#anyway see if you can spot my childhood headcanons about luke in here

[yellowocaballero]

Fox & Leia's Star Wars Holiday Special

SUBJECT: Office Party

BODY:

This is a notice to all guardsmen that next Zhellsday during night shift we will have a short holiday celebration. As the Senate building will be closed, we may hold it in Conference Room A (location subject to change - discussions on choosing our least favorite senator’s office welcome). As this gathering and its funding may fall outside of official SOP, I urge all guardsmen to only discuss the manner in private. Attendance is optional.

FOX

ADDENDUM: This is not because I’m getting laid.

ADDENDUM: I’m not getting laid.

EXTREMELY goofy...fluff AU of Twilight On Owl Creek Bridge. Technically speaking you don't need to read that in order to read this, but I will say that it will probably be extremely bugfuck if you don't.

Call it a 'mistaken for dating when in reality we're partners in crime for a murder plot'. But a Christmas Special. That ended up a lot longer than intended.

CW for discussion/suspicion of coerced sex. 28k of stupidity under the cut. I'm very sorry.

“I’m just not certain that a sniper’s the best assasination method.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Leia said brusquely. She closed the manila folder, tapping it professionally on the desk to settle out the flimsi. “It’s subtle. It’s tasteful. He’ll never see it coming.”

“Is it important that the assasination’s tasteful?” Fox asked, slightly aghast. This woman’s priorities. “You’re the one who said that Force sensitives can sense danger and intention through the Force. A sniper’s too much buildup. It has to be instant.”

“As if planning to stab him in the back isn’t too much buildup?”

“Not if we know he can’t read you in the Force and he never bothers to read me.” Fox pinched the bridge of his nose, settling back in the comfortable leather office chair. “You’re the one who says poison won’t work.”

“Too much buildup,” Leia said firmly. Fox rolled his eyes. She squinted above his head, looking at the large silver Alderanian style clock above the door. It was completely indecipherable to Fox and seemed to rely on the reflection of the light on Mt. Aldera, but it seemed to make sense to Leia. “You realize it’s 0100. Don’t you have the first shift at 0600?”

“We’re actually engineered to only need around four hours of sleep a night.” But Fox stood up anyway, grabbing his bucket from the floor next to the chair. “Try not to stab Senator K’lun during the special committee meeting tomorrow.”

“Really?” Leia asked with abject interest. Fox very, very rarely told that sort of clone secrets, and she was always interested each time. “Then why do you all drink so much caff?”

“Life’s little joys.” They were also all very sensitive to caffeine, and at this rate it was a psychological dependence. “Goodnight, Senator.”

“Goodnight, Captain.”

They didn’t smile at each other, but Fox and Leia were not smiling people. Leia said it gave her hives and Fox got self-conscious about public displays of emotion. But he liked to think their stilted goodbyes were just a little warm, and when he exited Junior Senator Leia Organa’s office at 0100 hours with his bucket tucked under his arm he was smiling just a little. Just to himself.

Stone stood frozen in front of him, rifle half-hoisted over his shoulder.

Fox stared at him.

Stone stared at his bucket.

Fox stared at Stone staring at his bucket.

Stone squinted at Fox’s smile.

Fox quickly dropped the smile.

“Goodnight, Lieutenant.”

“Uh,” Lieutenant said.

Fox took the last trolley back to the barracks, staring out the window the entire time.

*********

Admittedly, Fox had been a little more tired than usual lately.

The whole ‘time traveling senator slash Rebel Princess’ situation was stressful, as were their continued assasination plots. Senator Bail Organa was doing a relatively successful job of both flying Leia under the radar (as much as one ever could with Leia) and keeping her from going after the Chancellor with a knife immediately, but Fox had already been sent on a bit of a personal and emotional journey vis a vis his place in the galaxy and it had left him with the desire to sleep for the next decade in the hopes that he’d wake up to a refreshing lack of totalitarianism.

Fox was well aware that recruiting him to the assasination mission made the most objective sense. He was probably the life form closest to the Chancellor, and completely above (or below) suspicion. He had complete control over the police, the judicial system, government security, and he could swing jurisdiction over a significant percentage of the military. Most importantly, Fox could do just about anything and put it in the name of ‘government security’. These useful attributes explained why Leia sought him out for help, while also explaining why it had been such a completely fucking awful idea to seek him out for help that it had convinced him of her incompetence for weeks.

“You realize that it is a miracle I didn’t turn you in, right?” Fox had said, roughly a dozen times post voyage of self discovery. “You took the most dangerous gamble possible on the highest stakes mission possible.”

“The Force led me to you,” Leia had said breezily, “and I always play to win.”

And there was no argument to be made against that.

Leia had been in the past for a little less than three months, in the Senate around two months, and a pain in Fox’s ass for six weeks. He did not realize they were friends until Leia had breezily said something about how friends help each other crawl into these ventilation shafts, so hop to it. He had felt weirded out, somewhat used, and a little bit of what felt like pleasant indigestion. He could not identify it, and Leia kept him busy and stressed enough that he didn’t have time to figure it out.

As both a cause, side-effect, symptom, and consequence, it took Fox a solid five minutes to realize that the breakroom had fallen completely silent when he walked in. He got his caff in a haze, knocking it back like engine room moonshine as the room reluctantly kicked back into quiet conversation. A record number of officers were looking at him out of the corner of their eyes. Stone was flipping through his datapad at record speed while holding it upside down.

Fox sighed and put his cup down. “Who broke it.”

The room erupted into furious protests - the first stage of grief, denial. A third of the room were looking into their cups and avoiding eye contact, another third were swearing up and down that nothing was broken, and another confused third were proclaiming that they didn’t do it!

“If I have to find out for myself instead of receiving a confession,” Fox said, leaving unsaid the fact that he will find out, “the punishment will be three times as severe.”

Two thirds of the room were now swearing up and down that they didn’t do it (whatever it was)! Yet none were confessing. Hm. Inconvenient - Fox would also like to know what was broken.

Strangely, the only person who approached him was Stone. Who did look nervous, but almost more uncomfortable than nervous.

“Uh, Captain - can I talk to you? In private?” Fox narrowed his eyes. “Nothing’s broken, I swear.” Fox glared. “Nothing’s wrong, just - come on, please?”

Fox went, and they both walked awkwardly down the hall to Fox’s office. Fox realized too late that he had forgotten his coffee in the break room, and was left collapsing in abject despair onto his office chair. His expressions of abject despair were identical to every other expression he made, but there was a reason for that.

“Look, uh, Captain.” Stone leaned against the wall, before thinking better of it and moving to sit in Fox’s visitor chair. He leaned forward, folding his hands on the desk. “You know you can tell me anything, right?”

“Nothing above your clearance level.”

“Right, right - I mean, you know, even stuff that isn’t - classified.”

Fox began to worry that Stone knew about the assasination plot against the Chancellor.

He had to fight to keep himself from looking or sounding defensive. He kept his shoulders straight and his glower on his face, but he couldn’t stop himself from over-arranging his stacks of flimsi. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Stone opened his mouth, then closed it. A series of complex expressions crossed his face before he steeled himself, leaning forward. “I’m not going to make you tell me. It’s none of my business.”

“Whatever you’re thinking of, it definitely isn’t,” Fox said. He arranged his flimsi faster. Stone’s eyes followed the motion.

“Look, I just…” Stone pulled another few uncomfortable faces before he steeled himself, falling into a serious and professional calm. “Is Junior Senator Organa acting inappropriately towards you?”

Fox stared at him. He furiously tried to work out if plotting to assassinate your boss was inappropriate for the workplace.

“Uh,” Fox said, abruptly sweating a bit. “Can you specify?”

Stone kept his face calm, almost reassuring. “Is Junior Senator Organa asking you to do things that are not within your job description?”

Fox vividly remembered her asking him to hoist her into the ventilation shaft. Is that what he meant? How much did they know? He trusted his men to follow his lead and back him up on his decisions, but this was a large ask. It was unlikely enough that Leia got through to him - he couldn’t take a chance on her getting through to Stone. Even if, strictly, Stone was halfway seditious already.

But he couldn’t throw her under the bus like this. He had accepted his role as an accomplice a long time ago. He was relatively certain that Leia would manage to extract him before the execution, but Fox always took responsibility for his own actions. He wasn’t ashamed of any of them.

“She’s not asking me to do anything I don’t want to do,” Fox said firmly. Stone’s eyes widened. “I take full responsibility for this. I have to request that you and the men don’t interrogate the matter any further.”

Very slowly, Stone said, “So we don’t need to arrange any ‘accidents’.”

Fox’s hand jerked, spilling the stack of flimsi over his desk. Crap. They definitely knew. They couldn’t know about the assasination thing, they would have turned him in by now. But his behavior was suspicious. Shit. Of course it was suspicious - Fox had been voluntarily interacting with a natborn. He had thought he had kept it under the radar by making sure only to really interact in private, but in retrospect maybe that was even more suspicious -

“No accidents,” Fox said. He aimed for firm, but maybe he landed a little closer to frantic. “Absolutely none. If anybody’s suggesting accidents, tell them that I’ve banned them.” The thought of his guard bumping off Leia - and they could find a dozen ways to get it done completely legally - stressed him out. He’d invested way too much time in the assasination thing to do it by himself. Fox knew himself, or at least he’s learned recently. He’d completely give up the minute she wasn’t around to nag him. “In fact, I don’t want anything happening to her at all. She’s completely off-limits.”

Stone’s eyes narrowed. “Is she.”

“That means no search and seizures.” That was probably the first time Fox had ever said that sentence. “If that’s all, Lieutenant, you’re dismissed. I have back to back meetings today and I’m very busy.”

“Uh huh,” Stone said slowly, standing up as ordered. “I’ll just get the Junior Senator on special protection detail, then.”

“Yes, that works,” Fox said, barely even listening in favor of booting up his datacom and looking very busy. “Can you get me my cup back? You made me leave it.”

Stone left, leaving Fox with a sense of both anxiety and satisfaction. At least that problem was resolved. Fox held a strict ‘take care of a problem once so you didn’t have to take care of it again’ policy, and he decided that this definitely counted.

Maybe.

**********

“Well, that’s mysterious.”

“I know,” Fox said grimly. “I might have to take suppressive action.”

“Suppress the knowledge of sentient rights abuses all you want,” Leia pointed out, delicately tearing a corner of a savory pastry before stuffing it in her mouth. “You can’t suppress office gossip. Trust me. When I was sixteen I led a whisper campaign against another senior aide I didn’t like. In a month she was out of there in disgrace with a probation order.”

“Do you think we’re soulmates?” Fox asked her seriously. “Like, born to meet?”

“I don’t see why not,” the time traveling murderous princess said frankly.

The Liberty sculpture loomed down above them.

They were sitting in the park across the street from the Senate building. Like every other park on Coruscant, it was more of a rooftop affair: an artificially constructed paradise, its plastic nature allowing it to attain heights of beauty and low maintenance that an organic garden could never achieve. Fox related.

Also like most Coruscant parks, it was the 1,400th floor of a 1,600 floor building - which was extremely high for Coruscant, and a prime show of the Senate district’s prime location. As such, and yet in tasteful deference to the sprinkle of nature in duracrete hell, there was a faux ‘sky’ three stories above them, complete with fake clouds and a sun. Artistic sculptures, meant to enrich the mind, dotted the gardens. The Liberty sculpture - portrayed by a Toydarian in flight arching high towards the sky - provided a semi-ironic backdrop to their conversation on a wrought durasteel bench. Leia’s lunch separated them, a neat four tiered bento. Fox had wondered if her father’s servant staff packed it for her before he saw that it was bought from the convenience store. Leia claimed that she had lost the taste for anything without preservatives.

It was a very nice space, and as such it had four entrances highly guarded by Fox’s men. You had to show a Senate badge for entry, and Fox’s men regularly patrolled the space. Fox had bullshitted something about how spaces just outside government buildings were hotspots for assassinations, but in reality it was just good/bad for morale for the senators to feel constantly watched even during their break times.

He had already seen two of his men patrolling through the small area he and Leia were in. They had both moved on very quickly.

“At any rate,” Leia said, after heroically swallowing her bread, “I am content to play the long game. We still have a year and a half left, and my time table more than accommodates for any delays. However, if suspicions are already rising, we might have to accelerate the schedule.”

“You know what would help accelerate our schedule,” Fox said seriously.

“No.”

“I have an idea for something that would really get this over with quicker.”

“I said no.”

“The convenience would be unmatched.”

“I’ve already said no!”

“I hate the Jedi as much as the next programmed Jedi subordinate with sleeper programming to mass-murder them,” Fox said aggressively, or as aggressive as Fox ever got, “but they are objectively our best bet. He has stupid magic. They have stupid magic. He can backflip five times in the air. They can backflip five times in the air.” Fox really fucking hated Obi-Wan Kenobi, who felt the need to demonstrate this whenever he was drunk. Which was all the time. “They would be highly invested in not being murdered. They’re the most skilled soldiers for this mission, which is their specialty. And neither of us can backflip five times in the air, Leia!”

“And there is still one problem with that.” Leia crammed the rest of the bread in her mouth aggressively, reaching out to unscrew the last tier of her bento - milky, creamy soup. Fox had recently learned that Alderaanians exclusively ate bread and dairy. He was allergic to dairy, found bread too soft and mashy, and did not understand the appeal. “The Emperor can sense every Jedi in this time period completely, and he’s more than aware of their identities. He would be able to sense any hostility or murderous intentions from them perfectly well.”

“They would have the element of surprise -”

“The only ones who would truly have the element of surprise are you and me.” Leia jabbed her wide, shallow spoon at him. “Which is why we are the ones who are doing it. We can’t afford to take any chances.”

“Oh, because you’ve been so careful.”

“Was learning sarcasm quite necessary?” Leia asked waspishly.

“I work a service position,” Fox panned. “I learned sarcasm my second week here.”

Despite herself, Leia smiled. “I learned them from princess lessons. Did you know that Alderaanian princesses are supposed to be polite?”

“Really.” Out of the corner of Fox’s eye, he saw two of his men enter on their regular patrol. “And are Alderaanian princesses supposed to yell like a ship engine?”

“I’m the only Alderaanian princess you know.” Leia stuck her nose in the air, a smile creeping across her face. “You can’t prove that they don’t.”

Despite himself, Fox smiled too. It felt freakish, and it seemed to give him indigestion. Was laughter supposed to do that? He’d have to ask Stone. “If I didn’t know any better, Princess, I’d say that you were raised on Mandalore.”

Two more guards poked their heads in. They were all staring at Fox and Leia.

Leia lightly punched him on the arm, making him thankful for the armor. Leia ‘lightly’ punched you very frequently, which was problematic considering the way she unconsciously used the Force to augment her body. “Mandalore doesn’t teach diplomacy, thank you.”

“And Princess lessons don’t teach you that aim, but you’re a great shot anyway.”

Then they were both smiling at each other, and two more troopers skidded into view at the entrance on the other side of the clearing. It was only at that moment that Fox realized six of his men were gawking at him.

Fox stood up, making all six troopers jerk to attention. “Is there an emergency, men?”

Indigo, suddenly abandoned at the head of the pack by his compatriot, saluted sharply. “No, sir!”

“Do you need me for something?”

Leia sipped loudly at her soup.

“No, sir!”

“Then why aren’t you on your patrol routes?”

“Yes, sir!”

“As an answer, that doesn’t make a lot of sense,” Leia said unnecessarily.

“I fail to see what any of this has to do with you,” Fox told her. He turned back to his men, who were now both standing at attention and faintly goggling. Or maybe they had always been goggling. Fox has been too busy imagining Leia in beskar’gam. Terrifying, and far inferior to Jedi Leia. It also mentally connected her with Jango Fett, which he objectively hated very much. “If you have nothing useful to say then get back to work!”

The men helpfully got back to work.

Leia sipped loudly at her soup.

“Office gossip,” she said wisely, putting her spoon down into her bowl. “You’ll never stop it.”

“Well, let me know if the senators start noticing any strange behavior between us,” Fox said, aggravated beyond all measure. And a little stressed out - something about plotting to murder your psychic, mind reading boss right under his nose left you on edge. “We can’t afford for everyone to be suspicious. Or for anybody to be suspicious, but it seems that ship has left atmo.”

“Oh, relax,” Leia said. “None of the senators realize you exist, much less are capable of picking your armor out of a lineup. They won’t notice a thing.”

“Hm,” Fox said. “Out of curiosity, during your time as Senator how much of the Empire knew perfectly well that you were a prominent figure in the Rebellion?”

Leia sipped her soup loudly.

*********

The situation only grew more dire.

Fox had no idea that agreeing to the assasination of a Sith Lord would cause so many problems - or, at least, he’d anticipated that the main problem would take up most of his attention. Instead, he found himself desperately trying to dodge his subordinates, who suddenly seemed to be absolutely everywhere and in every location where he’d prefer that they weren’t.

He barely even had an excuse to bitch them out over it. They always found a perfectly good explanation for popping up at his elbow, or suddenly being in the same location as him and Leia. It was putting a crimp in their plotting and Leia had a tendency to backseat Captain. Apparently she had been a general of her Rebellion (“And a political leader - we were short staffed”), which Fox fully believed and left him with a great deal of confidence that she was a thousand times more competent than those idiot Jedi, but they had opposing philosophies on leadership and her comments were usually unhelpful.

“Will you at least tell them to give it a rest?” Leia said, interrupting their very important conversation about Senator Hu’lun’s abysmal love life. “They’re everywhere. As someone who grew up with Stormtroopers, it’s almost anxiety provoking.”

“Almost?”

“I don’t experience stress,” Leia said, with a completely straight face. “Yesterday Senator Julep was flirting with me again, quite atrociously -”

“He was what?” Fox cried, outraged. “With that hygiene?”

“I know! And suddenly one of your men was right there, with some made-up summon from my father! It was ridiculous.” Leia narrowed her eyes at him. “Of course, you didn’t give them orders to do that.”

“Not that I recall,” Fox said honestly.

“So, naturally, you’ll tell them to cut it out.”

Fox vaguely implied he might do as such, and then completely failed to do that. Leia doubtlessly would not appreciate it, but Kenobi hadn’t appreciated Cody giving him a bedtime either. Leia, of course, was much more competent than the average incompetent Jedi, much less the gratuitously incompetent Kenobi, but that didn’t account for the incompetence of others around her. Or her reckless idiot streak.

The entire situation made it difficult to focus on work. Fox’s focus had already been comprimised vis a vis the identity crisis, the political and ideological shift, the stress of interacting with a natborn, the introduction of a friend to his existence, and the murder thing, but the sudden unpredictable behavior didn’t help.

The fact that work had been in a bit of a frenzy lately didn’t help either. A new Sith Lord had burst onto the scene, and reports from the front suggested that they were a terrifying menace who commanded armies with ease. When Fox bothered to listen to what the senators were saying, he heard a lot of fear mongering: that the Sith would just keep coming and coming, what were those Jedi doing, wasn’t this supposed to be their job, why are we fighting their battles?

This was ironic for more than one reason. Fox was also somewhat curious about the Sith Lord - Lord Sidious hadn’t even mentioned him or claimed him as his apprentice in their weekly meetings, and Fox personally considered himself the expert in evil - but Leia told him not to worry about it. Sometimes Fox had the opinion that Leia should worry about more things.

What did help was Leia’s genius suggestion that he stop caring about his work. Fox had too many responsibilities to start slacking off, and they had designed his workload with the expectation that he work fifteen hour days, and like it or not they still had prison riots to quash, etc, but Fox found a subtle and sublime joy in simply no longer caring. His police chief, military chief, and prison head could take care of things. All they needed from him was validation and forwarding mailcoms. These meetings weren’t necessary. This micromanaging wasn’t necessary. When he killed his boss and Leia hired him to be a secret service agent in her palace he wouldn’t have to worry about any of this.

Or something. Fox didn’t know what would happen to Leia after she averted her future. He wasn’t thinking about it. Fox was quite adept at avoiding thinking about things he didn’t want to think about.

After a particularly aggravating day, Fox finally utilized his hard-fought independence and responded to an extremely rude mailcom by the ‘Chief of Police’ by turning his computer off. They wouldn’t completely take over the police until the third year, but Fox was counting down the days already. Leia would probably call that ‘bad’ or something, but she didn’t have to deal with middle aged men throwing a tantrum.

He checked her schedule and saw that she would be in her office for the next hour until her next special committee meeting for diplomatic missions to war-torn planets, which was the exact kind of useless thing Leia was always doing. Fox breezed past useless people wanting useless things from him in the hallway, finally stopping at the humble office next to Bail Organa’s and throwing the door open.

“Leia, you will not believe the shit -”

Bail Organa and Padme Amidala stopped short, slowly turning their heads in sync to stare at Fox. Fox froze in the doorway. Bail froze halfway through pouring himself a cup of wine. Padme froze half-way through her drink.

Fox, a genetically engineered super soldier trained to have unnatural reflexes in the battlefield, did not miss a beat. “Good evening, Senator Organa. Is Junior Senator Organa present?”

Amidala opened her mouth, then closed it.

Bail’s drink spilled over his hands and he jerked back, cursing. He quickly righted the bottle, screwing the cap back on with one finger and replacing it on the sideboard. “I - I’m sorry, Captain, did you say something?”

“Is Junior Senator Organa present, sir?” Fox repeated obediently.

“I - the other thing.”

“Sir?”

“You said something when you walked in,” Amidala said, wearing a unique kind of stressed expression - as if objects on Coruscant were dropping upwards, or Mace Windu was smiling. “What was it?”

“I’m sorry, ma’am, I don’t understand the question.”

“I - I’m sorry, I must have…” Amidala shook herself. Fox internally congratulated himself. The ‘play dumb clone’ gambit always worked. “Never mind. I’m afraid Leia just stepped out for a moment for some food.”

“Just a social call,” Bail assured Fox, as if Fox was suddenly concerned that the whole time travel jig was up. “Is there anything you need from her?” Fox stared at Bail very pointedly, inclining his head. Bail’s eyes widened. “Right, of course. I forgot. She needs her…security updated. Completely blew my mind.”

“She needs her security updated,” Amidala slowly repeated. She was staring at Bail, her expression growing more and more unimpressed. Fox was also growing unimpressed. “Leia’s security clearance is already very high for a Junior Senator, Bail.”

Bail laughed awkwardly. Fox silently wished that Obi-Wan Kenobi, that incompetent asshole, had better taste in adopted fathers. “She’s a very promising up and comer! Isn’t that right, Captain?”

Idiot. “Yes, sir. If she’ll be back momentarily, I can wait for her.”

Fox moved to stand by the door. He waited. Bail and Amidala abruptly looked extremely awkward. That was the problem with that group - the ones that Leia called the ‘clone rights activists’ with a certain begrudging fondness, and a small amount of surprise. They always acted as if he was there. And they were slightly more reluctant to believe he was stupid.

Amidala tilted an eyebrow at Bail. From sheer association with both Leia and Bail, Fox read very clearly ‘is this fascist stooge onto us?’. Bail’s eyebrow just twitched as he took a sip of his drink, which effectively communicated ‘don’t worry about him and forget he exists ha ha ha’.

Bail was periodically updated on the Plot. He was fully aware of it, and he was also unfortunately aware of Fox’s involvement. For his own safety - and, more importantly, Leia and Fox’s safety - they told him the absolute minimum. Fox hadn’t yet privileged the man with knowledge that he had a personality. If he had his way it would stay that way.

“So,” Amidala said, who was not privileged with jack shit, slowly turning back to Bail, “How did Leia come to the Senate, anyway? It feels like she burst onto the scene.”

“It was certainly explosive,” Bail said wryly. “She’s Breha’s cousin. Pure nepotism, I’m afraid, but she’s the only feasible heir to the throne right now and Breha wanted her to gain some political experience in case anything happened. She’s had years of unofficial experience in Alderaanian government, but this is her first true galactic position. I’d say she’s risen to the task admirably.”

“Is this really her first political experience?” Amidala asked, shocked. Bail made a ‘so-so’ movement with his hand. “She’s a natural, then. I’ve never met such a passionate and astute senator. Breha must be very proud of her.”

“Yes,” Bail said, smile tugging at his lips, “we are.”

The man was about as subtle as his daughter. Fox was slightly disgusted by how trusting the man was. A few little state secrets about the Alderaanian royal house and both he and Queen Organa folded like a house of regicidal cards.

He still looked at her with a certain shock sometimes - as if he discovered her again every time she spoke. It was more than surprise or bewilderment. Fox saw a strange kind of awe in him whenever he looked at Leia. As if he never knew that the galaxy could produce this, and he had never expected that it could be his.

“Are you all going back to Alderaan for Life Day?” Amidala asked, pulling Fox back to attention. “I hear your snow festivals are stunning.”

The fuck was ‘Life Day’.

“Not as stunning as Naboo’s waterfall art,” Bail demurred. Fox rolled his eyes. “But yes, I’m flying back in three days to spend the holidays with Breha. And my inlaws.” Amidala laughed, as if she also had to deal with inlaws. She did not. Fox dealt with her inlaws. “I’m trying to convince Leia to come back with us, but I think she might want to stay here. Young politicians, you know.”

Amidala made a sympathetic noise. “I didn’t see my family for all four years I was Queen. I know they aren’t happy they missed out on my teenage years.” What the fuck. This explained so many of her shit decisions. “I hope she’s able to spend the holidays with you.”

Fox still did not know what ‘Life Day’ was, and he wouldn’t care if it wasn’t for the fact that it seemed to be a) important and b) related to Leia. Come to think of it, the Senate had been closed at around this time last year. Maybe that had something to do with it.

“Yeah,” Bail said lowly, “hate to miss out on anything…what about you, Padme? Are you returning home to Naboo?”

But Amidala just smiled, a little sadly. It looked like Leia’s sad smile. For some reason, Fox didn’t like that. What was wrong with her life? She had a planet and everything. “I’m afraid my parents are also missing out on my twenties. I’ll see them when I retire.”

Bail opened his mouth to say something - hopefully not inspirational about family, and hopefully no suggestions about her family on Coruscant - when the door banged open. Bail and Amidala started, but it was just Leia striding into the room.

“Fox, you won’t believe the shit - oh, you two are still here.” Leia stopped short, ignoring Bail’s raised eyebrow and Amidala’s slight shock. She turned to Fox, who was still doing his wall impression. “You won’t believe the shit I ran into on the way back here. Senator Kira’s hat has an entire bird on it, and I think it’s alive.”

“That’s very interesting, ma’am.” Fox radiated the thoughts ‘We are in mixed company’ as loudly as he physically could. Leia grimaced, smelling his displeasure. “I hoped to speak with you regarding your security clearance. It’s nonurgent.”

Which meant, of course, that Fox had also come here to bitch and he had grown trapped in a natborn web. Fox and Leia understood each other like this. Bail Organa, judging by his panicked looks, probably thought that Fox had come to talk about secret future business. He did not understand either of them, although he obviously yearned for Leia’s hard-won approval. He seemed relatively oblivious to the fact that Leia worshiped him, which always brought up the adage ‘any adult who thinks their father is perfect is a crazy person’. Granted, Leia’s worship looked very much like unbridled hostility.

“I see duty calls yet again,” Bail said quickly, downing the rest of his drink very fast and placing it back on the sideboard. “Padme and I will get out of your hair, Leia. We’ll see you at the vote tomorrow. Have a nice night.” He paused, just for a second. “Have you considered my invitation for Life Day?”

Leia just stared at him, face blank, before abruptly looking away. Finally, she said, “Maybe. Goodnight, Senators.”

Amidala looked at Bail, hoping for a compatriot in her confusion, only to be met with a badly hidden sadness. She looked at Fox, who realized only too late that Leia had automatically stood right next to him. Most people stayed away from the fuck-off big rifle.

“If it’s not too much trouble, Captain Fox,” Amidala said slowly, “would it be possible for you to walk me to my car service? It’s grown dark out.”

The path to the car service was excruciatingly well-lit, covered, and in one of the safest districts of Coruscant. “Of course, ma’am.” Fox inclined his head at Bail, then Leia. “Senator Organa. Junior Senator Organa.”

“Come right back here afterwards,” Leia said, folding her arms. “We still have to talk about my security clearance.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Fox opened the door for Amidala, ushering her though. “I’ll be back momentarily.”

The last thing he saw before the door closed was Leia’s slightly disturbed face.

He and Amidala walked in silence down the quiet halls. It was late, but that never disturbed the Senate. You didn’t make it to senator by going home at 1700, and the junior aides were lucky if they went home at all. But the sessions were over with, and people rarely had anyplace urgent to be, and Fox and Amidala walked down the halls with only the clicks of his heel to accentuate the silence.

It was only once they reached the outside docks to the car services that Amidala stopped. The glowing white lights of the city painted her face, giving her perfect make-up an ethereal glow. They gave her heavy robes a strange, dramatic quality, as if she was spreading her wings. Senator Amidala always looked like an angel, and she always carried herself as such. It was a fair contrast to Leia, who was beautiful until she opened her mouth.

“Captain Fox, may I ask you a question?”

Fox stopped next to her. Under no circumstances may she ask him a question. “Of course.”

Amidala pressed her thumb to a beautiful silver ring on her finger, curving and delicate. “Leia seems quite fond of you.”

Shit. Not this again. It had spread to the natborns? How? His men weren’t snitches. “Why would you say so?”

“Oh, lots of reasons.” Amidala began twisting the ring on her finger. One sharp turn clockwise, another counterclockwise. “I have some professional working relationships with the military.” Read: her very unprofessional relationship had been gossiping with Rex. Great. That was really what Fox needed. He loved this. How did this get to Rex? “But I thought it might be helpful to both you and Leia to give my support. However much that would mean to the both of you.”

Okay. Wow! How many other senators secretly wanted to kill the Chancellor? Could this be a coup situation?

“It’s…appreciated, ma’am,” Fox said slowly. “But I’m not sure what…”

“You don’t have to talk about it. It’s probably best if I don't know the details. I just wanted to say…” Amidala took a deep breath, heart-shaped face intent and focused. “I think it’s a beautiful thing. In a place like this, in a time like this…in a galaxy that feels like it wants to stifle everything genuine and good…no matter what others try to tell you, Captain, it’s a beautiful thing. Alright?”

Wow. Fox had been under the impression the Chancellor was a mentor to Amidala. It had prompted some serious concern from both him and Leia regarding Padme Amidala’s potential evilness. He had no idea that she supported this.

He also had no idea what she was supporting. Did she know what she was supporting? Did Bail tell her? Wouldn’t Bail at least ask Leia before telling her? He was a surprisingly discrete person. Maybe she just knew that Fox and Leia had turned their mutual focus towards crime. Maybe she knew that the plan was to assassinate the Chancellor in order to prevent several genocides and a despotic dictatorship. Maybe she had a different, third misconception.

Did Amidala find murder beautiful? She didn’t seem the type, but Leia had to have gotten it from somewhere. And it wasn’t from Bail or Breha. He had figured perhaps her birth father, but it was downright insulting to insinuate that she had inherited anything from the man. Worse deadbeat than Jango, which was sincerely saying something.

Out of lack of anything better to say, Fox went with the tried and true, “Yes, ma’am. Have a nice night.”

Amidala looked disappointed, which made Fox reflexively uncomfortable, but she nodded and stepped away anyway. Fox carefully watched her to make sure that she reached the waiting car, waiting alone underneath the glowing white lights of the city, before turning around and diving back into the glimmering Senate halls. Where everything was perfectly lit, and so the evil things had to hide in plain sight.

When Fox made it back to Leia’s office, he made sure to knock first this time. He heard the sound of faint voices behind the door, but his knock cut them off shortly. He waited for Leia’s military grunt of acknowledgement before stepping back inside, nodding his head at Leia and Bail as he locked the door securely behind him. They were awkwardly looking away from each other - Leia at the ground, Bail at the ceiling.

“Senators.” Fox nodded at both of them, ignoring Leia’s moue of distaste. “Senator Amidala’s gone home. I should return to my post.”

“Oh, honestly, Fox, we’re not in mixed company anymore,” Leia snapped. It was the end of a long day, and her elaborate fishtail braid was frizzing just a little at the edges. “You can shut it off.”

“Of course,” Fox said stiffly, not shutting it off whatsoever. Bail Organa was still looking at him, and he could feel the back of his neck prickling. “If you don’t need me for anything, Junior Senator, I will leave you and Senator Organa to your work.”

Leia looked downright offended. Her soft fabric blazer with the long split train was draped over the back of her office chair, leaving her in the sharply cut pants and the long Alderaanian tunic split at the thigh. With her heeled boots and the sleeves rolled up to her elbow, she looked almost casual. Almost. “Fox. It’s just my father. Go ahead and take off the bucket, we may as well talk coups.”

Completely automatically and instinctively, Fox reached up his hand to his bucket latch.

His mind didn’t stop him, but his body did. His hand froze halfway up, hovering at his chest. For some strange reason, his heart had sped up.

Just do it. A senator requested you to do it, and it wasn’t against any regulations. Just do it. A Jedi wanted you to. Just…

Just what? It was Leia. She wasn’t either of those things. Or she wasn’t only those things. Or she was more than those things - if there was any Jedi who was worth the loyalty and trust Kamino had forced into them, wasn’t it Leia?

She must have picked something up, because Leia’s eyes abruptly widened. “Forget about it, Captain. I have to wrap things up with my father anyway. Go ahead and wait for me outside.”

Thank the god of mercy. Fox relaxed immediately. “Yes, ma’am.”

He stood alone in the hallway, ramrod straight.

After a few minutes, he looked around. Nobody was coming down the hallway. He checked his maps, and saw that there was nobody in the hallways in the wing.

Keeping a careful eye on the maps and live tracking of the senators, Fox carefully leaned against the wall.

Finally, after muted conversation punctuated by Leia’s characteristic loud noises, Bail Organa exited the office. He smiled awkwardly at Fox, who had straightened the second he heard the hinges of the door creak.

“Have a good night, Captain.” He paused for a second, staring at Fox. Fox stared back. Abruptly, he said, “So, you and my daughter…”

Fox stared blankly at him. He already knew about the coup thing. There was no confusion here. “Sir?”

Bail gave him another strange look before shaking his head abruptly. “Never mind. Good night.”

“Good night, sir.”

Leia emerged soon after, expression a little more troubled than before. She stopped at the doorway, the door wide open and allowing soft yellow light to stream outwards from her office. She frowned at Fox, who felt deeply as if he had done something wrong. Her expression cleared immediately, as if she had heard his feelings. Damn Jedi magic.

Fox opened his mouth to say something, but Leia beat him to it.

“I’m sorry.” Leia’s mouth was pulled tight, serious and solemn, and Fox fought the urge to recoil in shock. “I didn’t account for your discomfort. I should be more sensitive to your feelings when you aren’t in a position to tell me what you want.”

Fox mumbled something that may have been a derogatory statement about feelings.

“I think I forgot that it wasn’t all an act.” Leia stepped out from inside her office, moving to lean against the wall next to him. Her fishtail braid brushed the edge of his armor, wispy brown strands clinging to the red. “Or - well, it is, but you know what I mean.”

“I don’t,” Fox said stiffly.

“I’m still learning the whole situation, obviously. But it’s evident that there are two Foxes, aren’t there?” Leia turned a keen eye on him, and Fox felt the back of his neck prickle again. Damn Jedi magic. “There’s the way you are forced to act in front of the other senators, and there’s the way you act in front of your men and me. It’s the dark and light sides of the mountain. I thought my father ought to fall into the second category, but I suppose I misjudged - perhaps it’s the royalty…”

“You know you’re a senator, right?” Fox said, cutting her off without a twinge of guilt. “You’re royalty. You’re the Jedi.” (“I am not -”). “What makes you so different from the rest of them? The programming doesn’t exempt you. That righteousness doesn’t erase that.”

Leia stared very hard at the ground in thought. Fox let her, knowing that once in a while she had to think hard about what to say, and let himself relax against the wall. The aircon hummed, a steady and omnipresent sound adding another note to the choir of soft steps and voices in the distance.

Finally, she said, “But I am different.”

And, of course, she was right: for all that Leia was the same as the others, she wasn’t the same at all. And for all that natborns freaked him out, Leia never did. Maybe there were three Foxes, because Fox sure as hell didn’t show his subordinates the face he showed Leia.

“Yes, you are.”

“What is it about me,” Leia asked, “that makes me different?”

Fox didn’t know.

What didn’t make her different? She was a fake senator, a Jedi-that-never-was. She would be born several years from now and the nature of the timelines was uncertain. Two of her parents didn’t know what to do with her and the other two barely knew she existed. There was nothing about Leia that made her different save for her sheer and overwhelming difference; save for how she was nobody at all; save for how she was the only natborn who had ever truly felt real to Fox. Maybe even one of the few clones.

It was as if she was no different from Fox, not really. Not in any way that mattered.

Fox opened his mouth to answer her - to tell her that she wasn’t as different from the others as she liked to think, to say that if she was truly from this time then she wouldn’t be different at all. To say that he didn’t know what made her different: only that she was, and that didn’t change the reality of their lives and situations. To ask her what would happen once they killed the Chancellor. But the last thought made the words stop in his throat, hard and fast and immobile. He couldn’t force them out. He didn’t even want to try. And, as always, Fox retreated.

“What’s Life Day?”

Leia blinked, thrown a little by the hard left turn of the conversation. “Did they not tell you what holidays are?” Fox gave her a flat, unimpressed look. “Right. Well, it’s just some important holiday in human cultures. Some alien cultures celebrate it too, occasionally as a result of colonialism. I believe the Wookies are enthusiastic practitioners.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I believe it’s a standardized synthesis of hundreds of different human wintertime festivals,” Leia said thoughtfully, unintentionally flexing the princess education. “That sort of standardization was very common under the early days of the Republic, as its denizens attempted to form some sort of unified galactic identity. Of course, that galactic identity often just meant human identity, but it’s hardly as if humans are homogenous either. Present company excluded.”

“Thanks.”

“It’s really nothing exciting. Holidays that every culture celebrates are so over-generalized that they’re insufferably bland. Still, they’re the holidays that galactic employees get off, so we celebrate them.” Leia waved a dismissive hand. “Outdoors art, snow and candle festivals, family togetherness, a great deal of food. The usual.”

“Your father wants you to go home for Life Day,” Fox said slowly, and Leia’s lips thinned. “But you don’t want to.”

“Well, I hardly want to make things awkward,” Leia said waspishly. “Or see Aunt Marha twenty years younger.”

“You haven’t celebrated a Life Day on Alderaan in four years.” Leia winced, but Fox didn’t let up. “And you probably haven’t seen your family in that long. You should go. This is a rare opportunity.”

“You sound like my father,” Leia snapped. She crossed her arms, leaning against the wall next to him. Their shoulders brushed - or, Leia’s shoulder and his upper arm brushed. “I’ve had my Life Days. That well’s run dry. I’m not going to go home and pantomime festivities just so I can pretend to have it again.”

“You know this is real life, right?” Fox asked, exasperated. Apparently it had taken a week on Alderaan before Leia stopped thinking it was some sort of Force and grief induced hallucination. “It’s hardly you indulging in hallucinations. Look, you’ll regret it if you don’t go.” For some obscure reason, he added, “If I could see my brothers who marched away again I would. Even if it isn’t the kind of reunion I wanted.”

“I know, I know.” Leia looked away from him, shoulders drawn up to her ears. “I’d just feel like a ghost. Pretending I don’t know them, pretending they know me. It’s nothing but a haunting. Frankly, it’d just be too strange giving Cousin Hale a pacifier for a present.”

“A present? Is that an Alderaanian thing?”

“Goodness, no. It’s the most annoying part of Life Day. You make your secretary buy everybody presents and you’re a bad person if you don’t.” Leia rolled her eyes. “If you don’t get any presents you might as well not be loved.”

She stopped short, eyes widening. Fox tilted his head. “Princess?”

“Spirits, I have to get you a Life Day present.”

“Princess, you…really don’t have to do that, no.”

“Nobody else is going to get you one!” Leia pushed off the wall, unfolding her arms in favor of waving them around. “Never getting a Life Day present like some tragic orphan - are you even allowed to own things? Is that illegal or something?”

Fox shrugged uncomfortably. “There’s no rules for or against it. In Kamino they used to sweep our bunks once every few months and throw out our possessions, so we got into the habit of hiding the one or two things we do have.”

“That’s fucking pathetic! Spirits, you have to have something now.” Leia chewed hard on her lip, already beginning to ignore him. “Clone rights legislation? No, that would never be ready in three days. Palpatine’s head? Same issue. Do you have a senator you really dislike -”

“Wait. Do I have to get you a present now too?”

“With what paycheck?” Leia asked dismissively, and Fox conceded the point. “Don’t worry, I’ll figure it out. Don’t worry about exchanging presents, I have this covered.” Under her breath, Fox heard her mumble, “Watch the other senators or the Jedi get you Life Day gifts…”

“Do you have something to prove?” Fox asked curiously.

“No! And good night, Captain!”

“Good night, Leia.”

And Fox watched her stride off, not so much furious as furiously intent, with the slow and dawning realization that he now had to get Leia something for Life Day.

*********

The next day, Fox was interrupted in the middle of his peak productivity hours by an unexpected source.

He recognized the intruder by their knock: not the polite 1-2-3 of his guardsmen, or the rap of the other Senate staff with a fire for him to put out. It was heavy and decisive, a rough double-tap that proclaimed loudly that he didn’t need anything more to catch your attention.

“Just get in here!” Fox yelled, and when the door swung open to reveal the man on the other side he couldn’t help but smile. “Don’t waste my time, Wolffe.”

Wolffe froze. His organic eye widened. Fox’s smile froze on his face, replaced by confusion. They stared at each other.

“I don’t believe it.” Wolffe leaned back a little, as if in fear of Fox’s office and the sludgy cup of caff on his desk. “They were right.”

“I’m not interested in the second half of that.” But Fox stood up anyway, offering a hand, and Wolffe dumbly stepped forward to shake it. “What’s got you planetside again? You hate stepping foot in here.”

“Anybody with an ounce of sense hates stepping foot in here,” Wolffe said automatically. Fox rolled his eyes - he’d heard it a million times. Apparently the Senate was ‘creepy’ (Ponds) or ‘stunk with a malevolent air’ (Bly). “I’m here because of you, asshole. We’ve been trying to get in touch with you for weeks.”

“What?” Shit, was communication down? “Is my comm insecure? That’s a major security breach -”

“If we tried to talk to you about this on a work comm you’d hang up in one second,” Wolffe said. “We’ve been calling your personal comm.”

Fox stared at him blankly. “The one I turned off months ago?”

They stared at each other. Wolffe wore ‘Wolffe vs. Fox Expression No. 34 [Est. Age 3]: You’re Lucky I Haven’t Told Anyone Else You’re Oblivious As Hell’. Fox squinted at him.

Very slowly and excruciatingly, as if Fox was a vod’ika instead of a batchmate, Wolffe said, “Turn on your personal comm.”

It took Fox a solid two minutes of rooting through his desk, and the extraction of a worrying amount of Leia’s hair accessories - Wolffe’s eyebrows rose higher - before Fox fished out his personal comm. He blew the dust off it, checked the battery, and powered it up.

He watched as fifty two different missed calls and hundreds of messages lit up the display screen.

“Hm,” Fox said. “And how much of this could be said in an email?”

“None of it. Check the groupchat.” Wolffe grabbed Fox’s bucket off the floor, tucking it under his armpit. It was the kind of casual invasion of privacy only a close batchmate would ever show. Maybe it was the kind of liberties that Fox would have only ever allowed Wolffe to take. “I’m taking you to 79’s. You have shit to explain. Now let’s get out of here, this place is giving me bad juju.”

“I’m in the middle of work -”

“It’s 0100.”

“Prime productivity hours.”

“Open up the fucking groupchat.”

Fox opened up the groupchat. He scrolled through the group chat for almost a minute, his brain taking a second to click back into the Mando’a. It had been almost a year since he had spoken it, and it took a few more seconds of re-reading to guarantee that he wasn’t mistranslating.

“What?!”

Cody: Independent verification provided by Stuart, Tuco, and Longstreet. However, the reliability of sources is dubious.

Ponds: Lieutenant Jyl has received confirmation by Lieutenant Stone. Sources very reliable.

Bly: OK Great Received. Do you believe me now.

Wolffe: Can you blame us for NOT BELIEVING YOU?

Wolffe: @ FOX

Bly: I’d prefer he not know that I spilled to you guys actually.

Ponds: No, I need fucking answers.

Ponds: @ FOX @ FOX @ FOX

Cody: Please stop spamming the chat, this is meant for informal internal communications. It’s not a gossip chamber.

Wolffe: Shit, it’s not? I assumed ‘informal internal communications’ was what the word ‘gossip’ sounded like when you had a massive stick up your ass.

Wolffe: @ FOX

Bly: We don’t have to jump down his throat

Bly: Fox’s, I mean. Nobody can jump down Cody’s throat.

Bly: How would they miss the stick?

Wolffe: I actually just desperately need to know why my best friend is fucking a senator.

Wolffe: @ FOX

Cody: Don’t be crude. I think the Mando’a term is ‘sharing weaponry’.

Ponds: You are all so boring @ FOX @ FOX @ FOX WHY ARE YOU FUCKING THE NATBORN @ FOX @ FOX WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS IT IS SO GROSS

Bly: Does this mean y’all’ll stop making fun of me for being a natbornfucker?

Cody: No. @ FOX

Bly: @ FOX Back me up please we’re on the same side now

Ponds: @ FOX

Wolffe: @ FOX

***********

As a rule, Fox did not go to 79’s.

The primary reason was that he did not have time. He had a planet to run and totalitarianism to implement, he didn’t have time for drinks. The secondary reason was that he hated loud noise, drunk people, and darts games - something all bars had in excess. The tertiary reason was that Fox had definitely executed some of the friends of at least one clone in any given room, and seeing The Man (™) show up and order a whiskey fresher on the stool next to you tended to interrupt a good time. This was why he only hung out with Leia - he hadn’t killed any of her friends yet.

But Wolffe wasn’t taking no for an answer, and Fox was too flabbergasted to do much arguing. He couldn’t tear himself from the group chat on the speeder ride over, staring fixedly at the screen and asking Wolffe increasingly panicked questions roughly once every five minutes. It was once every five minutes because Fox needed five minutes per question to digest the answer.

Apparently a significant percentage of the GAR was laboring under a misapprehension that made Fox want to die. The only upside to this was that it recontextualized a lot of the last few weeks - and it didn’t say much that the positive of a terrible life event was the fact that you now understood it was happening.

“I need to call Leia,” Fox said, dizzy. Coruscant whipped around them as Wolffe displayed his usual piloting skill. “She’s going to want to know about this.”

“Because you aren’t fucking,” Wolffe said, insultingly incredulous. “I thought you never used your personal comm.”

Fox stared at him blankly. “I don’t. I use the secure comm to talk to Leia.”

“Because you aren’t fucking.”

“You were trained to understand mission briefings the first time.”

“You were trained not to fuck senators -”

“You were trained to collect reliable intel -”

By the time they got to the bar Wolffe was fuming and Fox was freaking. Their only saving grace was the fact that Wolffe permanently looked angry and that Fox’s freak-outs resembled every other emotion he had, i.e. they didn’t strictly resemble anything.

The bar didn’t stop and stare at them as they walked in - no matter how good they were at recognizing each other, they weren’t that good - but as they navigated the crowd clones absolutely turned to stare. Fox scowled at them until they suddenly found their drinks fascinating, but Wolffe’s distinctive eye and scar kept on turning heads. Even if it was Fox they stared at. He could only glare at so many people.

Sure enough, Fox was brought before his own firing squad. Fox couldn’t let a Commander manhandle him on his own planet, if only because Fox’s position in the chain of command was ambiguous off Coruscant and absolute on it. One of them would be embarrassed. So he was forced to trail after Wolffe at brotherly gunpoint, whose keen eye made it very clear that he was more than willing to drag Fox by his heels, until he dropped into a booth at a table populated by the three people on Coruscant he wanted to see the least.

“I can’t believe it,” Cody said. “You actually dragged him here.”

“It’s great to see you, Fox!” Bly said. “Ha ha, just a few questions -”

Cody’s chronic tag-along took a long drag of his drink. “What the fuck is happening.”

“The situation’s fucking nuclear!” Wolffe hissed, dropping down heavily next to Fox and effectively trapping him. “He smiled at me!”

The other inhabitants of the table stared at Fox in abject shock and disbelief.

It almost made Fox feel self-conscious. Wolffe had been his best friend as a cadet. If there was anybody in the galaxy Fox would even consider smiling at, it would be Wolffe. But he hadn’t considered smiling at anybody in a while. Not that he had decided against it, it just - hadn’t crossed his mind.

It crossed his mind to smile at Leia frequently. Once he had begun working through the evil fascist Sith brainwashing, he had even started doing it. It wasn’t that bad. It made him think of doing it more often. To Wolffe and to Stone, to a bright sky or a funny joke. Like a Mando’a word almost forgotten, yet rolling familiar off his tongue.

“For the record,” Fox said testily, both nervous and aggravated, “I have no idea how certain rumors -”

“He’s denying it,” Rex muttered to Cody. “Told you he would deny it.”

“Shut it, Captain. I’m denying them because they’re untrue. I don’t want to hear any more about this.” Fox stared threateningly at the bartender droid until it rushed to make him a drink. “I’m having one drink and then I’m leaving. I’m not answering any more questions. You get as long as my drink lasts to bother me.”

“Oh, no. No, no, no. You are not getting out of this one.” Wolffe gripped Fox’s collar and shook him slightly, eliciting a growl that did not deter him in the slightest. “A senator? I thought you hated every last one of the bastards!”

“Leia wasn’t a senator when I said that. Their average intelligence has gone up.” Fox shook Wolffe off him, scowling fiercely as he arranged his collar back in order. One of Wolffe’s many charming habits he had forgotten. “But that’s irrelevant, because Leia and I aren’t sleeping together. That’s disgusting.”

“He calls her Leia,” Rex whispered to Cody, very loudly. “This is insane.”

But Cody just leaned forward, elbows on the table. He steepled his fingers, the dim yellow lighting giving his eyes a strange and cold glint. “Junior Senator Organa has been an elected member of the Galactic Senate for more than two months. She was first reported interacting with Commander Fox two weeks into her tenure at the Senate. After a short period of mutual tension -”

“Romantic tension?” Bly whispered, almost vibrating.

“ - they begin engaging in surreptitious behavior. Several eyewitnesses report Commander Fox entering Organa’s office after hours, being seen together in unlikely locations, and voluntarily interacting with her. Two weeks ago, Commander Fox verbally confirmed with Lieutenant Stone that he and Senator Organa were involved. The evidence is overwhelming. Simply put, Commander, I don’t understand why you’re denying it.”

“I didn’t know that’s what he was asking,” Fox hissed. Cody just leaned back and crossed his arms, fixing Fox with a cool look. As if he had already won, and Fox was just the prisoner protesting as he was led away in cuffs. Asshole. “I thought he was talking about - about - uh -”

“You can’t even think of a defense,” Rex condemned, crossing his arms in an imitation of Cody that had been far more adorable when he was five. “This is real weak, Fox.”

“It’s okay, Fox,” Bly jumped in - the one person whose help actively decimated his case. “I think it’s really romantic! And, you know, it really normalizes the whole thing.”

“This is actively something we need to discourage,” Cody said flatly. “We can’t let the men think this is ethical behavior.” Bly opened his mouth, outraged. “I don’t care if General Secura ‘isn’t like the other ones’.” The air quotes were evident, and Bly deflated slightly. “Regulations aren’t a judgment call. They exist to protect the men. Having two high level officers acting inappropriately sets a bad example. And a politician is just bad taste.”

“She’s not like the other ones,” Fox protested. Bly pointed at him empathetically. Fox realized what he just said. “I mean - we’re just friends. Your informants are seeing us together because we are friends. I am hanging out with her because we are friends. It is that simple. You’re all just bored and - and looking for drama.”

But they all just stared at him - disbelieving, joyfully disbelieving, skeptical, incredulous. As if the idea of Fox having a friend was far more impossible than the most torrid love affair. As if Fox didn’t have friends, and the fact didn’t even need to be stated.

It didn’t. Fox didn’t have friends. He had subordinates and he had natborns. He had the Chancellor and he had his somewhat ambiguous place in the military structure - which was doubtlessly on purpose. He had batchmates, who had been so inseparable the Kaminoans had frowned upon it, and once upon a time he had a teacher who taught them Mando’a personally.

A teacher who refused to be anything more than that. Batchmates who he hadn’t spoken to in months. A best friend who was nothing more than a cadet’s refuge in the storm. Nothing suitable for an adult. At the very least, nothing suitable for a captain with better things to do and an Empire to create. Nothing suitable for Fox.

He could tell them that she was a Jedi. That would explain everything, even to himself. It wasn’t true, but the truth was fickle and easily created. But that would compromise the mission. He couldn’t exactly tell them, ‘She harassed me until I stopped being a fascist and now we’re plotting to muder my boss so that’s why we hang out’, mostly due to mission integrity but partly because it really wouldn’t explain anything. Any true explanation couldn’t be said, and any false explanation would fail to explain why Fox felt this strange churn in his gut and twist in his heart. It would fail to explain the weird hurt in his chest - a hurt that couldn’t be said, for fear of it coming true.

But maybe Fox wasn’t half as clever as he thought he was, because something strange seemed to pass over Wolffe. His expression twitched a little, as if he was caught off-balance. “Small gods, you actually like her.”

“I can think of about ten gods for this situation,” Fox muttered. The bartender droid shuffled over and slid his drink onto the table, and Fox aggressively grabbed the cool glass and took a long drag from it. Chandrila knew kombucha. “If I hear anything more about this I’m breaking Rex’s fingers.” (“Why mine -”). “Feel free to not believe me, but I’m telling the truth. We’re just friends. She has commitment issues anyway. Childhood trauma.”

“Uh huh,” Cody said.

“She has difficulties opening up,” Fox elaborated. Bly nodded fastidiously, which he interpreted as him caring. “It’s the isolating nature of political and military command. She recently lost one of her best friends - he turned out to be her brother - so I think she’s second guessing herself. She was a general of a paramilitary terrorist group before she retired and moved to politics, you know. More battle experience than any Jedi.”

“My Jedi was the general of a paramilitary terrorist group,” Cody said, unnecesarily aggressively.

“Yeah, when he was fourteen. That’s not impressive. I bet he wasn’t even good at it.”

“General Kenobi’s the best tactician in the Order!”

“Excuse me?” Wolffe said, effortlessly catching the whiskey slid onto the table without looking. Fox didn’t even see him order anything. “General Koon didn’t even need to be a terrorist to be the best tactician in the Order.”

“I don’t judge Aayla’s worth on her military prowess,” Bly felt the need to add uselessly. “Her value lies in her courage and kind heart.”

“You’re just saying that because the 327th lost the skirmith on Onderon,” Rex said, taking a long sip of his drink. Cody kicked him. “What? I have nothing to prove. My general’s the Order superstar. I’m not insecure like you guys.”

“My general trained -”

“Your general’s an old man.”

“At least Leia’s not a deadbeat father,” Fox hissed. Rex squinted at him, baffled. Cody opened his mouth, looking smug and ready to agree with Fox no matter how little context he had for the statement. “And Leia doesn’t have shit taste in foster parents, so don’t you start either.”

“Why is this even a competition?” Wolffe asked, looking increasingly weirded out by the second. “Senator Organa’s not even a Jedi. She automatically loses the best Jedi contest.”

The best Jedi contest was incessant, unending, constant, sycophantic, inane, and had a tournament board on a chalkboard pinned to the 79’s wall. Fox craned his head to check it. It appeared the Jedi of the week was Mace Windu. That was a surprise. Mace Windu was a controversial subject among clones. Nobody knew if they needed to swear revenge like that brat Boba or if they should shake his hand. The ingrained respect for Jedi versus the enforced respect for Jango fought hard battles.

“Maybe she wins the best Jedi contest because she’s too smart to be a Jedi.” Identical expressions of outrage bloomed on everybody’s face, and Fox abruptly cut himself off. He had faint memories of feeling the same way about Jedi as they did, but ever since he took his posting at the Senate the endless sycophantic adoration of the Jedi had become grating. He liked to think of this as him being a free-thinker. “I’m not getting into this argument again. Leia and I are none of your business. Change subjects or Rex’s trigger finger gets it.”

“Why mine -”

“Do you guys want to hear about the date Aayla and I went on yesterday?” Bly asked, as if anybody did. “It was really fun, we went to one of the Life Day sculpture events and looked at all of the cool art -”

“Did everybody know about Life Day except for me?” Fox cried. He even knew the sculpture events that Bly was talking about, but he had dismissed it as one of the garbage cultural enrichment events the Parks and Recreation bozos wasted money on. Fox was trying to defund their departments and move the money to his militarized Rangers instead. “Does it have a point?”

“You mean a meaning?” Bly asked, signaling the bartender for four hard shots of malt liquor. “Are you looking for the meaning of Life Day?”

“No, I’m looking for a fucking point.”

“Shoot me if I know,” Wolffe grunted. He filched Fox’s drink, ignoring his scowl and sniffing it cautiously. He made a face and returned it to Fox. “Jedi don’t celebrate it either. They have like a holiday a month but all they do is meditate six hours longer than usual.”

“The Wookie Life Day specials have a lot of messages on family togetherness and community,” Bly volunteered, displaying a disappointing proclivity for media consumption. “And anti-consumerism!”

“The Wookies don’t even have an economy,” Fox said flatly.

“The specials must really be doing their job!”

“None of you read, do you?” Cody said.

No, and it was a virtue. Fox took a sip of his drink. “Reading rots the brain.”

Cody sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “There’s no meaning to Life Day. There’s a meaning to the thousands of different winter festivals across the galaxy, but the Republicans decided a government needs a holiday. So they picked a date during a typical Core World’s winter and created a soulless, homogenized celebration of nothing. There’s not even a religion attached to it. It’s sponsored by brands. None of the Jedi care about it and neither should we.”

“But that’s not what I asked,” Fox cried. Disturbingly, Cody said almost the exact same thing that Leia did, furthering Fox’s resolve that they shouldn’t meet. “I asked what the point is.”

The clones looked at each other. Of course, they couldn’t know.

Finally, after a long moment of silence, Bly volunteered, “When Aayla and I went to see the lights…it just seemed like an excuse to spend time together. It made her happy.”

“It’s why I’m on planet,” Cody said grudgingly. “General Kenobi moved things around so Commander Tano could do all the festivities with her friends. We were - he’s worried about her development. She was so happy about it, too.”

“So’s General Skywalker,” Rex said. “He kept on talking about how Kenobi’s making time for them and everything. Apparently he never makes time.”

That was unexpectedly mature. Fox would worry for Tano if he cared about her at all. Between Skywalker and Rex, her only adult supervision were man-children who mistook the ability to scrap a droid for intelligence. If it wasn’t for Kenobi then Cody might have felt the need to step in, which was the only reason Fox was ever glad that Kenobi existed.

Fox struggled with this. His mind almost didn’t want to accept it. He kept on staring at it, desperately searching for some common thread of reason that made sense. How could somebody like Fox understand - what was it he was trying to understand?

“So…what?” Fox asked. He didn’t even have an answer. Every time he tried to grip onto it, it slipped away. “It’s just…something?”

The other clones glanced at each other before eventually shrugging.

“It’s just something,” Rex agreed. “Everyone needs something, right?”

“We don’t,” Cody said curtly. “We have all we need.”

Bly blinked, and maybe it was only Bly and Fox who realized that Cody had misunderstood the question. “Do we?”

Silence reigned over the table. Around them, clones talked and chatted and shoved each other. They dared each other to drink more and more, and others took advantage of their loosened tongues to vent and yell.

Was ‘79 their something? The Jedi of the Week wall, their impassioned arguments - was that something? The belief in the small and large Mandalorian gods, in the scraps of ancient rituals - that wasn’t anything else other than a strange and scavenged something.

Did Fox have something?

He knew what Leia would say, even if he didn’t agree with her. She would say that the something was hope, and that all these little things gave hope and spirit to their short lives. Leia mentioned her own military sometimes, and Fox knew that they eked out the same small comforts the clones did. They had a budget for parties and painted ships and what joy they could spare, because citizens under the Empire had so little.

We had nothing else, Leia would say grandly, but we had each other. Was that true? Now that she had ‘won’, that her New Republic had bloomed - did they still have each other? Had they lost that something?

An idea began to slowly coalesce in Fox’s mind - a desire that could be possible if Fox was careful enough about it. He was still surprised to see a desire every time it appeared. He hadn’t even been able to recognize them at first - confused by the endless intrusive thoughts about a happy situation that gave him a pull in his gut, as if his body was stretching towards that happiness. His legs had stayed frozen where he stood for so long, and it was only recently that Fox had begun to reluctantly walk as far as he could to that happiness.

It was only a few steps at best. Some of the time it was only one. Most of the time his feet stayed frozen no matter how hard he tried, and all Fox could do was look towards that happiness - suffocating that longing, stealing it from himself.

But this was something he could do, wasn’t it?

The conversation raged on above his head, even as Fox started failing to pay attention. He could never really focus in recreational group conversations anyway - his brain usually started to fuzz out about five minutes in and all noise was replaced with static. He listened to the conversation ebb and flow with half an ear, and when the group broke up to hustle at pool (Rex), stop others from hustling at pool (Cody), and focus on getting insanely drunk (Bly), Fox found himself standing up too.

He pushed past the crowd and broke into the smoking area outside, only to find it generously populated by clones smoking and shooting the shit. They froze when they saw him, eyes widening, and Fox rolled his eyes. Every one of those smokes were contraband. The clone smuggling ring was robust - Fox had heard whispers that Vos was involved somehow, reinforcing Fox’s desire to find a charge against the man and make it stick.

The men all found something very interesting and mysteriously urgent to do inside, and Fox didn’t bother disabusing them of the notion that he gave a shit. He leaned up against the wall of the bar instead, watching two clones frantically stuff gambling dice back inside their pockets as subtly as they could, and stared up at the skyscrapers towering above them in a claustrophobic cage.

Fox saw other planets, but it was rare. He didn’t envy the soldiers who were shuttled between planet after planet in skirmish after skirmish, but he had always secretly wanted to see a desert planet. He had read reports from desert planets, and had been strangely captured by the details of cruel and mindless sandstorms. He had always loved every Kamino hurricane, and he always wondered what water that bit and tore would feel like.

Natural disasters hurt mindlessly. They were not cruel, because they acted with no intention. They were not good or bad, virtuous or sinful - they simply were, and they hurt through their existence.

Some part of Fox wanted to stand in the middle of one and melt into it. He wanted to surround himself with the biting sand and see if there was any difference between him and it; if like recognized like; if violence recognized violence. If violence and violence could combine, and become nothing. If nothing could recognize nothing, and become…

The door creaked, and Fox glanced to the side as he saw Wolffe emerge with the heavy waft of alcohol and the sounds of yells over music. He looked around the smoking area, surprised to see it empty, until his eye rested on Fox. Fox blinked in greeting before returning to staring at the sky.

“What are you looking at?”

“Just thinking.”

Wolffe raised an eyebrow, even as he moved to lean against the wall next to him. “You said thinking is a nasty habit.”

“We all have our vices,” Fox said ruefully. The lights of the speeders flashed in and out before them, leaving streaks of light behind like stars in hyperspace. 79’s platform was large, and you couldn’t see the railing from where they stood. You had to look far above yourself to realize you weren’t on solid ground. “Why aren’t you inside?”

“Looking for you.”

‘ “You’re always looking for me.”

“Yeah,” Wolffe said, “I am.” He paused a beat, then two. He looked at the ground, trying hard to pull his face into something harsh but not quite managing it. Wolffe wasn’t a harsh person. “I haven’t been able to find you.”

“I’m at the Senate seventy percent of the time,” Fox said. “If you try before 1000 and after 2200 I’m usually there.”

“That you are.” Wolffe’s voice was dull. He stared at the ground hard, and for some reason Fox got the impression that he wasn’t truly talking to him. “It’s not like I visit you. That’s worse. Looking at you and not finding you is a lot worse than not seeing you.”

“What are you talking about?” Fox asked, baffled. “I’m right here. I’ve been right here the entire time.”

“You haven’t been here since we were cadets.” Wolffe straightened, and for the first time he looked Fox in the eyes. It was strangely intense, almost searching - as if he was searching for Fox. “You have something behind your eyes, Fox. You haven’t had anything behind your eyes for years. Every time I’ve tried to talk to you for the last year it’s been like I’ve been speaking to…you’re still in there. But you’ve been quiet. And something else has been loud.”

Fox stared at him.

Had it been that obvious? Had anybody else seen? How many of the people around him had seen but rationalized it away, blamed him? How many of his batchmates had known but didn’t want to bring it up? How many of his friends had seen it, seen all of it, but knew that nothing they could do would change it?

Maybe it had hurt too much. The thought was strange - that who Fox was, or who he had been for the last few years, had hurt the people around him. He hadn’t thought of them at all. He hadn’t even known that he was hurting himself.

“You’re telling me this because you think I can hear you.”

Wolfe grunted in agreement, turning away to stare at the brick wall in front of them and steadily avoid Fox’s eyes. “You’re different. I haven’t seen you like this since…I don’t know if I’ve ever seen you like this. You still aren’t back to normal. But it’s better than…that.”

Fox stayed silent for a long second. Finally, he said, “I’m sorry. You deserved better than that.”

“Stop talking, you’re making this worse.”

“I didn’t want this to happen to me either,” Fox snapped. Wolffe looked abjectly relieved that Fox was being mean again. “I - I’m not going to say that I can ever go back to normal. I can’t even say that I’m happy. But…but I can feel something. It’s awful, but it’s great too. I hadn’t known that.”

“And now you’re talking about your feelings!” Wolffe’s lips twisted in a sneer, the idea anathema for its strangeness. “It’s insane! At least when I lose my men I don’t see them executing my brothers every month!”

“I’m not dead, idiot.” Fox ignored the strange twist of hurt in his chest. There was no reason for it - Wolffe wasn’t wrong. “Look, I just - I’ve made a change. I’m going to do better from now on. As much as I can, I will. I’m sorry that they took me from you, Wolffe, but I’m trying to come back, and -”

“How come she could do it, and I couldn’t?”

Fox stopped short, the words taking a second to process. Wolffe was growing steadily angrier, for reasons that Fox struggled to understand, and Fox watched him with a numb confusion as he pushed himself off the wall. Fox hadn’t cared about people’s feelings for long enough to successfully interpret them.

“Do you mean Leia?”

“Leia! He calls her Leia!” Was he angry? Why was he angry? “What, you start getting laid and suddenly you’re a new man? You’re cured? Is that all it took?”

“We aren’t sleeping together!” Fox cried, stunned that he even still had to say this - say it to Wolffe, who should know better. Shouldn’t best friends know if you were lying or not? “We’re just friends - and she didn’t cure me, she just…talked me out of it. Look, Wolffe -”

“Talked you out of it?” Wolffe barked a laugh, cold and harsh. “I tried to talk you out of it, and you shut off your comm!” Was that why Fox had turned off his personal comm? It sounded familiar. “I tried being your friend, and you didn’t let me! Or couldn’t, or - or whatever. Why is a natborn more important to you than your own brothers, Fox?”

Fox faltered.

She wasn’t. Of course she wasn’t. No natborn could ever - but Leia was different, wasn’t she? She was a Jedi, or the closest thing. Clones put Jedi above their brothers all the time. Without thinking, without flinching. Clones didn’t protect their brothers, and they didn’t save them.

Everybody hated Fox for executing their brothers. But none of them tried to stop him. None of them ever called it unfair. They just hated that the Republic used a brother’s face to do it. They hated that they had picked Fox to do it, and that Fox didn’t even care. Couldn’t even care.

Fox put everything above his brothers. He felt more comfortable with Leia then he did with most of them, because with Leia he was stripped of all artifice. With Wolffe, with Cody and Bly and Ponds and maybe that tag-along Rex, he was stripped of artifice.

Fox couldn’t tell Wolffe the truth now. He couldn’t explain everything, give his excuses as to why he was a terrible person. He couldn’t explain how the Chancellor was a Sith Lord who had fucked with Fox’s brain, who had turned him into nothing. He couldn’t explain that Leia was a Jedi, and that her strange talent with the Force had helped him break free of the impossible. He couldn’t tell Wolffe that he was making up for it, that he was going to make it right - make everything right. He couldn’t tell him the good news: that they would all be free of this hell soon, and that either Fox would be alive to see the freed galaxy or he would finally achieve the dignity of death. Wolffe wouldn’t have to see a dead man’s face executing his brothers anymore.

It was just another little lie thrown onto the gigantic pile that served as the foundation of their lives. Every aspect of their lives was a lie. It was just one more. It just hurt more than the others.

“I love her, Wolffe,” Fox said, and he didn’t realize it was true until he said it. Even if it wasn’t in the way that Wolffe thought, even if it wasn’t in a way that even Fox understood - he did. It had saved him. “She makes me happy. But she’s not my brother.”

And, of course, that didn’t fix anything. Only the truth could have helped, and Fox couldn’t give that. All he could offer Wolffe, the man he had once been closest to in the world, was a platitude.

Wolffe backed up a step, then another. Fox couldn’t interpret the expression on his face. Maybe Wolffe couldn’t either - couldn’t understand the strange sting of betrayal he felt. Finally, he said, “Then I’m happy for you. Whoever you are.”

When he left, he slammed the door behind him. But Wolffe always slams the door when he’s in a huff. He had done it ever since they were kids, and he would probably continue to do it until he got killed.

Fox didn’t remember how he used to slam doors. He didn’t remember how he used to smile at Wolffe, the classes he liked the least, the way they would all bully the younger cadets as the older cadets had once bullied them. Wolffe probably remembered it all better than he did - holding tightly onto those memories, the only proof he had left that his brother had once been somebody other than this. Other than Fox.

Fox could change who he was. He was working pretty fucking hard at it, actually. But he couldn’t be the person Wolffe wanted, the child that he missed.

Maybe that was why Leia didn’t go home for Life Day. There was no home to return to.

Fox’s idea solidified, and he made a decision.

*************

SUBJECT: Office Party

BODY:

This is a notice to all guardsmen that next Zhellsday during night shift we will have a short holiday celebration. As the Senate building will be closed, we may hold it in Conference Room A (location subject to change - discussions on choosing our least favorite senator’s office welcome). As this gathering and its funding may fall outside of official SOP, I urge all guardsmen to only discuss the manner in private. Attendance is optional.

FOX

ADDENDUM: This is not because I’m getting laid.

ADDENDUM: I’m not getting laid.

********

“Apparently Stone’s had ten guardsmen ask if he’s hacked into my mailcom.”

“Fascinating.” Leia delicately spread some strange melty cheese onto her stick of bread before swallowing it whole like a guppy. She squinted at the datapad again, chewing. “And - to be clear - everyone thinks we’re fucking?”

“Everyone,” Fox confirmed, desolate and devoid of hope. He leaned back in his chair, taking a small sip of the caff. He had to hand it to these fancy Alderaanian restaurants - they knew their caff. “I realized the situation too late to suppress it. It’s probably burned through the entire Coruscant guard and all my batchmates. The situation’s just too scandalous.”

There were flecks of cheese in Leia’s braids, two cute loops around her ears with the rest pinned back. It was bothering Fox tremendously, so he cautiously leaned forward and picked them out of her hair. She ignored him. “Well, I’ve spent the entirety of my professional career under constant speculation of who I was fucking, so I can’t say this is a surprise. At least this one will likely be less disgusting in hindsight.”

Fox shuddered, reflexively looking around the restaurant. It had dim, atmospheric lighting, with tables placed a healthy distance from each other for privacy. It wasn’t quite Fox’s preferred ‘restaurant used only to conduct business deals’ atmosphere, but Leia was incapable of picking a restaurant that was either reasonably priced or served anything but Alderaanian food. If she couldn’t have a conversation with the hostess in Alderaanian she turned around and left. Fox hadn’t even known that they had a native language.

She hadn’t bothered changing clothing for the occasion, her pure white number with a boxy blazer, her silk shirt with a ruffled collar complementing the well-fitted white slacks and white heeled boots. She was the least messy eater Fox had ever met, although since he had grown up in the military that meant roughly nothing.

She had, however, forced Fox into civilian clothes. It was terrible. They were hideously loose, very soft, and it took thirty minutes of bargaining and an outright exertion of his autonomy to wear his bodysuit underneath the loose fabric. Fox looked like her father. Worst case scenario.

They weren’t even serving them real food. It was just an endless round of little slices of bread with things on them. Leia had ordered them for him - ‘here’s the tough, tasteless consistency you yearn for, Captain - scrape the actual flavor off if you wish’. It was very thoughtful, or as thoughtful as Leia ever got.

“It doesn’t bother you?” Fox asked cautiously. “I mean, it - it may affect your professional reputation. With a guard…”

“Relax. Only a senator who spends far too much time with the Jedi would catch clone gossip, which leaves us safe from everybody but women who don’t use birth control.” Leia popped another slice of bread smeared with cheese and jam into her mouth, yet again swallowing it whole. How did she do these things? “If anything, I’m only bothered by the insinuation that I would abuse that power dynamic.”

For some reason, Fox felt the need to establish, “I can have you killed at any time.”

“Yes, and the Chancellor would likely give you a medal. But it would be embarrassing to last an entire war avoiding death via Stormtrooper only to fall at the hands of protective clones. And I’d hate for your brothers to worry about you.”

Fox sagged a little. He put an elbow on the table, rubbing hard at his eyes. He had already detailed the conversation with Wolffe on their way over, which had been met with Leia’s usual amount of sympathy (“That sucks”) and thoughtful resolution to the problem (“Well, nothing you can do about it now”). “It never even crossed my mind that any of them worried about me. They never crossed my mind at all. The minute this is over, I’ll explain. I’ll…make up for it. Somehow.”

“Since when do you feel guilt?” Leia asked curiously. “Is this new?”

“Yes,” Fox said, depressed beyond all measure. “It’s terrible. How do people deal with this.”

Leia thought hard, having never experienced the emotion. Fox was slowly learning that Leia’s talent at repressing her Force sensitivity so completely may have had unintentional side effects for the rest of her personality. “I suppose it must be very difficult. Definitely a waste of time.”

“Agreed. We’ll worry about useless things after we kill the Emperor.” Fox straightened, experimentally shoving a whole slice of bread in his mouth too. The flavors burst on his tongue, all fruity and creamy, and his eyes widened as he swallowed it. “Hey, this is good!”

“I’d call killing the Emperor the ultimate apology,” Leia said wisely. “We’re making good track on that, by the way. My operative with the Separatists is proving far more effective than I dared to hope for. Last time I heard he was making good headway with Count Dooku.”

“Are you ever going to tell me who your operative is?” Fox asked, still slightly wounded. He was used to knowing everything. “I won’t tell.”

Leia shrugged, taking a dainty sip from her giant glass of wine. Alderaanians could pack that wine away. “Best that you don’t know every detail of the plan in the event of your capture. Don’t worry. They’re basically competent. Some of the time. They’re ridiculous and incompetent the rest of the time.”

“That was the highest praise I’ve seen you give anybody,” Fox said flatly. “And it’s about your friend pretending to be a Sith as they infiltrate the Separatists. It’s not Ventress, is it?”

“It’s not Ventress.”

“If it’s Ventress you have to tell me.”

“I don’t, actually. And it’s not Ventress.”

“You would not make a good girlfriend,” Fox said, with a completely straight face.

Leia didn’t miss a beat. “That’s what I keep telling Han, but his obsession with commitment and the nuclear family is downright obnoxious. He just won’t give up on it, but I’ve never seen that sleezeball give up on anything.”

Wait. Fox blinked hard. “Han? Did you actually trick a man into dating you?”

Leia threw a crumb of bread at his head, forcing him to dodge. “More like he tricked me. I finally gave up and started having sex with him, and now he won’t stop bothering me.”

“What a way to phrase that.”

“He would marry me if I let him,” Leia complained, leaning back in her chair and crossing her arms. “It’s incredibly annoying. We aren’t dating. We aren’t even exclusive. How can he waltz around, still fucking two of his exes, and tell me that he wants to be exclusive? Go be exclusive with Lando, he needs a trophy wife!”

“Does everybody in the future live like this?” Fox asked, with a kind of sick fascination.

“It’s downright suicidal,” Leia bitched. “The minute he marries me he’d die in a tragic speeder bike accident. I’d have a rosy cheeked baby that would die immediately of consumption. Palpatine would return, somehow. He’s just courting disaster.”

Somehow, Fox felt sad. Leia frowned as she sensed it, deflating slightly. “Sounds like he’s courting you.”

“That’s what I said.”

“Leia -”

“I don’t need something permanent,” Leia said, cutting him off - once again choosing nothing over the possibility of losing everything. “I just need - I just need something. Something real. Even if it’s only for a little while.”

Fox didn’t know what to say. Her eyebrows were pulled tight, and she was studiously looking away from him. “Leia. You’ll get more than that someday.”

“I don’t even know if I’ll be able to go back to my -”

Leia stopped short suddenly, eyes widening. Fox immediately sharpened, sitting up straight and letting his hand drift to his waist. She whipped her head over to look at the door, where regally dressed people filtered in two by two. The sounds of people talking and eating loomed loudly in the sudden silence, the sputtering candles providing a soft glow around the room, and Fox craned his head to see what Leia had sensed.

It was, of course, the two people Fox and Leia wanted to see the least. Probably below the Chancellor and Mas Amedda. Above Ventress and Count Dooku. Probably the most embarrassing. Definitely the couple that would end up with the highest chances of Leia spearing someone through the eye with a salad fork.

Unfortunately, both of their unabashed staring caught the attention of the couple. One half of the couple stopped in their tracks, staring unabashedly at them.

Everybody stared at each other but Padme Amidala, who just looked confused. She followed her husband’s gaze to Fox and Leia, and she blinked in hard surprise.

Skywalker immediately bee-lined for them. Fox slipped a knife into his sleeve, and he saw Leia do the same. Amidala’s tiny yet dignified legs rushed to keep up with him, barely stopping him from appearing overly strange in public.

A buzzer in Fox’s brain went off, and when Skywalker approached he automatically stood up and saluted. “Sir!”

“At ease,” Skywalker said, as automatically as Fox had saluted. He visibly did a double-take at the sight of Fox, who admittedly did still look like Leia’s father. “Captain Fox, is that you?”

Fox sat back down, ignoring Leia’s tight expression. “Yes, sir. I’m off the clock.”

“Yeah, uh - so are we. Senator Amidala and I.” But Skywalker was already dismissing Fox, moving to just staring at Leia. Leia stared back, and only Fox could have seen how hard she fought to keep her expression blank and polite. “Do I know you?”

Amidala finally caught up with them, tugging pointedly at Skywalker’s sleeve. Any other wife who caught their husband staring at a woman like Skywalker was staring at Leia would have been pretty peeved, but Amidala just looked confused - as if the concept of Skywalker showing any interest at all in other women was completely out of the question, and she was left with no explanation for her husband’s interest. Fox, who did have an explanation, was jealous.

“I’m Junior Senator Leia Organa of Alderaan,” Leia said tartly. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.” It was not a pleasure to meet him. “I’ve never had the pleasure of your acquaintance.” Burn. “Perhaps you’ve seen me at the Senate.”

But Skywalker just cocked his head, expression growing more and more intense. A particular crease developed at the corners of Leia’s eyes, and Fox wondered if she was fending off some sort of…psychic attack. Maybe she was just hiding under the metaphorical bed. “You just…seem like you’re from where I’m from. What planet were you born on?”

“I was born on a satellite in deep space.” Fox hadn’t known that - but maybe she was just lucky it hadn’t been a volcano or something. “Which my astrology chart has always told me was exceptionally unlucky. Hello, Padme.”

“Hello, Leia. It’s lovely to see you. And it’s wonderful to see…” Padme stared blankly at Fox, who let himself be stared at. He refused to help. “I’m very sorry. Would this be Captain Fox?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Fox felt excessively awkward and resented the situation. He could ma’am her all day with the bucket on, but her seeing his bare face as he did it…it made his gut twist. He didn’t really know why. “It’s a pleasure.”

Both Amidala and Skywalker looked at Leia, then looked at Fox. They looked at the bread and cheese. They looked at the wine. They looked at Fox. They looked at Leia.

Finally, Amidala worked up the courage to ask, “Are you two…having an outing?”

Fox and Leia exchanged glances. Fox sent strong psychic waves of ‘please make this stop happening’. Unfortunately, Fox was not psychic, but he read Leia’s eyebrow tilt as ‘I wish to the heavenly mountains that I could’.

Fox blinked hard at her, very clearly conveying that Padme ‘Projection’ Amidala clearly thought they were on a date. Leia’s lips pursed in confirmation of the point and the rebuttal that dates did not typically include assasination plots.

“Yes,” Leia said slowly, willing to swallow any indignity for the sake of the mission, “one could…say that. Are you two also…on an…outing?”

Skywalker and Amidala traded glances before embarking on a complex series of psychic wavelengths from Amidala and pointed facial expressions from Skywalker. Leia looked infuriated that her parents did anything resembling anything she did. Fox had seen her fly into a rage after she and Amidala accidentally both reached for the same cake in the Senate cafeteria.

Finally, Amidala said, “Yes, we are. It’s very nice! How we’re both on outings.”

“Sure love me some outings,” Leia said.

“Yeah, this is great,” Skywalker said.

Fox sat very still, in hopes that they would not see him.

“Well!” Amidala said, the utter picture of faux-brightness. Beside her, Skywalker had yet to stop staring at Leia. He had an incredibly intense stare, and it was making Fox’s uselessly protective Clone Instincts go crazy. “Maybe we could join you two? Since we’re both on outings?”

Fox and Leia froze.

Even worse, their only hope betrayed them. “That sounds like a great idea,” Skywalker said, far too quickly. “If we wouldn’t be intruding.”

They would very much be intruding. They would be intruding to an unimaginable degree. There were no words for how deeply they would be intruding, or how thoroughly Fox did not want them there.

But Amidala was smiling at Leia, half-hopeful, and Fox saw that Leia couldn’t look away from her. There was something deep and raw buried within her - unshown, unheeded, but a yearning that persisted through years of frantic suffocation.

Fox knew what it was like to hear that voiceless cry, and how it felt to finally understand the words it said. Leia wanted something very much, but she would never ask and she would never allow it. Leia didn’t allow herself luxuries like wanting.

So Fox did something he did not want to do, because Leia would not. That was what friendships were all about.

He stood up, nodding briskly at Skywalker. “Of course, General. I’ll fetch some chairs.”

Leia’s head jerked towards him, eyes widening, and Fox just spared her a very pointed look before stepping over to drag over two extra chairs. She barely had time to frantically slide her plate and wine glass over before Fox deposited Amidala’s chair in front of her, holding it out so she could sit down and placing Skywalker’s chair next to him.

Something seemed to occur to Amidala as she was smoothing her skirts, far too late. She looked up abruptly, eyes widening as Fox took his seat. “I’m sorry, I know we technically outrank both of you - please don’t feel obligated to agree. Especially you, Captain Fox. We’re all - ah, very off the clock, aren’t we?”

“Of course, ma’am,” Fox said. “It’s no trouble.”

“You can relax, Fox,” Darth Vader, scourge of the galaxy, said. “Really, any of my men can tell you that I hate that shit.”

So Fox had heard. Repeatedly. Apparently Skywalker had banned most of the 501st’s pointless military formalities within a week of their assignment. Rex bragged about it - “he has his boots on the ground, our General!” - while it drove Cody crazy - “it’s about respect!”.

It wasn’t about respect for Fox. It was just something you did. But showing the due respect to Skywalker as the greatest Jedi General, as the Emperor’s hand-picked apprentice…it made something hard and harsh grind inside his chest, metal screeching against metal.

When Fox spoke, the words were ash in his mouth. “Yes, sir.”

A loose, cool pressure enveloped his wrist, and Fox looked down in surprise to see that Leia had placed her hand on his wrist. Small and light, but with Leia’s familiar tight grip. He looked at her in surprise, but her expression was just sad. Her big brown eyes were crumpled a little at the edges, and Fox felt the slight pressure of her fingernail scrape against his skin. She shook her head, just a little - a signal that she would get rid of them in a second if Fox even secretly wanted them gone.

She didn’t say anything, but she didn’t need to. Fox wasn’t psychic, and he could never know what she was feeling. He couldn’t even imagine having parents. But if he ever introduced Leia to Wolffe, he would want them both to be themselves. He would want them to truly meet, even if it was in a strange and sideways way.

Maybe there was more to it than that - maybe it had to do with Leia’s discomfort every time she saw him interacting with other natborns, or with the fact that he was only letting them stay for Leia’s benefit. Maybe she just really hated her dad and didn’t want Fox to give him the royal treatment any more than he wanted to give it. Maybe she knew how much Fox didn’t want to give it. Fox wouldn’t know. He wasn’t the psychic one. But he knew what she was asking.

So Fox relaxed, and nodded at Leia. “Sure.” She withdrew her hand, and Fox looked back at the irresponsible couple. “It’s fine. Leia’s been talking nonstop about your new bill, Senator.”

Amidala lit up - at both Fox’s semi-honest words and Leia’s interest. “It’s a pet project of mine. I’m afraid it won’t get through the committee, but I’m choosing to remain optimistic.”

“Of course it’ll get through, it’s genius.” Leia aggressively sloshed much more wine into her cup, ignoring Skywalker’s impressed look. “I saw you trap Senator Hu’lun in the bathroom until he agreed to vote for it. I was inspired.”

“Oh, I try not to rely on physical intimidation too much!” The absolutely miniature woman laughed. “But you’ve been such an inspiration to me in that regard. I saw how you stapled Senator Yuu’s sleeve to their podium!”

“They’re lucky it wasn’t their hand, right?”

They both laughed uproariously. Horrifically, in the worst moment of his life, Fox and Skywalker shared identical glances of unsettled fear.

Fox was fully content to sit there in silence, but Skywalker clearly got antsy if nobody was talking about him and Fox had promised Leia to interact with ‘people’ as if he was a ‘person’, trapping him thoroughly. Skywalker raised a finger at a waitress, asking for another menu, as Fox desperately wished that he wouldn’t talk to him. It was in vain.

“So, Captain Fox.” Skywalker squinted around the table in search of wine, finding only Leia’s tightly maintained bottle. “That’s…what you look like, huh? I mean, I know what you look like, hard not to - but you know. What I mean.”

“I don’t make an effort to be distinctive,” Fox said. His only consolation was that the small talk was physically paining Skywalker as much as it was paining him. “Waste of energy.”

It was true, even if there were a few more reasons than that. Fox had no distinguishing visual characteristics, and he didn’t go out of his way to create any. He had a regulation buzz cut and a regulation face. The distinctive armor was a matter of practicality, as his life was easiest when people could immediately identify him. There was no need for anybody to identify his bare face, so he had never bothered.

“Normal as always,” Skywalker muttered. Fox graciously let it go. “So, uh…you watched the game last night?”

“Game of what?” Fox asked, confused.

“...yeah, me neither.”

Both of them sat in mutual recognition that they talked to nobody but their Jedi Council assigned family and clones (Skywalker) or a timeline refugee and clones (Fox). And spending too much time with clones actively destroys your social skills.

The waiter put another bottle of wine on the table, which Amidala attacked with the swift grace of a nexu. Fox took advantage of the confusion to stuff another one of the surprisingly good bread slices in his mouth - and, in a moment of supreme charity, pushed the board over to Skywalker.

Without hesitation or pause, he took an excruciatingly polite bite out of one. Fox watched with bated breath as Skywalker slowly chewed, then swallowed.

He looked down at the food, surprised. “Hey, this is good!”

Fox suddenly understood how Leia felt. “It’s Alderaanian. Leia refuses to eat anything else.” He jerked his head at Leia, who had launched into a highly technical and jargon-filled discussion about urban planning with Amidala. “Royalty, you know.”

“Padme hates eating the same type of food twice. She’s adventurous.” Skywalker rolled his eyes, as if Amidala’s definition of adventurous did not quite match up with his own. “Royalty, huh? So how did you two meet?”

Alarm bells started flashing in Fox’s head. “Senate.”

Skywalker stared at him blankly. Fox kept his expression very earnest and blank, in a specially modified version of the ‘dumb clone’ routine that accomodated for actual conversation. “I…figured, yeah, but how’d all of that…” He waved a hand at Fox and Leia, who had finally noticed that her father was asking invasive questions. “Happen?”

“It’s a long story,” Fox said.

Leia delicately wiped her mouth with a napkin, mindful of her lipstick. “Blackmail.”

“Yeah,” Fox said, “long story.” He made a vague gesture to Skywalker and the suddenly attentive Amidala, desperate to change the subject. “So, how did that…happen?”

Amidala perked up, even as Skywalker froze. “It’s actually a wonderful story! Neither of you probably remember, but around eleven years ago the Trade Federation blockaded Naboo. I was Queen at the time, and it was a diplomatic nightmare. A pair of Jedi were dispatched to help navigate Naboo’s diplomatic overtures with the Trade Federation. Of course, the Jedi were Qui-Gon Jinn and -”

“I’d say it actually started a few years back,” Skywalker interrupted, cutting the excited Amidala off completely. “I was put on her bodyguard duty, stuff happened, you know how it is.”

“Anakin,” Amidala said, slightly reproachful. “It was more than that.”

“Bodyguard duty?” Fox asked, confused beyond measure. “How does that happen from bodyguard duty? Bodyguard duty is boring.”

“You think everything’s boring,” Leia said.

“Have you ever done bodyguard duty?”

“None of my bodyguards have ever said I was boring.”

But Amidala and Skywalker were having a hushed sort-of argument, and Fox saw Leia’s attention drifting back to them. He wondered why Skywalker didn’t want them to know the story of how he and Amidala met. Maybe it featured baby’s first massacre or something.

Somehow, for some reason, Leia broke in, “I’ve heard about that blockade. My - Senator Organa’s told me of it. Your bravery and - and strength, Padme, it was incredible. He always told me what a hero you were.” She faltered, just a little. “That’s how you two met…I had no idea. He never mentioned that.”

Amidala flushed, embarrassed. “Bail talks me up. Honestly, he shouldn’t be spreading that around…”

But Skywalker just nodded fervently, leaning forward. “She was a hero! I’ve never seen a politician stand up to those goons like she did.”

“I once saw Satine throw a shoe at Death Watch. And I think Senator Binks went on to liberate five planetary systems from oppression.”

Skywalker ignored her. “Nobody cares like Padme. Nobody’s ever cared like her. It’s because she knows - we both know - what it’s like to have powerful people step on you just because they can.” He stared at Leia, long and hard, not blinking. “Padme talks about you all the time. She says you have that spirit too. You get it, right? That’s why you and Captain Fox are - you know. Because you get what it’s like.”

“Yes,” Leia said, “I’m acquainted with suffering.”

They stared at each other, hard and unblinking. Fox and Amidala exchanged embarrassed glances.

Slowly, yet with great care, Leia said, “How did you meet Padme eleven years ago, Knight Skywalker? You must have just been a child.”

Without missing a beat - maybe too quickly, maybe too eagerly - Skywalker said, “My mother ran a mechanic shop. Master Qui-Gon asked her to help fix Padme’s ship. That’s how we met.”

Something in Leia sparked, hot and bright. She leaned forward, but Skywalker didn’t lean away. “You were living with your mother? You must have come to the Temple late.”

“Almost too late,” Skywalker said wryly. Padme squeezed his arm. “It’s fine. Obi-Wan really fought for me. I owe him everything.” Leia almost choked on her food. “His master died, he liberated a planet, he was knighted, and he took a padawan practically on the same day. I was too young to be a padawan but he taught and raised me anyway. I know I couldn’t have done it.”

“Sounds like he sacrificed a lot for you,” Fox said, as Leia coughed.

A strange expression crossed Skywalker’s face, half thoughtful and half disturbed. “He did. Not like my mother, I suppose, but…”

“What was your mother like?” Leia leaned in closer, eyes wide and gaze intense. Amidala stiffened, lips thinning as she glanced at Skywalker - that wasn’t fear, was it? - but he didn’t notice her. He was looking at Leia too, as intently as she looked at him.

“She was - she was amazing. The best person in the galaxy. Coruscant combined wasn’t worth half of her.” Skywalker couldn’t tear his eyes away from Leia. Could he see his mother in her eyes? Even Fox could tell that Leia had gotten her eyes from Amidala, but the strange connection between Leia and Skywalker seemed to run deeper than that. “She always - uh, she always said that the biggest problem in the galaxy was that nobody helps each other. She always put everybody else above herself. I always came first.”

“She sounds like a very impressive woman,” Leia said quietly. “I’m sure she’d be very proud of you. And everything you’ve accomplished.”

“Yeah.” Skywalker finally broke away from her gaze, looking down to fiddle with his forks. Amidala put a hand on his forearm, brow furrowed. “Well…it’s always too late to know, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Leia said, staring daggers into her father, “it is.”

“So how did you two meet?” Amidala asked Fox desperately. They were both as Force sensitive as a rock, but she was obviously picking up on the weird intensity. “If we’re sharing stories.”

“Senate.”

Amidala’s smile stayed fixed to her face. “Is that so.”

“He’s not going to say anything more,” Skywalker told her flatly. “All of his brothers are terrified of him. I think it’ll remain a mystery.”

Leia drew herself up in indignation, and Fox quickly kicked her in the shin. She huffed, but she settled on reaching for her wine instead. Fox was glad - he really didn’t want Leia defending his honor. Instead, she settled on saying, “I think Fox is worth the other half of Coruscant. Certainly the top half.”

“I’m afraid I’m worth less than the art in Senator Organa’s office,” Fox told Leia. “Maybe about as much as the piece on the back wall.”

“Oh, goodness. Yes, I read that report. This war is such a waste of money.” Leia took a long drag from her wine. “How much do you cost again, Captain?” Fox told her the number. “That seems both very high and far too low.”

“Is it? I have no idea how it works.” Fox shrugged. “I’ve never had money, I have no frame of reference.”

“Maybe I can start embezzling -”

A crack rang through the table.

Fox’s body moved before his mind did. His hand shot out, right in front of Leia, and he immediately felt a piercing pain shoot through his palm. Leia had already jerked back, shards of crystal skittering over the table, and a cloud of light crystal dust showered their food.

“Fox, are -”

“Anakin, what -”

“Sorry, sorry! I’m sorry, I don’t - sorry, that didn’t - sorry!” Skywalker’s glove was coated in crystal shards and dust, clutching a broken stem where a wine glass used to be. Servers were already bee-lining towards them, armed with towels and complimentary desserts. Skywalker stood, dusting off his glove onto the small ceramic plate and the ruined bread. “That was the metal hand, sorry, must be an issue with the hydraulics - it got banged up on Ryloth last week, that has to be it.”

But Leia was ignoring him completely. She carefully grabbed Fox’s hand, inspecting the slivers of crystal. Thank the god of mercy for exercising his autonomy, because the bodysuit had saved his palm from almost all of them. Only his exposed fingers were cut, with thin trails of red dripping down his fingers.

“I don’t think any crystal’s stuck inside, but I’m worried about the - oh, shut it, Skywalker - worried about the dust. Let’s get you a med droid.”

“I’m fine,” Fox said gruffly. “It is literally a scratch.”

“Look, Leia, I’m really sorry -”

“Sorry?” Leia didn’t even honor Skywalker with a snarl or a sneer. She just stared at him, as if her contempt was too obvious even to show. “I’m sorry, Knight Skywalker, but I would have assumed that an adult Jedi Knight had no need to say sorry for losing control like a toddler. I would have also assumed that an apology would be due to Captain Fox, and not myself!”

Amidala carefully dusted the crystal dust off her dress, expression almost suspiciously blank. “Captain Fox, we’re truly sorry about this. Anakin’s hydraulics have been malfunctioning for a while, we should have fixed them weeks ago.”

Leia froze, her fingers tightening on Fox’s wrist. She looked at her mother, face almost white. When she spoke she didn’t sound like Leia at all, her words quiet and forceful and strangely horrified.

“Did you always cover for him?”

Amidala paled. A strange expression crossed Skywalker’s face - anger, or maybe fear. Or maybe both, indistinguishable from each other. Amidala’s eyes darted from him to Leia.

A million alarm bells went off in Fox’s head, and he let them. He gently extricated himself from Leia immediately, standing up from his seat. “Forgive me, General. It’s my fault. I believe the Senator is rattled. With your leave, I’ll see her home.”

“That seems like it’s for the best,” Amidala said quickly. “It’s best we get going too. Thank you, Captain.”

“Yeah, you’re dismissed,” Skywalker said. It had worked - he reluctantly calmed down, safe again in the knowledge that nobody was about to criticize him. That Amidala wouldn’t, that Fox couldn’t, and that Fox would do his job and make sure that Leia didn’t. “It was nice to meet you guys and everything.”

“It’s always such a pleasure,” Leia said tartly. Fox subtly pulled her upwards, taking her coat and pushing his chair back in. “Excuse us, I ought to find a droid immediately.”

And, without any further ado, Leia paid the check and swept both of them out of the restaurant.

The Senate district was dappled in soft lights. The night cycle had begun, and the young people eager to cruise the high-class restaurants were out in well-cut dresses and fine tunics. Fox and Leia melted almost invisibly into the growing crowd, and Fox felt the bizarre-familiar sensation of being just another face in a crowd.

It was a short walk back to the Senate building, if a slightly depressed one.They both had more work to do. It was only 1900, and Fox and Leia would work for three more hours at least. The Senate had a small medbay, and they could check for crystal shards there.

Leia didn’t say a single word on the way there. She just stuck close to Fox, elbowing aside the people pushing past her, and it wasn’t until they got to the building that Leia grabbed his elbow and tugged Fox’s towards the guard’s entrance.

This was not going to help any rumors whatsoever, but Fox followed her anyway. He let them in through the guard’s entrance, and let Leia lead them down the hallways in stops, starts, and random left turns that she would chalk up to her sense of smell and that was definitely the Force.

It was a short path to Fox’s office from the guard entrance - which was why she had chosen it. Fox silently opened the door for her as she called for a med droid, flipping on the lights and letting the sickly fluorescent lighting illuminate the pale, washed out nothing that was his office.

Datapads and a desk. A personal caff machine in the back was the only nonregulation item. Fox expected Leia to beeline for his chair and throw herself down on it, but somehow she only stood there- not looking at anything, barely even registering their surroundings.

Finally, now that they were in absolute private, Leia said, “I hate him.”

What was there to say to this? There was nothing. Fox could try to fix it for her, but they were both already doing their best. The path to salvation wasn’t Anakin Skywalker, and neither of them particularly wanted to try.

Instead, Fox just said, “I know.”

“I hate him,” Leia whispered. She was grinding her teeth together, her left hand clutching her own wrist tightly. “I hate him, I hate him…”

“I know,” Fox said, impossibly tired. “We’re taking care of it.”

“He - he -” Leia fell silent. She opened her mouth, then closed it, then opened it again. “I didn’t tell you how Padme died.”

She hadn’t. She had told Fox almost everything, but she hadn’t told him that. “You don’t have to,” Fox said carefully. Truthfully, looking at Skywalker and Amidala’s faces and knowing how it would all end was strange enough for him. “We shouldn’t reminisce on things that haven’t happened yet.”

“General Kenobi told me she lost the will to live.” Leia took a deep breath, keeping her lips pressed tightly together. “What - what does that even mean? What does that mean? He choked her out and she lost the will to live? I’ve met her, Fox. That woman’s will can burn down a world. I don’t believe him anymore. I think - I think he -”

It wasn’t Fox’s parents, and he could never understand. Fox was the family who hurt family, but he had never pretended to love them. He didn’t know what to do.

Slowly, awfully, Fox put a hand on her shoulder. His fingers had stopped bleeding, but they smeared bright red blood on her pure white outfit anyway. His brain twitched at the sight, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. “It’ll be okay. That will never happen now.”

“I don’t get it,” Leia hissed. She almost shook in anger. Her hand raised to clench at Fox’s wrist, and Fox let her grip him impossibly tight. “Luke told me she knew about the Tuskens, but I couldn’t - it didn’t make any sense. How could such a bright, amazing woman - Daddy always said I was just like her, Fox, he always did - how could she cover for him? How could she excuse that? I don’t get it. How…”

“Because you would never do it.” Leia’s blazer was smooth as silk, but the red trails from his blood soaked in immediately and didn’t smear. “You don’t understand because you cannot tolerate injustice or evil. Amidala does. It’s that simple.”

Leia’s expression twisted. “If Dad and Mom knew, they would have turned him in.”

“Yes, they would have.” He paused a beat, uncomfortable with the prospect of changing an opinion. “Kenobi did a good job choosing parents for you.”

“Please, Fox, I’m not blaming her. I - I just -”

“You thought she was perfect, and she’s not. I know.”

“Luke told me what Skywalker meant,” Leia whispered, and Fox stopped short. He heard a crash in his ears, and the echo of a shooting pain. “His uncle wanted to change the name. It’s a dirty name on Tatooine, one of the ten or so that they assign slaves. It’s common and - and meaningless. But Luke’s aunt convinced his uncle and General Kenobi to keep it. Did you know that? Because Luke shouldn’t forget where he came from. If he forgot, then maybe - maybe he’d grow up to tolerate great evil. And Luke’s not that kind of boy.”

Fox didn’t say anything.

“He knows,” Leia whispered harshly. “He knows as well as I do. But he can’t. So he doesn’t. So he waltzes around, buying into everything they’re selling, believing anything that’ll keep the wolf from his door. And anything that threatens his delusions is a threat.”

His other hand was on Leia’s other shoulder. When did that happen? Fox didn’t remember moving. “I was the same way,” Fox said bluntly. “I believed what I had to in order to survive. I couldn’t do anything about it. I had no choice. So I made myself into the kind of person who could survive the next day. Skywalker, he has more freedom than I do - but I don’t think he’s any more free.” He paused a beat, working his jaw. “That’s what the Emperor does to you. You freed me, but nobody’s freed him. Not yet.”

“Oh, as if he’s such a victim,” Leia snapped. “He’s one of the most powerful men in the galaxy now and he’ll be one of the two most powerful men in the future. He made his own decisions, and I don’t care why, he can have all of the reasons and excuses and whys he wants, I just don’t care - he murdered his wife, he killed my family, he wasted Luke’s valuable time, I hate him, I hate him -”

“He’s a great man, Leia,” Fox said, supremely exhausted. Leia’s blazer was stiff but soft, and the cuts from his other hand began to run down in red trails down the back. It was very ruined. Whatever. “And I’m not much better than he is right now.”

“Oh, do not give me that,” Leia snapped. “The minute you had a choice you made the right one. I didn’t save you, Captain, I just gave you an opportunity. You’re the one who took it. You are a thousand times braver and stronger than he is, and it makes me want to kill something when you have to act like you aren’t, and I swear the minute we assassinate that old man I am embezzling all of his money and buying you a cottage in Stewjon so you can retire and keep those insipid bees.”

“I like the bees,” Fox said, with a perfectly straight face.

“Then you will have your bees! You can live in the thrice-damned woods for all I care, but you are getting something better than this garbage and that’s final!”

And, for some reason, Fox found himself hugging her. Tightly, but excruciatingly careful not to hurt her. He needn’t have worried - Leia was hugging him back, just as tight.

Maybe it was the supreme surrealism of physical affection, or the insanity that was building in his chest right now, but Fox felt a unique and stupid emotion. In the midst of the Clone Wars, in the twilight of the Republic, directly in the center of the Sith Lord’s seat of supreme power, Fox felt perfectly safe. So long as he was with Leia, Fox felt safe.

“Hey, Captain, got those - never mind, not important, bye!”

The door to his office shut at lightspeed, as quickly as it opened. Fox groaned and dropped his forehead on the top of Leia’s head, who promptly began cackling.

*********

Fox hadn’t meant to attend the party.

He left most of the arrangements to Stone, who actually enjoyed doing that shit, and let him decide everything. He’d show up for five minutes at the beginning of the party, guarantee that it was happening and let the men see that nobody had hacked into his mailcom, and then disappear. He didn’t do parties, and no amount of personality changes would change him into someone who enjoyed fun.

But he received the updated invitation in his mailcom inbox five hours before the party anyway. It was from Stone, sent via the encrypted line and featuring a very polite threat regarding his mandatory attendance.

He couldn’t even pretend he had too much work to do. The Life Day holidays had begun. Tomorrow was apparently the first day, and they would extend for three more days until the actual ‘Life Day’ on the third day, with some sort of additional after-day tacked on at the end. Or something. Fox hadn’t listened to any explanations. All he knew was that the Senate building was deserted completely except for him and his men, for only the second time that Fox could remember.

He hadn’t really noticed last year, beyond appreciation that there wasn’t any stupid Senate to get in the way of making sure the Senate ran smoothly. He noticed this year - acutely aware of the empty echo of his footsteps on the tile, matched and joined by nothing.

It was even stranger to meet some of his men in the lobby, who smiled and waved when they saw him. They forced him into small talk as they left the building, breaking into the equally quiet Senate district, and Fox ignored them for favor of triple checking their perimeter and making sure that they weren’t being followed. Practically the entire district was shut down for Life Day, but Fox always felt watched.

Was the Chancellor watching him now? Did he suspect? Or was the thought of Fox betraying him unimaginable?

Maybe he thought that a single clone wanting a single holiday party meant nothing. Fox could have just been mindlessly copying it from media and other life forms. He could even be doing his job, propping up the facade of a functioning society and normal government by implementing useless little things like holiday parties. Maybe he didn’t know and didn’t care. Maybe he didn’t know a single goddamn thing.

Maybe he didn’t know Fox at all.

The men standing guard to the gardens bitched goodnaturedly about missing out on the first hour of the party, but a single head tilt from Fox shut them up. They disappeared into the enclosed gardens, the high shrubs and thick foliage hiding them from view, and Fox watched as his men popped off their helmets with a sigh of relief.

They blinked around the gardens with new eyes, wrinkling their noses at the smell or blinking away spots. They had probably never taken their buckets off in here, only ever stepping inside the area for patrol duty or to spy on Fox’s lunch meetings. Fox took off his bucket too, ignoring his subordinate’s exaggerated exclamations of surprise. Longstreet loudly expressed surprise that he had a face. Stuart elbowed Tuco, pretending to be surprised that Fox was so ugly.

“Good enough for the - okay, wow, shutting up.”

They had seized Fox and Leia’s favorite clearing, which would have been suspicious if it wasn’t for the fact that the clearing was the most secluded area of the gardens with the best coverage. Or so Stone insisted, swearing up and down that Fox had nothing to do with it, honest, isn’t the party your idea? You don’t get to complain!

“I always get to complain,” Fox said. “Perks of command.”

“Was that a joke?”

“Is this a fucking office party or not?”

Someone had accessed the control panel and turned on the few lights in the clearing, giving them a healthy glow in the backlit foliage. Men were still filtering in, yelling loudly at each other in ridiculous excitement. Fox felt almost defensive about it. They got recreation, didn’t they? Well, maybe they didn’t - but they didn’t need it, did they?

They didn’t need anything, did they?

Someone had set up one folding table with food and three with alcohol, a clear foreshadowing to disaster. Fox made the executive decision that it wasn’t his responsibility. There was a portable speaker at the base of the Liberty statue, resting on the Toydarian’s feet, and three clones were already arguing over the station.

Most importantly, Wolffe was sitting on top of another folding table in the back, arguing easily and lazily with Nemo.

Fox promptly turned on his heel, but it was too late. Wolffe instantly grabbed the nearest projectile - his own bucket, placed next to him - and threw it directly at his head. Fox instinctively grabbed it out of the air, shooting it back at him as forcefully as he could, and he could practically hear a trainer bitch them out for playing handball in the hallways.

The closest thing to a trainer here was Fox, and they had never even told him what handball was. He had never bothered to find out. Maybe that was a better use of his time than bothering to repeat meaningless orders that had never even made sense to him.

“This is a Senate Guard party,” Fox said, picking his way from the clones already getting as drunk as possible towards the two unabashed criminals. “What are you two doing here?”

Nemo snickered, sliding a thin object wrapped in brown flimsi out of his belt. “Oh, so you don’t want this?”

Fox snatched it out of his hands, quickly stuffing it in his own belt. “We’re even. You can leave.”

“Do you have any idea how hard that thing was to steal? We are not even. I’m staying the whole damn party and drinking every beer you have.”

“You falsified some inventory reports and swiped it from an unattended room. It was not difficult.”

“It was at great personal risk to myself. I want your beer.”

It had, actually, been an unbelievably illegal thing to ask Nemo to do, so Fox grunted and let the matter drop. He turned to Wolffe instead, who was very studiously staring at the sun instead of Fox. “Why are you here? I thought you were mad at me.”

Nemo hopped off the table instantly. “Wow, look, the other side has more beer. Talk to you guys later!”

What a loss. Fox took his place, leaning against the table with his arms crossed next to Wolffe. More and more men were filtering in, the soft white lights transforming them from shadowy figures into grinning men as they stepped into the spotlight.

It was good to see, somehow. For some reason. Fox was surprised. He was still discovering the things that made him happy. He took his responsibility to his men seriously, but he hadn’t cared about their feelings or their happiness for a very long time.

“Yeah, well, I was being a dick.” Wolffe took a long drag of his beer, not looking at Fox. Fox politely didn’t look at him either. Neither of them did well with emotional conversations, so it helped to pretend that the other person wasn’t there. “It’s pretty selfish to get angry that my best friend’s happy.”

“You were angry about a lot of other things,” Fox pointed out. He paused a second, working his jaw. “Whatever I say isn’t going to mean much to you, is it.”

“Nah. Haven’t trusted a word that came out of your mouth for a year.” Wolffe glanced at him out of the corner of his eye, but Fox just shrugged. “What, that doesn’t piss you off?”

“It’s fair,” Fox said blandly. Across the clearing, men were already getting into wrestling matches with each other as others laughed and cheered them on. “I think the brothers kind of sensed it. They haven’t been treating me like a person for a while now.”

“Neither have I.” Wolffe picked at the beer, using the edge of his armor to scrape at the label. “So it’s hard to blame you for not talking to me. It just hurt. You know?”

“Are you admitting to a vulnerability?” Fox asked, incredulous. Small gods, what were they? Senators? “What’s gotten into you?”

Wolffe scratched the back of his neck, somewhat abashed. “Leia?”

“You -” Fox stopped, then started. “You talked - you talked to -”

“You mean she chased me down once she heard that we fought and interrogated me for an hour? Did a terrible job explaining to me your fucked up psychology? Yup.” Wolffe shrugged. “We’re friends now.”

“You’re friends -”

“Yeah. I even invited her to the party. See?”

And, in horror, Fox saw it - a small woman in a white dress, flanked by one of the entrance guards. They were standing just to the side of the mouth of the clearing, talking intently.

“God of natural disaster.” Fox was already pushing off the table, ready to follow his immediate instinct to run after Leia and stop her from engaging in yet another diplomatic incident. “Why would you -”

“I told you I don’t trust a word coming out of your mouth.” Wolffe huffed a laugh, draining his beer and setting it down next to him. “She’s an easy person to trust, though. I see why she got through to you.”

“You went to Senator Organa for information gathering?”

“Hey, that’s what she was doing.”

They had teamed up. Great.

Fox gave into the instinct and jogged across the clearing, bravely fighting past the few clones who were already whispering at the sight of Leia. As he drew closer, he noticed something that almost made him stop short.

Her hair was down to her shoulders. If it wasn’t for the fact that Fox recognized Leia solely by bearing, he would have passed right by her. Her dress was shorter than her usual, a tighter top with the bottom half flared around her ankles complementing her white flats. She had a red shawl draped over her shoulders. She had a small silver package tucked under her arm, narrow and about as long as his forearm. Even more unbelievably, she was speaking politely to the guard. Fox sped up, just in time to catch their conversation.

“I don’t want to intrude. I just wanted to drop this off with Captain Fox.”

“Oh, no, ma’am, it’s perfectly alright. He’s - there he is.” The guard - Fox recognized him as Jobal - saluted loosely at Fox in greeting. “Sir, the senator wishes to speak to you.” He stepped closer, lowering his voice a little. “Did you tell her…?”

“I did not,” Fox snapped. Jobal leaned back, embarrassed even for the insinuation. Even Fox didn’t spill clone secrets, and this definitely counted as one. Even if Wolffe, apparently, did. He turned to Leia, who was still standing there with completely uncharacteristic politeness. “I can’t believe Wolffe invited you here. This is private.”

The gossipy fucking clones immedietly started murmuring, many of them craning their heads back to stare at an unrepetnant Wolffe. Fox fought to keep his face from heating up. Way to be the guy who invites the natborn to a clone function, Fox - even though it was not his fault whatsoever.

“I understand completely,” Leia said immediately. “Commander Wolffe was highly insistent I come here in person to drop off my package. I asked the guard to give it to you for me, but he was insistent that I come in.”

“It might be a bomb, sir,” Jobal said gleefully. “Can’t have that.”

Fox gave him a very ‘what are you doing’ squint. Jobal pretended to look professional, which was just smarmy.

He held out his hand, and Leia obediently put the package in his outstretched hand. Fox frowned, weighing it in his hand a little. It felt oddly familiar…

Then, to Fox’s absolute shock and slight horror, Leia turned and bowed slightly to the assembled clones. It was a very Alderaanian gesture, but it was one Fox had never seen from Leia before. Mostly because it was polite.

“I’m very sorry for interrupting,” Leia said. “I’ll take my leave now.”

Three clones surrounding Jobal immediately started shoving at him, and he immediately broke the shocked silence. “Princess, there’s really no need to apologize -”

“Yeah, Princess,” another clone said heatedly, “it’s good to see you!”

“How’s the vote go, Princess?” The clone next to him asked, shoving himself forward. “Did you win?”

“Hey, Princess, I never thanked you for that armor polish -”

“I still have to give you those magazines back, right?”

In slow, dawning horror, Fox turned to Leia. She was smiling gently at the men, who were suddenly pushing amongst themselves to say hello or talk to her. “You’re friends with the guards.”

“Of course I am,” Leia said cheerfully. “They’re very nice people.”

“You’re…nice…to…my…guards…”

“Oh, honestly, Fox,” Leia said, “I only give a hard time to the people that deserve it.”

“You give everyone a hard time!”

“I give other politicians a hard time.”

“You give me a hard time!”

Leia smiled at him, and in the soft white light she looked like nothing more than a happy young woman. “You deserve it.”

Fox stared at her, speechless.

A nearby clone tapped at Fox’s armor, making him jump. “Hey, Captain, can’t the Princess stay? We don’t mind.”

“Yeah, she won’t snitch!”

“The Princess is cool, let her stick around!”

A natborn. Invited to a clone…

“Hey!” Fox cried, outraged. “Why are you nice to my guards and I’m not?”

“Well, damn, Fox, want me to wipe your ass for you too?”

The clones around them burst out laughing as Fox abruptly gave up. He waved a hand at Jobal, his eyes threatening murder but his gesture announcing that she was safe. “We are never talking about this again.”

He couldn’t tell if this was a victory for Leia or not. It seemed in character for her to try and infiltrate Fox’s life and utterly destroy it, but instead she just seemed surprised. The feeling faded in an instant, and when she looked to the men she simply seemed very professional and kind.

“Then please call me Leia tonight! I’m just here as a friend.”

The men cheered, caught up in the familiar mass hysteria that clones had a proclivity towards. And, for just a second, Fox saw something strange in Leia’s eyes. He only recognized it because he had seen an identical copy in a face that looked very different than hers. It was a strange kind of awe, she had never known that the galaxy could produce this, and she had never expected to witness it.

The expression didn’t change when she looked back at Fox. He didn’t know why he expected it to. It only softened, and for the first time in Fox’s life he wondered what she saw when she looked at him.

She didn’t say. Instead, she only said, “You should open your gift.”

It was only then Fox realized that Leia had, in fact, given him a present for Life Day.

It took him a second to figure out the packaging, which was some very nice silver flimsi that had a strange iridescent effect in the light. Almost every clone at the party was far, far too invested in the proceedings, craning over each other’s heads to look.

Finally, Fox managed to reveal a thin durasteel box. He unlatched the lid and flipped it open, squinting uncertainly at the object inside.

It was a dagger. Clearly antique, but with a sharp edge and strong craftsmanship that suggested it would hold up well in a pinch. The blade was white but the hilt was pure silver, with a curved and lattice shape that was laced with a single blood red mineral vein. The gentle, elegant lines marked it undoubtedly as Alderaanian, and everything else marked it as very expensive.

“It’s very practical,” Leia said eagerly. “And hideously expensive, it’s some antique I liberated from my family’s vaults ages ago. You can sell it for money! Which you could use to buy something else practical and needed. I can give you the name of a good antiquer who will give you a very fair price. I didn’t want to give you money outright, it seemed very impersonal, and I know it being a gift would somewhat ruin the spirit of the whole ‘having money’ thing. How is it?”

Fox stared down at the present blankly.

Leia’s smile began to falter a little. “Is it a bad gift? Was I being tacky? I’m sorry, I usually make my assistants buy the Life Day gifts. I can buy you a gun instead, but I figured that you probably had enough guns and I didn’t know your favorite types. A gift card?”

Finally, Fox found his voice. “Are you friends with any Mandalorians?”

Behind them, the men were still going insane.

Leia didn’t miss a beat. “They’re usually too busy killing each other to stop and chat, why?”

“So you aren’t fucking with me on purpose.”

“If I was fucking with you then you’d know about it.” Leia chanced a glance at the men, who were still going insane. “Why are they doing that.”

“I cannot believe that you keep doing this by accident.”

“Doing what by accident?”

“The good news is that our cover is very secure.” Very, very carefully, Fox took the dagger and secured it onto his belt. “The bad news is that it was a marriage proposal.”

Leia buried her face in her hands.

“Only on one planet,” Fox felt the need to clarify. “And only culturally.”

Leia muttered something into her hands that may have been “your culture”.

“I’d have to give you a weapon back for us to be engaged.”

Leia muttered something about how this did not stop her embarrassment.

“You can take it back.”

Leia muttered something into her hands that may have been a request for him to go fuck himself.

“If it makes you feel any better,” Fox said, “it’s the best Life Day present I’ve ever gotten.”

Leia looked up at him. “Give me the dagger.”

“Can’t, it’s mine.”

“Give me it, I need a weapon.”

“But I like it!”

She lunged for it, making Fox step away, and the other clones didn’t stop laughing as Fox worked hard to dodge Leia’s incessant fight for her life.

********

The party raged.

Fox, anti-social to the last, stayed perched on the back table with Wolffe shooting the shit. Apparently he and Leia really did know each other, and the minute they caught sight of each other they engaged in an immediate shouting match. Fox was on her side. Wolffe deserved it.

After ten ridiculous minutes, Wolffe had finally hopped off the table and clapped Fox on the shoulder. Leia stuck her tongue out at him in an extremely mature move before flouncing off to go dance with an extremely flustered clone.

“Keep your personal comm on,” he said. “So I know you’re doing alright.”

“You’re beginning to sound a lot like Cody.”

“Insulting the man who arranged your engagement. No love between brothers.”

“I hope Plo Koon tells you that you’re nothing to him,” Fox said pleasantly.

“I hope you have to talk to a senator tomorrow.”

“I hope you have to talk to Kenobi tomorrow -”

“Way too far.” But Wolffe smiled anyway, and Fox nodded back. “I have a gym calling my name. See you later, Fox.”

For some reason, strange and obscure and foreign, Fox missed him the minute he turned his back. Sometimes he didn’t like all these new emotions. Guess he’d have to actually start talking in the groupchat.

He went back to watching the crowd instead. The men were growing drunker and drunker, but they weren’t too rowdy. It was now the depths of night, and Coruscant had quieted just a little. The neon lights still lit up the world far above them, but through the thick canopy of trees and foliage it was nothing more than a backlit glow. The soft white lights inside the clearing felt far more real, something just to the right of organic, and the men’s laughter rang just a little louder and looser than usual. It even sounded different from the laughter at the bar, or from the barrack shittalk. It was a strange, out of breath laugh, the kind that wheezed from your chest after too long talking and dancing and drinking.

Leia was a decent dancer. With her impressive Force-given stamina, she had barely bothered to take a break since she began. You could barely tell that she had been classically trained in princess school. She kept it loose, matching the other clone’s steps and taking the lead if he felt unsure. She was clearly unused to the heavier, more expressive style of Mandalorian dancing that they had bribed out of drunk trainers years ago, but she adapted quickly. Her hair flew long and wild, growing more and more frazzled as she danced. She didn’t touch any drinks, but her laughs came easier as the night drew on.

And there was a strange feeling in Fox’s chest, growing more familiar by the day. A strange kind of happy indigestion. It didn’t even feel like happiness. It felt like her happiness was his, that her joy blew on his own smothered embers and reignited it into a flickering star.

“You know what they say. Love can reignite the stars.”

Fox almost fell off the table.

There was a man sitting next to him. A natborn, about Fox and Leia’s age, with sandy blonde hair and a round face. He was dressed in all black, his simple clothing sleek and tight, but he wore a billowing black hooded cloak draped carefully over the side of the table. Fox’s eyes hitched onto the lightsaber on his hip, and he couldn’t tear them away.

He just sat there, posture loose and relaxed, legs swinging slightly above the ground. Fox looked around quickly, but nobody else seemed to find the man’s instant appearance strange - or maybe nobody else noticed. He’d have to fucking kill Jubal, what kind of guard - but Fox hasn’t seen him either, had he? How could he have not seen him? The man’s presence was tangible, heavy and thick in a stomach-churning and familiar way.

Fox’s first wild thought was that the man felt like Lord Sidious. They had the same overwhelming presence, permeating every inch of your body while bearing down heavily on your shoulders. They always froze every inch of you - not just your muscles, but your throat and lungs and gut.

But there was something different about it. Instead of oppressive and suffocating, it was soft and bright. It made him breathe easier, and for just a second his tongue tasted fresh and natural air. Frankly and simply, the man was not the single most evil thing in the known galaxy. Maybe he wasn’t even evil at all.

He didn’t feel like any Jedi Fox knew. There was something muddled and confused about all of them, like a sun hidden behind dark gray clouds. He barely felt like a Jedi at all, because he scorched.

The address rose instantly to Fox’s tongue, completely without thought. “My lord, how may I help you?”

The man’s eyebrows tilted upwards in surprise, and Fox saw for the first time how pale and blue his eyes were. “No need for that. I’m only a part time Sith Lord.”

“I - sir, how did -”

“I didn’t want to make anybody uncomfortable, so I tried to slip in quietly. I’m very sorry for the intrusion.” The worst part was that he did genuinely seem sorry, as if Fox’s comfort was important to him. “You’re very sensitive to the Force, aren’t you? I wonder if it’s your exposure to Sidious. Like…rubbing sandsheets on your skin every day. That must be awful.”

A Jedi. He had to be. Fox saluted, embarrassingly late, and the man quickly waved him at ease. “No need for that either. Man, I really am being rude…” He straightened, sticking out a hand. Fox eyed it, terrified. “Knight Luke Skywalker. Grandmaster of the New Jedi Order. Please relax, it’s weird when I’m not undercover. Nobody back home’s scared of me.” For a bizarre second, he even looked a little put out. “You’d think that calling yourself the last knight of a mythical monastic order of warrior monks would inspire a little more respect. But everyone just thinks I’m a myth. Isn’t that weird?”

“Very weird, sir,” Fox said, dizzy. A great deal of conclusions rammed him in the head at once. “Sir, you wouldn’t happen to be…”

“That cannot be my loser brother.”

Said loser brother perked up, hopping off the table immediately. Fox backed up respectfully, just as he opened his arms in clear expectation of a lovely embrace from the twin sister rushing over to meet him.

Leia tried to kick him in the ribs, her flats grinding on the soft grass as Luke barely dodged. “You asshole! What are you doing here! You’re supposed to be undercover!”

“I wanted to see my lovely sister for Life Day!” Luke announced, dodging her melee attacks with some difficulty. “Nineteen years of separation, I didn’t want to be gone for a second longer! And none of the droids laugh at my jokes.”

“Nobody laughs at your jokes, sand for brains.” But Leia stopped trying to kill him just long enough to hug him, and Luke gleefully hugged her back. “Will being here compromise your cover? Fox and I have been maintaining opsec very carefully, and I won’t have you ruining this.”

But Luke just straightened his cloak, letting it billow around him in an easy grace. Leia rolled her eyes. “What makes you think I am even truly here?”

“You’re an idiot.”

“I could be a Force ghost.”

“And I could be a Wookie, but you don’t see me with fur.”

Cover. Part time Sith Lord. Fox inhaled a sharp breath before even thinking about it. “You’re the other mystery time traveler!” Luke and Leia stared at him blankly, and Fox immediately realized what he had just said. “I - I mean, sir, I didn’t realize you were the other operative on this mission.”

Leia rounded on Luke before he could even open his mouth. Fox instantly checked their surroundings, fully aware that a true Leia yell could shatter eardrums and pull a lot of attention to them. But nobody else even seemed to notice them. Force magic. Incredible.

“Do not tell me you bullied Fox into that sir crap. If you gave him even one ounce of your ridiculous ‘last knight of a mythical monastic order of warrior monks’ bantha shit I’m shoving your tongue into your ear. You will not believe how useless the Jedi are. All General Kenobi does is drink and lose his clothing everywhere.”

“I did not need to know that! And I’m perfectly aware how great and amazing he is, Leia, as you’ve detailed. Exhaustively.” Luke rolled his shoulders, bringing the cloak to roll over his front and obscure the lightsaber hilt. He smiled apologetically at Fox, who froze. “I’ve never seen Leia actually say nice things about somebody before. It’s been hard for her to make friends since she lost her best friend - that’s me, I ended up being her brother.”

“I can’t believe we’re related,” Leia said flatly.

But it made perfect sense to Fox. The brightest will and the greatest power on Coruscant would, of course, go onto create two children who overwhelmed themselves with their own incredible feelings. Who wanted too much, fought too hard, and held on too fiercely.

Fox stared at the man blankly. “I’m sorry for not recognizing you, sir, but - your sister claimed her brother was a ridiculous incompetent.”

“I’ll admit to the ridiculous,” Luke said cheerfully, “but I’m only incompetent sometimes. Besides, Leia says that about everyone.”

“That was before I met clones.” Leia propped her hands on her hip, mock-glaring at Luke. “Clones are among the most competent people I’ve ever met. It’s a breath of natural air in this useless time period full of useless people. I wish I’d met Captain Fox years ago. We would have wrapped up the war months ahead of schedule.”

“When you think about it, you have met Fox years ago. And I’d say we’re wrapping up the war many years ahead of schedule.” Luke turned to Leia as Fox fought mortification. “Count Dooku has come around to our point of view, more or less. I think the Separatists will be able to negotiate for their rights quite well once the war is over. Honestly, once you root out the Sith and corporate interests from the Seperatist Senate, they’re all very nice people. And recognizable!”

At Fox’s confused look, Leia sighed. “Most of the founding members of the Rebellion were Seperatist during the Clone Wars. Something about trying to dissociate yourself from a large government taking further and further extremist powers makes you unwilling to accept an even worse government. Ex-Seperatist planets were also much better off financially than the Republic, thanks to the corporate interests and the Emperor’s bankrolling.”

“I’m looking forward to the government these good people will come together to make.” Luke looked around the assembly - at the clones laughing and talking, at the dancing in the center of the field underneath the Liberty statue. “And I’m excited to see the future you and your brothers will have. I think it’ll be a kind one. Don’t you?”

Fox’s breath caught. Something about Luke’s simple words hit something deep in his gut. He was terrified of the future, and he had always known that it only held bad things. He had always known that he would never see it. Excitement for a kind future…the thought was overwhelming. “I hope so, sir.”

Leia elbowed him, quite rudely.“If you call my brother sir one more time I’ll slug you.”

Fox elbowed her back, leaning in to hiss in her ear. “That is a real Jedi! Shut up!”

“Oh, you’re surrounded by Jedi all damn day, get over it.”

“Not real Jedi,” Fox said, and he didn’t know it was true until he said it. “Jedi like that haven’t existed for a long time.” Maybe they’d never existed. Fox had thought that the myth of the Jedi spread throughout the Kamino barracks was a fiction, meant to propagandize and indoctrinate, but something in Luke’s bearing made the fairy tales seem real. Something in… “Jedi like you and the Grandmaster.”

Leia stepped away from him, crossing her arms tightly. Luke politely looked between Fox and Leia, sensing that he was missing something. “For the last damn time, sweeping at sabacc does not a Jedi make. I don’t know the first thing about being a Jedi. And he’s the Grandmaster of, like, five people.”

“There’s a lot of backflips,” Luke said seriously. “And riddles.”

“I hate riddles.”

“That’s the point! I thought they were some ancient wisdom thing at first too.” Luke nodded solemnly, as if he was impairing a secret of the universe. “But it’s just about being annoying. I’ve been trying out the whole thing, but I think it suits me better to be annoying in a completely different way. I’m thinking about acting oblivious.”

“What’s the point of being annoying?”

“It makes them think you have some ancient wisdom thing going on.”

“I’m sorry,” Fox cut in, raising a hand and halting them both in their tracks. “You’re saying being a Jedi is more about acting like you know what’s going on than…actually knowing what’s going on?”

Luke just shrugged at him, offering a lopsided half-smile. “Who really knows what’s going on? Anyone who thinks they’re wise enough to always know the correct course of action isn’t wise enough to admit when they’re wrong.”

“Do you need a clone commander, sir?” Fox asked, completely serious. Leia squawked. “It would be my honor.”

“You said that you were my second in command! Luke, don’t you dare poach my subordinates!”

“I’m afraid I’m still a Sith Lord right now,” Luke said apologetically, “but get back to me if my school ever ends up existing in this timeline. Do you know how to write syllabi?”

“And you call us real Jedi?” Leia cried, gesturing empathetically with both hands to a serene Luke. It saved Fox from having to admit that he’s actually completely fine with the Sith Lord thing. There was a precedent. “He’s a moron! I’m a bitch! He’s a farm boy, I’m a senator, and our parental figures have a 400% mortality rate! We voluntarily associate with Han Solo!”

“He’s not that bad once you get to know him,” Luke told Fox. “Even if he does get gross with my sister.”

“For goodness’ sake, just call it sex -”

“It is pretty gross,” Fox told Luke.

“Thank you!”

“He calls sex gross and I’m having sex with Han Solo! What about us is Jedi material, Fox!”

“You asked what made you different, Leia,” Fox said, and Leia stopped short. “You - you’re not a real senator, the Jedi would throw you out in a day, and you’re born in more than a year. But that’s not why you’re different.” He looked significantly at Luke, who was standing very still. “I - forgive me for saying so, Grandmaster, but you could never have been a Republican Jedi either. You’re too…”

“I’ve heard it all before,” Luke said wryly. Fox grimaced, hoping that it didn’t sound like a criticism. “I suppose it means that I’ll have to figure out what being a Jedi means for myself. It’s a pity. I would have liked some easy answers.”

“It’s not easy,” Fox agreed. “But take it from the lackey of a Sith Lord. I know good when I see it.” He carefully withdrew a short and slim package from the back of his belt, wrapping his fingers around it. “I got you a Life Day present too. I don’t think you’ll want it. But…it would make me feel better if you had it. And I think it’ll increase chances of mission success.” He nervously glanced at Luke, whose face was carefully impassive, and Fox realized for the first time that he may slightly disapprove of how Fox had obtained it. Or the present in general. “I - if the Grandmaster gives me leave…”

“I am not getting in the middle of this,” Luke said. “Maybe you’ll succeed where I failed.”

“Oh, give me that.” Leia snatched it out of his hands, immediately ripping open the brown flimsi. “As if Luke gets to decide what presents I do and don’t get - if he’s not a real Jedi then stop acting as if he’s so great, I swear to the heavenly mountains. Why’s it -”

Leia stopped short. She stared down at the lightsaber in her hands.

It was just a training saber. Thanks to Nemo, Fox knew that the only thing that differentiated a training saber from a real saber was a few extra components on the end that could easily be screwed off. It was intended for older padawans, which put it at about the right size and weight for Leia’s absolutely tiny hands.

“I hate you,” Leia said.

Fox kept his face impassive. “Nemo wouldn’t steal Mace Windu’s no matter how hard I asked, so you’ll have to settle with a blue one.”

“Die.”

“It’s not from a corpse or anything,” Fox felt the need to add, somewhat anxiously. “It’s just from the Temple stores. They have everything down there.”

“I see no problem with it,” Luke said cheerfully, making Fox exhale with relief. “I steal tons of things from the old Jedi Temples. Call this preemptive scavenging.”

“That’s just theft,” the head of the police department felt the need to say.

But Leia was still staring at it, face blank. Her hand clenched tightly around the hilt, her knuckles turning white.

“You aren’t a Jedi,” Fox said slowly. “I know you don’t want to be. But I think a politician uses every weapon at her disposal. And…I took that from you.” Leia looked up sharply, mouth opening, but Fox just shook his head. “The Emperor, Nemo, and I took that lightsaber from you. This Republic did. It’s your birthright, as much as it is the Grandmaster’s. You can decide what to do with it. Throw it away if you like. But I wanted to give it to you. That’s all.”

A long silence stretched between them. Luke stared steadily at Leia, frowning slightly, before his expression cleared in surprise.

Finally, with excruciating slowness, Leia said, “Fox.”

His breath caught in his chest, and he saw Luke’s eyes slowly widen. “Yes, Princess?”

“You realize this means you accepted my marriage proposal, right?”

“Okay,” Luke said loudly, as Fox groaned and buried his head in his hands. Leia immediately began hooting with victory, “did I miss something important? Not that I don’t think it’s great, I’m happy for your happiness, but I could have sworn -”

She kept the lightsaber. Fox was glad her practical side won out: there were many uses to a plasma sword, up to and including assasination.

The party wouldn’t wind down for a while, no matter how many best friends he reconciled with or mystery brothers he met. The speaker had petered out, but some enterprising partygoers had dragged their hand-drum sets in from their barracks, and they had started banging out some traditional Mandalorian song that Fox distantly recognized from long camping trips with Jango Fett.

He did remember it. The more he thought about it, the more he remembered. They had been around seven or eight. Wilderness training, one of the exciting field trips that made every other clone jealous of the CCs. It had been the highlight of all their lives.

Jango had been better with them than he had given himself credit for, or allowed himself to understand. They had all been ridiculously antsy and on edge, vibrating with barely suppressed teenage energy, and after a long day of backpacking and trekking he had given up and taught them some common Mandalorian songs. The singing had worn them out enough to sleep.

Who had taught them to the other men? It hadn’t been Fox. Or maybe it had. The sight of the dancing was familiar, in the distant and aching way that happiness was.

Luke and Leia had quietly pulled away ten minutes ago, standing at the entrance to the clearing and talking quietly. They didn’t seem to realize it, but they often spoke without words. But Leia never realized anything like that. Where Luke was overwhelming, Leia was nothing. She was practically invisible, and it was only the odd rigor of her invisibility that tuned Fox into her. It was strangely ironic - that the loud and explosive Leia was packed away so tight, and that the mild and friendly Luke overflowed.

He clasped her on the shoulder tightly, and Leia lightly rested her forehead against his shoulder. They stayed like that for one second, then two, before separating. Luke turned away from her, flipping his hood over his head and letting his cloak billow out, and he disappeared out of the clearing without another word.

Leia stayed there, staring blankly after him, and Fox found himself navigating the drunken crowd to walk over to her. She seemed almost uncertain, arms crossed tightly and defensively across her chest as she stared out into the black tunnel.

Fox stood next to her silently, waiting for when she was ready. It took a while. She wouldn’t stop tapping her fingers on her arm, or drawing herself in tighter.

Finally, she said, “My parents didn’t return to Alderaan for Life Day.”

Fox started in surprise. “Are they -”

“They’re fine,” Leia said dismissively. “They’re skipping out on every family function, of course. They’ll be hell to pay for it later from Mother’s great-aunts. They’ll likely show up on the last day of the celebrations and do the ceremonial queen and king shit. But for the first two celebration days, they’re here.” She fell silent again, tapping again and again on her arm. “Luke said it’s for me. He said they’re in the Senate, looking for me. They want to…celebrate. With me.”

That was it. Fox let her stew, watching her mind work itself around in circles. The lightsaber was clipped to her belt, with her dress artfully arranged to hide it, but Fox could still see glimpses of metal behind cloth. It gave her an oddly grounded air, as if she now possessed a great responsibility.

Jango had always called a weapon a tool, not a responsibility. People were a responsibility. Your brothers, the GAR, the Jedi were a responsibility. Fox wondered what Leia was.

Finally, he said, “You’ve never had a Life Day on Coruscant before.”

Leia waited a long moment before grudgingly admitting, “No.”

“You won’t have to lie to anybody, or pretend it’s normal. You could make new memories.”

“I guess.”

“Sounds nice to me,” Fox said lightly. He carefully put a hand on her back. “More of a first chance than a second chance, I think.”

Leia’s expression crumpled a little, but she leaned into the touch. “Something’s better than nothing, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” Fox said lightly, “I think I like something the best.”

They stood in silence for a little while longer. But maybe Fox and Leia were like Luke and Leia, even if only in that way: they never needed that many words to say what they meant.

Finally, Leia reached out and slid Fox’s hand into hers. She tugged him forward, making him slip his hand from her back as he struggled to right himself. “You haven’t danced tonight, and I’m sick of looking at your tragic ass in the corner. Come dance with me and pretend you’re having fun.”

“You know,” Fox said, “I think your brother’s very impressive. You could learn something from him.”

The crowd parted for them as Leia forced them into the small area in front of the Liberty statue that served as the impromptu dance floor. Everybody was stomping and clapping, holding each other’s hands and swinging in perfect rounds. The clones around them scrambled out of the way, already grinning at the sight of Leia forcing Fox into something resembling a social activity.

“I thought there was absolutely nothing worse than hearing you pretend to respect the dipshits we’re surrounded by.” Leia tugged Fox into position, seizing both his hands in hers. “I was wrong.”

“Wow,” Fox said, and somehow he felt himself relaxing. As if they weren’t being watched, and there was no lightsaber attached to Leia’s hip or armor strapped to Fox’s chest. “I thought they could fire a senator for admitting that.”

“Because hearing you genuinely respect my absolute idiot brother is a thousand times worse. He did absolutely nothing. He does not deserve it.”

Fox stepped forward, and for the first time Leia let him lead. He stepped forward and she stepped back, and then they stepped back together before jumping forward. The drum beats reverberated loudly through Fox’s chest, through his sternum, through everything. They shook something loose, and Fox never wanted to put himself in order again.

“Really?” Fox asked, stomping left as she stomped with him. “I heard he killed his royal majesty the Emperor.”

“Not this time.” Leia stomped right, and he stomped with her, and they separated to clap with the motion. “I think we can take credit. It’s about time we get a little respect around here.”

“Yeah?” Fox asked, heart pounding. “What’ll happen after that?”

Will you stay? Will you disappear? Will your timeline be erased, or will mine? Will you wake up in the future, and will I stay in the past? Or will we still know each other, wherever we end up, in whatever improbable way Fox and Leia could ever understand each other so completely?

“I don’t know,” Leia said, reaching towards him, “isn’t that a problem for tomorrow?”

And it was.

Fox laughed and grabbed Leia’s hands, spinning her around to the beat of the drums and his beating heart, living in time with her.

[demigodsanswer]

Out of curiosity, any headcanons on Clarisse's backstory?

I do! I’ve written about some of these before, so some might be repeats. 

Her mom (Madeline) was a dancer with the Paris Opera ballet when she met Ares. She was 29. They only spent the night together. He had told her that he was a god, but she thought it was some bad pick up line. 

When they were done, he made some comment about her having his baby, and she realized that he had lied about using protection. She was so angry (she’s a very angry person) that she stabbed him with one of her kitchen knives, which, of course, did nothing. 

Ares just smiled and took the knife from her, before handing her a celestial bronze knife. He said “This is the only thing that will protect your son. Hold onto it,” 

So she stabbed him with that knife. This time, it did something. Still, he just smiled and handed the knife back to her, and said “This bodes well for me. Your son’ll be fierce,” 

“How do you even know I’ll get pregnant? How do you even know it’ll be a boy?” 

“Just do,” 

Five months later, she smiled when she found out it was a girl. 

Madeline wasn’t from France. Her family was distantly French, but they had lived in America for 400 years. Her parents were from Phoenix. She moved to Paris for dance training when she was 15. 

Madeline never wanted to be a mother. She wasn’t a bad mother, but she wasn’t a great mother either. She spent a lot of Clarisse’s childhood focusing on her career instead of Clarisse. 

She also made Clarisse take dance as early as three. Which wasn’t really surprising to anyone, considering Clarisse was basically raised in ballet studios. 

When Clarisse was six month old, Madeline started dating another man in the company (Jean). They were together for seven years, and Clarisse grew up believing he was her real father. He treated her like she was his daughter and loved her fiercely. He was planning on adopting her when he and Madeline got married. 

Madeline swears she didn’t know that Clarisse thought Jean was her birth father, but Clarisse think’s that’s just impossible. 

But when Clarisse was seven, Madeline got a call that her mother had stage-four lung cancer. Her father asked her to come home (”You’re 37. Your dance career is almost over anyway,”) to help take care of her. 

Madeline agreed to go home until her mother passed. No one expected her to live for more than a year. So she and Jean put their engagement on pause and she moved back to Arizona with Clarisse. 

Her mother lived for another two and a half years. 

After the first year, Madeline decided to call off the engagement when Jean offered to move to Arizona to be with them. He was only 32 and still had years of dancing left and he was from France. Madeline didn’t want him leaving France to be with her when she didn’t know how long they would be there or if she would ever come back. 

When she told Clarisse, Clarisse got angry and yelled and asked to move back to France to live with her dad. Madeline ended up shouting back at Clarisse until ran off to her room. Madeline went to her room and cried too, and wished her mom would just die so that her life could get back to normal. She knew it wasn’t the right thing to think, but she couldn’t help it. Everything had been going so well, and now she was stuck back in a city she hated, taking care of her aging parents, and a child she never wanted and didn’t understand. 

Her relationship with Clarisse was never very good after that. 

When her mother lived another year, Clarisse finally called Jean and said that she didn’t expect to ever move back to Paris - Clarisse had settled into Arizona life, and she couldn’t uproot her daughter’s life again, even if her mother passed away soon. 

Her mom passed away six months later, and at the funeral, Clarisse asked if they would move back to Paris. 

“Do you want to?” 

“Yes, I hate it here,” 

“What about your soccer team?” 

“They play soccer in France,” 

“What about poppop?” 

“He can come,” 

Madeline smiled, thinking that maybe they could move back to France. 

Before any serious moves could be made in that direction, though, they discovered that her father had dementia. He’d had symptoms for the last two years, but they went unnoticed because of his wife’s cancer. Madeline couldn’t leave him alone or uproot him to move to Paris. 

This sparked another fight between her and Clarisse. 

“You said we were moving back to Paris!” 

“That was before we knew that poppop was sick! We can’t just leave him!” 

“But you promised!” 

“You think I don’t hate it here too? You think I don’t miss Paris every day? But your grandfather needs our help right now! And we can’t just abandon our family!” 

“What about papa? We abandoned him! We haven’t seen him in three years!” 

“Jean isn’t family!” Madeline yelled. 

Clarisse looked so angry, like if she were any taller or stronger she would start hitting her mom. “How can you say that! He’s my father!” 

Madeline realized then that Clarisse thought Jean was her birth father. She sat Clarisse down and explained that she had already been six months old when they’d started dating. Madeline expected Clarisse to ask questions about her birth father, but she didn’t. When Madeline finally looked at her daughter, she expected her to be angry, to start yelling, but she was just staring at the floor and crying. 

Madeline tried to reach over to comfort her, but Clarisse just looked at her and said, “I hate you. I wish papa had adopted me so that I didn’t have to live with you anymore,” and then she took herself to her room. 

After an hour, Madeline went to check on her and found her sitting in her bed looking at old photos from Paris. 

“Can I come in?” she asked. Clarisse nodded without looking at her. She made her way into the room and sat next to her on the bed, pulling her daughter in for a hug, who accepted it without resistance. “Are you okay?” 

Clarisse shook her head no. “I just still feel like he’s my dad,” she started crying again, and Madeline held her tighter, “and now I won’t ever get to see him again,” 

“I miss him too,” she said. “And I’m sorry. I would have told you sooner if I had realized,” 

They spend a decent amount of time talking, and Madeline orders them a pizza. She decided that she and Clarisse would play hookie the next day and get ice cream and hang out around town. 

The next morning, they’re enjoying a late breakfast, when someone knocked on the door. Madeline recognizes the man immediately. He had introduced himself to her a few weeks ago as Coach Hedge, when he’d explained who he was and why he was there, and that he was watching Clarisse. “She’ll have to leave soon,” he’d told her. 

“You want my ten-year-old to leave with a goat-man to go across the country to be trained by a magic horse?”

“It sounds insane when you put it that way, but yes. She needs to be trained,” 

“She is a child!” She yelled at him. “She needs her mom,” 

“If she stays here she could be killed. Now, I don’t know how long it’ll be before they start coming for her, but I can tell that she’s strong. If I know she’s here, it won’t be long before they know it too,” 

And now he was there, in her doorway with a backpack and a baseball bat. 

“Please, no, not today,” she said before saying anything else. 

“We need to leave today. They aren’t far. We need as much of a head start as we can get,” 

(Cut to the story I wrote yesterday for how the rest of that went) 

When she got to camp, Luke showed her around. She got a spot on the Hermes cabin floor next to Chris, who was excited to have another kid at camp around his age. 

“Do you like Star Wars?” 

“No,”

“Do you like soccer?”

“Yeah!” 

They become very fast friends, but Luke does have to move them to different parts of the floor because they kept staying up late talking. 

It takes about a month for her to be claimed, but no one is surprised when it happens. She was claimed after a spar with Annabeth. She was using a sword, and Annabeth was using her knife, but Clarisse had her dad’s knife hidden in her pocket. When Annabeth thought she had won, Clarisse pulled out her own knife and ended up winning. 

This starts their constant rivalry at camp. 

She doesn’t meet her dad until the Winter Solstice when Luke steals the lighting bolt. 

She introduces herself to her father, and he claimed he didn’t remember her mother, so she reminded him. “She stabbed you,” she said, “and that didn’t work, so you gave her this knife,” she pulled out the knife, “and then she stabbed you again,” 

She didn’t mean to be insolent or insubordinate, but that’s how her father took it. He slapped her across the face. Hard. 

She looked at him, shocked at what had happened. He looked back like he was waiting for her to say or do something. 

She looked him in the eye and said, “My mother hits harder.” That time, she had meant to be insubordinate and insolent. She was also a liar. Her mother had never hit her. 

Ares just smirked. “You need a better weapon that some stupid knife. They’re good when you need them, but you can’t do much damage with just that,” 

“I use a sword too,” she said. 

“You should use a spear, like your older brothers. I’ll send one to camp for you,”

She smiled, “Thank you, sir,” 

“One last thing, kid,” he towered over her. He seemed like he was seven feet tall. He might be, Clarisse realized, he’s a god. “I don’t have many daughters. I prefer it that way. They tend to be disappointing. I hope you don’t disappoint me,” 

Clarisse nodded. “I won’t, sir,” she promised.

[cherryrpg]

welcome to riverside, olivia price !

OUT OF CHARACTER.

name - Aly age - 23 timezone - EST pronouns - she/her

IN CHARACTER.

character desired - Olivia Price character faceclaim - Victoria Pedretti, Lili Reinhart, Benedetta Gargari character birthday // zodiac sign  - December 1st, Sagittarius extracurriculars // hobbies - Prom Committee, Theater Tech, Cheer Squad // Painting, Dance Lessons, Sketching, People watching, Wandering around, Bothering anyone who will listen position on cheer squad: Secondary base

WRITING SAMPLE.

It was too grown up for her. If anyone were to walk into her Father’s too-big kitchen at that moment, that would probably be their response to the seventeen-year-old with a glass of red wine in her hand. But it was many a summer that Olivia had spent in France with her mother; drinking a glass of wine with dinner since she was nearly twelve years old. Much to her Father’s dismay, she made no plans of stopping that tradition any time soon… Even if she had upgraded from just a glass to just half the bottle in the last couple of years. It was different in Atlanta, where everyone around her was always popping champagne for brunch, lunch, and dinner; pretending to be more mature than they really were for the sake of appearances.  And besides, it wasn’t as if her father was going to notice the missing alcohol, anyway. It wasn’t very often he noticed anything about her at all, really. Choosing instead to focus his energy on just how big of a disappointment she thought Luke to be.

It was one of the things she thought she loved about Riverside, andbesides the hoops her brother was always jumping through at the urging of their father, it was nearly perfect. Sure, she had been free to do as she pleased in Atlanta - as long as her mother approved - but in the little town she was hardly expected to answer to anybody. Her father was always busy (either with work, or with Luke), her teachers loved her (for some reason she couldn’t quite put her finger on), and she hadn’t found herself wanting to get into any actual trouble since she first arrived…not when she knew that familiar faces were lurking around every corner. It was strange how grounded it all made her feel; like the chaos that had been building up in her chest for the last seventeen years of her life was finally dissipating.

She had always considered herself a city girl - convinced that the flash of the lights and the parties were the only reasons to go on some nights - but with every day she spent in the little town, she found the city, any city, being the last place she wanted to be. No, Olivia wouldn’t trade sneaking glasses of wine in her father’s farmhouse style kitchen for anything now. She was a Riverside girl, and she was planning on staying that way for as long she could stand it.

————————————————————————————————

It was the crunch of leaves behind her that tipped Olivia off to her visitor; ears flushing an embarrassed shade of pink as she was caught red handed and bloodied by the barn door she had been not-so-subtly trying to break through. The cheerleader just spun around in her spot, skirt fluttering around her thighs with the sudden movement, as she caught the stranger right back. Her bloodstained fingertips - stupid, old wood - hidden behind her back while she spoke. “I’ll admit that I probably shouldn’t be out here.” In fact, she knew it was the last place she should be; seemingly abandoned or not, property was property, and it usually belonged to someone.

But the barn had practically been calling her name since she had first laid eyes on it, and she could only imagine the secrets that the inside of it held… Even if what was inside only seemed to be a dusty old tractor and a couple two-by-fours. That hardly mattered to Olivia though, because once she decided that something was beautiful, it was beautiful, and she had to uncover it’s secrets at all costs. “I mean, it’s a weird situation, right? Teenage girl, abandoned barn… What the hell am I doing out here, even? But I’d like to point out the fact that your lurking around in the woods puts you, at least, like – three points ahead of me on the creep scale. So, what do you say? Your creep move cancels out my creep move? We call it even?“

ABOUT THE CHARACTER.

The Louvre - Lorde

We Will Become Silhouettes - The Shins

Pretty Baby - Blondie

“I’m screaming at the top of my lungs pretending the echoes belong to someone… Someone I used to know.” - The Postal Service

headcanons :

Olivia has a hard time listening to her parents, her teachers, her elders, the police, and… any type of authority figure, really. She’s been highly independent since day one, with a mother and father like hers, she had to be to survive, and it’s all resulted in the most headstrong teenager in existence. She does what she wants to do, and only what she wants to do, and since escaping Atlanta and her mother’s near constant guilt trips… The fact has never been truer. Olivia knows that she’s all she needs to survive - well, herself, and her parents money.

Her brother is the only exception to the the walls that she builds around herself. She would sell her soul to keep Luke safe, and always gets herself into trouble if it means keeping him out of it. Olivia is protective because she knows that at the end of the day, Luke is the only person she really has in the world. She’s not close to her mother, and she knows neither of them are very close to their father. While she has no idea how Luke really feels about her fierce protective nature, she isn’t sure she could tone it down if she wanted to.

Olivia thrived in Atlanta. She was the perfect socialite, and she had only found herself resenting the shallow lifestyle a few times throughout her life; who could possibly resent getting everything they ever wanted? But the Riverside lifestyle has grown on her in a way that she had never been expecting. For the first time in her life she doesn’t have to worry about the way she looks, or who’s going to see her, or what she can and can’t eat to fit in whatever dress for wherever her mother was dragging her next.

For the first time in her whole life, she didn’t need to look in the mirror at every opportunity. She didn’t feel afraid of making friends. She wasn’t worried about anyone stabbing her in the back or using her as their step-up in society.

personality :

Olivia is highly independent, and it’s always led to her skirting through life as a lone wolf. Sure, she had her ‘friends’ back in Atlanta, but she knew she could never truly count on the girls she had grown up with. Olivia has trust issues - she’s skeptical of nearly everyone - but something about the small relationships she’s forged in Riverside have changed her in a way. Olivia is more open to talking than ever; she actually goes out just to be around people rather than to get champagne drunk on a dance floor.  Her lonesome streak might never be shaken, though.

Sometimes she prefers watching people from afar, even those she calls friends. She prefers an empty building to the company of even Luke sometimes. Abandoned places - quiet spaces - are Olivia’s safe place, and if someone is lucky enough to be invited into one of them, they can probably consider themselves a part of her inner circle.

Liv completely expected to hate every part of joining the Cheerleading squad, but after a few weeks of getting her ass handed to her with workouts and routines, she quickly found herself changing her tune. It was a challenge that had made her feel more alive - more like a teenager - than anything she had ever done in Atlanta. Maybe it was all stereotypes from the dumb movies she had seen over the course of her childhood, but the girls on the squad were nothing like she had expected them to be either. Call it a soft spot, but she was certainly willing to go the extra mile for the girls on the squad… even if it seemed completely out of the ordinary for her.

ANYTHING ELSE.

I think Olivia probably mostly goes by Liv! But I love weird nicknames, so call her Picasso, or Monet, or even Weirdo  - whatever you want! - because I think it would be fun!