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tarantula-hawk-wasp · 4 years ago

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Til Death Do Us Part ch 1

This will end up on Ao3 eventually Based on the @maulusque post (Which You Should Read Before Reading This) where Fox and Palpatine end up in a fake relationship and sham marriage because both thinks the other is sincere and that they are manipulating the other but Fox had one hell of a prenup and ends up cleaning house when he divorces Sheev and saves the galaxy��

This is not that story. This is a failed version of that story I thought up because my two braincells were like Rey Palpatine? That makes Fox her step-grandpa??? and i wanted them to meet. It also is turning into a Sequels Fix It (disclaimer- I kind of take sequels canon about the sheev clones and mash it with my fist until juice comes out and make lemonade and do whatever i want bc they dont explain enough)

Summary: Fox wakes up from cryo-stasis to a galaxy recovering from the fall of the Empire as the universe’s Bitterest Ex-Husband because he didn’t get to kill Palpatine himself. He’s not going to let some discount clone of sheev ruin things again either, and ends up with a surprise step-granddaughter along the way. 3k words chapter 1/?

Fox should have known better than to attempt out-manipulating the puppetmaster of a galactic war. What really rankled was how close he had come, his fingers had metaphorically brushed the salvation of the Republic before it had been snatched away.

The divorce had been more than halfway processed, and Palpatine had grown more and more panicked. Under the scrutiny of every lawyer on Coruscant, the prenuptial agreement had been airtight, the political powers Fox tried to give himself in it were unlikely to be enforced, but the monetary and titular aspects were to the letter of the law.

Of course the law only applied to citizens and sentients. Palpatine cracked down hard against Clone Rights in those last months. He himself did not publicly utter a biased word in either direction, only ever praising the effectiveness of the troops, but many of Palpatine’s close associates presented strong cases. People that had been at their engagement party, people who had been roped by tradition into dancing with Fox’s brothers at the wedding, people who had looked him in the eye over an oiled banquet table and praised his wit, became the ones proclaiming that Fox and his brothers had no more inborn rights or legal merit than a droid or womprat.

Palpatine drew the court case out in circular debates, and last minute rescheduling. Fox was kept exhausted and worn to the bone between the ramped up tempo of the war, the grueling hours in court, and the new loathing facing him every second he spent at his job in the Coruscant Guard. Palpatine had dropped any acts around Fox, no longer the doting grandfather of the republic, or enthusiastic geriatric spouse, but bitter and jilted and cruel-tongued. Some days Fox feared for his life.

It was that resignation that he would die that saved Fox’s life. He updated his will -clones were at least allowed those for any non-GAR-issue items they had - and made sure copies were held by numerous offices, and even on other planets. He appointed Cody and the Coruscant Guard as the main benefactors, Cody had the authority to divy resources up among the rest of the vode, and the Coruscant Guard were both his closest brothers and deserving of any boon he could grant them. He left a hefty endowment for the cadets and tubies, to find either adoptive families or to raise them without the military training in the event of the War ending. He left his half of the cultural artifacts that Palpatine had collected to the Jedi for them to distribute as they saw fit.

Even if Palpatine managed to pierce holes through every line of the divorce documents, he could not deny Fox’s last will and testament. Palpatine had to keep Fox alive, or else he would lose many of the assets he was trying to keep in his grasp.

Fox had counted on more time to slip information to the GAR and the Jedi, he had counted on less supervision, and he had counted on Dooku and Grievous lasting for a few more months than they did.

He failed to prevent Order 66, and as his brothers lost their free-will, he was abducted from 500 Republica. A drugged dart jabbing through his blacks and unfamiliar hands hauling him onto a ship. He was put into cryo-cycle stasis. That counted enough as keeping him alive that his will could not be enacted, but kept him and his insider knowledge from challenging Palpatine.

Forty years later, a decade after the fledgling New Republic finally closed the buried account that dripped credits into the facility Fox’s stasis pod was in, the power couplings shorted out - whatever droid or employee was in charge of maintenance long departed for salaried work. The pod had emergency protocols to thaw him out with the last of its energy reserves if the power was cut out.

And so out he had staggered, head aching and bile rising. His genetically wired resilience and discipline had carried him through the worst of the stasis sickness.

The computer terminals were easy enough to slice. Palpatine did not change his cybersecurity strategy over the decades, and Fox knew more than he wanted to of that man’s mind. What he found was disturbing, but not surprising. Weapons capable of destroying entire planets, the genocide of the Jedi, the suicidal brothers made into cyborg Dark Troopers, a Galactic Empire. And cloning, an overwhelming amount of information on cloning. Not just familiar Kaminoan files, but resources from other cloning facilities, Strand-Casts, Splices, Stem-cells- every method explored and combined. Palpatine had been seeking immortality.

Fox did not let himself think about what year it was, he did not think about the decades Palpatine had marred for the Galaxy, the vode all marching far away without him, the history ripped apart by waves of propaganda. What he thought instead about was his own failure to sacrifice himself and put a blaster bolt through Palpatine’s wrinkled forehead so many years ago. It rankled quite a bit that Palpatine died while he was in stasis - the bitterness of unfulfilled hatred. But he could find new purpose. He would not let a false Palpatine return and inflict himself upon the healing Galaxy.

After he left the lunar facility orbiting its dead planet in a nearly-corroded relic of an emergency escape ship, the first goal he achieved was programming a medical droid to excise the control chip from his brain. Then he started slicing again. There were still some accounts he had set up during his sham marriage with credits that had decades of interest. His backup plan to that was selling the material assets he knew either he or Palpatine had stored away in scattered locations.

Fox bought a ship, blasters, and assembled piecemeal a set of armor. He bought bounty hunter credentials, keeping his helmet on always to hide any recognition his face might bring. He stacked crates of rations in the empty bunks in his ship - a Skipray Blastboat - a vessel meant for four was a roomy choice to travel alone in, but still nearly invisible in its ubiquity. And he went hunting.

Palpatine’s clones were hard to find, a challenge Fox embraced for its distraction. He found out some of the pseudonyms running the older facilities, the constructed identities for whatever apprentices, droids, or imperial loyalists were actually doing the work. That was a mystery Fox was still investigating.

Sometimes, to find a clone of Palpatine, Fox anonymously set the bounty himself, and then claimed it as well - getting the resources of the minor guild he worked with, as well as a tracking fob.

Sometimes he killed them. Sometimes it was easy, the compulsions and the personality of Palpatine showing through, and that hated face looking back. Sometimes they were worming their way into government positions to undermine the New Republic. Sometimes it was harder, botched strand-casts that held only a passing resemblance to the man, and were without the force or any malignance. Those, Fox judged on a case-by-case basis. Were they in politics? How connected were they to any neo-imperialists? He judged each of them by their own actions, he knew the way a clone could be blamed for the actions of another.

He was not the only one after these clones, someone else was also hunting them - off of any official Bounty Hunting channels. And with the karked up Sith tradition of usurpers, Fox could not assume it was an ally.

Fox’s unknown rival gradually became more than just a nuisance to compete against. There had been a strand-cast clone of Palpatine’s that bore only a partial resemblance and had been actively undermining some of the networks Fox thought might be connected to the cloning facilities. Fox had been trying to track him down, to talk to someone who might be able to link him to the roots of this operation - he was even ready to offer personal protection - but his opponent had reached him first.

The man was dead now. As was the woman he had been traveling with. It was frustratingly suspicious, and Fox was out of other leads to investigate. He spent a few months slicing and scouring for information about the strand-cast. The man had boarded a ship from a large spaceport with a woman and a child, had transferred numerous times, and then, at the last port before his death, had only embarked with the woman. The child had either died prior the the adults’ deaths, or was still alive. And if the child was alive, they might know where their father had come from.

Shipyard security cameras and life/heat sensors could only tell him so much. He looked into crew manifests, ration orders, and fuel receipts. Between fuel logs and hyperspace maps, he created a list of planets between each refueling stop with more fuel purchased and time between than a direct route would necessitate and worked down that, checking for ships matching their vessel’s description docking with false credentials. Planets with smaller populations were quicker to investigate so he looked there first. It was a slow process over weeks.

Jakku had only a few scattered settlements, and while their ship monitoring was lacking, the local population was likely to have seen anyone who arrived or left. He landed outside of one of the larger trade centers.

He disembarked his ship and walked towards the mass of tents and shabby buildings. He was wearing only a minimum of armor, and had left his helmet on the ship. His blaster was still displayed in its holster, a weight he felt pressed against his thigh with every step. He wasn’t here as a bounty hunter, but something closer to undercover instead, and if the kid was here he didn’t want to scare or threaten the child prematurely. He would blend in more as just another spacer.

He was met by a varied group of sun-beaten and skeptical beings. The welcoming committee seemed torn between distrust and hope for trade.

“I’m here for information.” He began, showing a flash of credit chips when he pulled out his holoprojector. “About a year ago a ship of this type would have arrived and left a passenger behind.”

“Lotta ships come in and out…” A thin Caskadag said unhelpfully. But Fox could see poorly concealed recognition among some of the faces. He mentally debated who to bribe or how else to persuade the crowd.

Out of sight, there was a shriek of conversation and then the frantic scuffle of running feet over sand. A girl emerged from a clump of tents and stopped, almost breathless, staring at him. She was young, between six or eight, Fox struggled like most clones with approximating odd numbered years of natural borns, but she was small.

“Did my parents send you!? Are they gonna come get me?” She asked with bright desperation. She was staring at the holoprojected ship in his hands. Fox knew this was the strand-cast’s child.

“I’m here because of your parents.” He said evenly. He looked at the group of now unhappy onlookers, denied their chance to weasel credits out of him. “Is there somewhere less busy we can talk?”

“Mmhmm.” She walked him between tents to a clearing edged with waste heaps. Fox opened his mouth and then stopped again, hesitant.

“Why did my parents send you?” There was sensible caginess warring with hope in her voice. She kept glancing back to the crowd they had just left.

“I’m sorry, Rey,” He hoped that what the other workers had muttered at her had been her name, and dropped down to one knee to be on a level with her. “But your parents are dead. I’m sorry, but they can’t come get you.”

There was a watery vulnerability to her eyes. Fox expected a denial, he hated being the one to deliver this news. It was partially his own failure.

“So… So I’m just… I’m just going to stay here? And - and work for Mister Plutt forever?” She looked wetly at the pitiful tents around them, the sand, the beating sun, the scrap-sorting piles. Fox looked at her, at the scabs and callouses on her tiny hands, at the stained clothing, at the bones of her arms, at the ring of faint green skin around her wrist. Force, he had always been weak for the cadets.

“No, if you want… If you want I can take you with me.” It was an impulsive offer, but it felt right.

“You’re not my dad.” She said sulkily. “I’m only supposed to leave if him or mum comes.”

“No, I’m not.” Fox did some quick thinking about his relationship to Palpatine, his own apparent age, and the fact her father was a clone of Sheev. “But I am your father’s ex-husband.”

He knew that she had no reason to trust him, and frankly if she had any sense to not get abducted, she wouldn’t. Fox was ready to pull up a datapad with the copy of his marriage certificate, proof her father was a clone, and a discussion of family trees. Instead of an argument, she looked intensely at him and he felt a warmth swell around him, like a summer breeze. Of course the kriffing kid was force sensitive.

It was pleasant, as far as being probed by the force ever was. She was bright and gentle and washed over him, so unlike the cloying oil-slick that he had not realized choked his mind for years until he was finally free of Palpatine. He waited, keeping his thoughts on what he had just said, but not so intently as to raise her suspicion that he was hiding something.

Eventually she nodded. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“I know when people are lying. And-” She hesitated, squirming a little. “And you feel nice.”

Fox smiled. Nice was not the word that Fox would have picked to describe himself currently, considering he had spent a better part of the past year hunting down clones of his ex-husband and killing many of them with extreme prejudice. He wondered unhappily at what relative caliber for niceness she was comparing him to. He stood up and paused.

“So you’ll come with me?” He asked again for clarity’s sake.

“Mmhmm.” She confirmed, and stepped to his side, reaching up to worm her little hand into his.

“Do you have stuff to get? People to say bye to?” He asked uncertainly. He wasn’t sure how this was supposed to go, and right now it felt too easy. She started tugging him towards the array of scrap-sorters.

She went to a spot she had clearly hastily abandoned when he had arrived, and picked up a dingy canvas bag and slung it over her shoulder. She walked back to him and put her hand back in his again.

“Okay. Now we need to tell Mister Plutt.” She nodded towards a permanent structure at the edge of the scrapyard.

“Rey, Rey, Who’s that man?” One of the women who had not been in the group that greeted him, skin toughened by sand and sun, rose up from the heaps of metal and brandished a staff at him. Part of Fox was relieved that at least someone was stopping little girls from getting kidnapped. The other part of him put on his most charming, non-threatening smile.

“I’m her father’s ex-husband. Her parents are dead and I only just found out…”

The woman glared at him but shifted to look at Rey, softening her gaze.

“He tellin’ the truth? Do you know this man?”

“He’s not lying.” Rey said. “And Dad mentioned he had a complix-complexcated past.”

“Her father and I may have split over our differences, but I’m not leaving his kid to grow up a scrapper beholden to quotas when I have the resources to raise her instead.” Fox’s honest determination had the desired effect, the woman lowered her staff and nodded, still suspicious but relenting.

“You’re going to have to pay Unkar for her.”

Fox frowned and gestured towards his blaster on his hip. “Sure, I’ll pay.”

“No. I mean it. You try any funny business and he’ll set the guild on you or worse.” The woman was very serious. “You got enough to pay?”

“If I have to, I will.” Fox said with finality. He did not want to buy another being, but he also wanted Rey off of this planet as smoothly as possible.

The questioning was repeated with Unkar Plutt, who glared with equal distrust to the people outside. He took Rey aside into his office room, and Fox hoped it was to question her about his claims and if she actually wanted to leave with him. Fox was concerned by how easy it was for someone to take a child off of Jakku like this, but also acknowledged that this was incredibly convenient for him.

Plutt and Rey reemerged and Rey walked over and clung to his pant leg. Fox brushed a hand over her hair.

“I’m losing years of good labor.” Unkar said callously. “I expect to be compensated.”

Fox told himself that the credits he handed over were a bribe. Fox swung Rey’s little bag over his shoulder and after a moment of consideration, hoisted Rey up to rest on his hip as well. She was light and clung round his neck, giggling with surprise in his ear.

Fox didn’t need to be force sensitive to know that this decision felt right.

#commander fox #rey #rey skywalker #sheev palpatine #foxpatine #fox/palpatine #my writing #star wars #This turned into a kid fic bc Im Me #foxpatine divorce stasis pod sequels fix it au

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