to the vode, and he was loyal to the Jedi. But none of that... none of that mattered in the face of being loyal to messy braids and big amber eyes and freckles over dark skin.

"If I call you buir again, will you be a weirdo?" They demanded, and Fox blinked, slow and steady.

"If I called you a brat, would you call it child abuse?"

"Yes."

"Then no, I won't be a weirdo."

"Good." And then they marched out with all the self importance of a child who had never once been told to doubt themself, and tiny fingers seized his gloved hand. "You better not have nasty cuticles, too."

... He had no idea what that was about, but stars, he had a kid, and they were perfect, and this was his life now.