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Chapter Text

Scorching, burning pain.

Nerves overstimulating as they bring heat towards the top of the skin. The urge to scratch till only blood come through is all that pounds in Fox’s head. His pulse beats past his ears, the throbbing consistent against the screams as hands pull him here and there.

His eyes aren’t working how they should. The eyelids themselves are too heavy to lift, the muscles weak despite his insistence and Fox coughs once before he understands why.

His chest aches a little much to be just heart pain. It’s as if his heart is slowly but surely burning the outer layer part away, ripping it away like a band-aid except there’s no scar to showcase the healing underneath.

The pressure against his chest, the feeling as though someone is sticking their hand right through his ribcage, has Fox swatting the cause away. Or trying to at least.

He pukes before he can complete the action.

Chunks of food moldy, expired rations because that’s all there was left slowly make its way up his throat and it is only seconds later that he vomits again all over himself.

Fox can’t stop the sob that escapes his lips after that, and he tries to turn his head as though he can hide from the sound, but fingers press gently against his temple. They keep him in place.

It was the wrong thing to do because his stomach had felt the rations wasn’t enough. Bile and acid made its way out of his mouth, less in amount but painful still. Saliva fills his mouth too quickly and he has to spit and cough to get the excess amount out. Or so he thought.

Saliva has no flavor and yet the liquid in his mouth taste more like the coins his men used to smuggle him when they were alive, the coins he has taken to gnawing on when sad or frustrated or anxious. It was the last of his anchor.

His breathes once before he vomits again.

And again.

And again.

The blood continues to pool down his chin as more is pushed out by his convulsing throat. The shouts around him increase in volume, overstimulating his hearing. The inside of his ears ache and Fox can’t stop from lifting his hands to pull at the appendages, intent on tearing it from his head.

His nails dig hard and deep into his skull, and he scratches down, pulling hair as his fingers slide down the skin of his ears. His ears sting from the pulling but it’s not enough to rid of aching inside and so he scratches twice more before his hands are taken hostage.

Fox screams at the injustice or attempts to. He does succeed in biting the hand that kept wiping at his cheeks, lips, chin; though a pressure on his chin, forcing his mouth open, keeps him from ripping the limb apart.

The lights are too bright against his eyes, making shadows of those above him. It’s terrifyingly familiar, the unfamiliar shapes staring at him while experimenting on him, and Fox can’t stop the hitch in his breathing.

This is not…he got away from Sidious. He swore he got away.

He sobs once before screaming, struggling against the binds that tie him down. He won’t take this!

He tugs hard, all too willing to rip skin and break bones if it means escape. “Let me go!” he yells when a hand pressing down on his chest. He bucks against it, kicking legs against ribs and screams once again when his body is held down unwillingly against the platform.

Amidst the sea of shouts is a soft shushing sound and Fox is too curious for his own good. He tilts his head back as a hand brush through his rather tangled hair.

The dark shadow from where the sounds come from moves closer and Fox squeezes his eyes shut, ready for his punishment. His teeth grind together as he breathes harshly out his mouth.

The punishment never comes.

The shouts cease but the shushing doesn’t. Tears sting at Fox’s eyes, unable to name the feeling that blooms in his chest. His hands squeeze close, prepping himself to face the shadow head-on.

He needs to know.

He squints one eye open, the other opening automatically when his sight clears. His brain stops for a whole minute as it processes the meaning.

Thorn however continues to make the soft shushing sounds, turning to humming when he realizes he has Fox’s entire attention on him.

Fox can’t speak, no matter at hard he tries to force the words out. His lips still attempt to form the words though. Fox doesn’t even try to hold in any dignity as tears fall down his cheeks and sobs leave his mouth.

Thorn is alive.

He’s still alive.

Fox finally succeeded.

He cries as he stares at Thorn, unwilling to turn his eyes away. “Please don’t leave me,” he whispers, desperation coating his words. There’s more he wants to say, needs to say, but none of it compares to what Fox wishes he said to Thorn that day.

The day he went to Scipio.

“I promise I’ll be good.” As though Fox can ever be good, but Thorn doesn’t need to know that. “I’ll be better.” I’ll make it better, he doesn’t say.

His body shakes from the overwhelming emotions that fill his bones, minuscule to the eye but obvious to Fox who can feel the tremors under his skin.

“Please.” Just don’t leave me.

 Fox doesn’t even flinch at the sting that erupts through his arm.

Thorn smiles sadly at Fox, carding his hands through the clone’s hair before saying “you’re okay vod’ika.” He chuckles though it was less as a chuckle and more just puffs of air. “We won’t leave you.”

We?

Fox furrows his eyebrows at the pronoun, but sleep tugs at the edge of his consciousness. It’s a losing battle.

Fox doesn’t take his eyes off Thorn until his eyes are forced down by the sedative.

Chapter Text

Beeping is the only sounds echoing in the room. It seeps into Fox’s unconsciousness and rouses him awake, like the alarm he used to have during the war to keep him on track of his shifts.

He bites his tongue to muffle the groan that threatens to escape him, but considering the rustling beside him, Fox knows he failed.

A hand covers his own, or rather engulfs his own. Fox furrows his eyebrows at the feeling. While he might have been more bone than muscle, Fox was not a small man. There are very few people who could overtake him.

Fox twitches on the platform when his hair is smoothed back, nails scratching gently at his scalp. There is a puff of air above him at the reaction before words are spoken. “You can wake up, vod’ika. We won’t hurt you.”

The sound of the endearment passing through lips has Fox squeezing his fists in anxiety. His teeth scrape together and his ruse of being asleep still is already broken but that doesn’t make it any easier to open his eyes.

Not when he doesn’t know what he’s facing.

He turns his head to the side before blinking his eyes open. He yawns before he can’t stop it and the small “o my god” is the only preparation he has for the sight before him.

Thorn sits on the chair next to him. Fox wrinkles his nose at how uncomfortable Thorn no doubt must be in sitting in one of those medbay chairs.

Cody sits in a chair next to his, looking all too young in his 212th armor. The lines that Fox was used to during the last months of the war were gone, not yet formed from the stress of surviving.

A tightness forms in Fox’s chest and he’s not sure if it’s a yearning to hug his ori’vod, the last of his brothers to have died when Sidious forced the Red Commander to hunt down the Vod’e, or the urge to punch the bastard for not escaping when Fox gave him the chance to during their final fight.

He blinks the unbidden tears that form behind his eyes, and he glances up in an attempt to stop them falling. The action causes him to see Ponds, Wolffe and Bly standing behind the two Commanders and the tears do end up falling.

Ponds still looks as young as the day he died. It’s immeasurable cruel for his brain to remind him that he lived longer than his younger brother; nor was it necessary to process the fact that in the end Ponds had a better death dying for a Republic that no longer existed than being hunted by his aruetyc brother who couldn’t control the chip that laid in his head unlike his brethren who seemed to ignore orders so easily.

Wolffe on the other hand bears no scar no prosthetic eye that Fox was so used to. While his stare is still hard, the lack of injury softens his facial structure. It’s less intimidating, that’s for sure.

Bly stares curiously back at Fox, smiling brightly when Fox makes direct eye contact. It’s a stark contrast to the bitterness and resentment Fox remembers, all ties torn from being considered family. After the death of his General though, it makes sense that Bly hated him. He pushed everyone away, including Cody. He died fighting, sacrificing himself for brothers who end up dead not even a week later, though it was less for actually wanting to protect them and more for his suicidal ideations.

Rex stands next to Wolffe with arms crossed, his lips twisted downward as his eyebrow close together. His blond hair is cropped short, unlike the version he remembered where Rex cared less of up-keeping his smart appearance. Of course, being on the run does that to a man.

Fox squints a little more, scrutinizing his younger brother. Rex frowns harder while glancing at the others.

There’s something off with this version. Rex’s chin moves a little to the left as he squeezes his bicep in discomfort. Maybe Fox has gotten too used to Rex being more…more…what is so different?

“You’re uglier,” he says before a snort erupts. Fox glances to the sound, watching as Thorn presses a hand against his mouth, muffling his laughter while Cody smirks. It’s only a second later for the reactions to process in his brain why are they laughing? before he realizes he said that out loud.

The uneasy feeling that crawls in his chest and squeezes around his throat prevent him from meeting eyes. “Sorry,” he says though he’s really shouldn’t. It’s the truth.

A voice rises above the sound of snickers and mutterings. “You know I’m right when a cadet sees it to.” The slight gravel and beginnings of a Coruscant accent has Fox snap his eyes to the man.

The clone is young, with no scarring across his face, and bears none of the stress or terror that his job will inevitably bring. He smiles like it’s not a crime to do so, and jokes freely with his batchmates, as though it’s not him who eventually kills every single one of them minus two.

It’s horribly discomforting, enough to jolt him up from the bed he was laying on. The action stops the laughter, but Fox can’t stop staring at his doppelgänger. His torso burns in pain and one of his batchmates say, “easy vod’ika” with a hand outreach, but Fox swats it away.

“You’re not dead,” he says instead, hands squeezing the blankets that cover his bottom half. He’s supposed to be dead, Fox thinks and wonders where he went wrong on the spell.

“Not yet, vod’ika,” and Fox hates the word coming from the man’s mouth, as though he has any right to say it. As though they have any right to the Vod’e. His tone is joking, like he’ll one day get the privilege to die and Fox hates how naïve his younger self is to think that. He wishes he himself could grab it, keep it himself, and pretend that that’s all there is to life.

Fight. Serve. Die.

Fox glares hard, teeth grinding behind closed lips, and snaps, “Don’t call me that.”

His clone, quite literally in all sense of the word and Fox squishes the amusement that threatens to rise at the irony, just raises an eyebrow. It’s annoyingly condescending and Fox scowls at the sight. He wonders if this was why his own batchmates stopped talking to him.

“Sure thing, cadet.”

The insult has Fox bolting from the bed in lightning speed, jumping his doppleganger. Not!Fox falls from the impact and Fox takes his opportunity to hit him over and over again.

He screams the minute someone drags him off, holding him close to their chest. He breathes heavily as Ponds and Wolffe check over their batchmate and it’s wrong.

It’s wrong! They’re concerned about a murderer!

“Crazy” is the only word he picks up from Not!Fox and he struggles against the arms holding him. A soft shushing sound starts up as he kicks and screams and bites, soothing even though his fighting doesn’t nothing for him.

Fox slumps in the hold after a while, staring down as his feet barely graze the floor. He kicks a leg up, watching it swing up but…

It’s not his leg.

Fox tries to even his breathing as he fully takes in his legs. Small, short legs.

Cadet legs.

He throws a hand out, fingers spread out, and the arm is much shorter than his body should have. The fingers are tiny, and he brings them to his face, staring at them in horror.

“What the kriff?” is all he could think to say before he passes out in shock.

Chapter Text

Fingers dig into his temple, under the skin and through the squishy parts of his brain. His mouth lets out a helpless screech as he intentionally damages himself, but it doesn’t stop him from still searching blindly for the chip in his head.

The chip that none of his brothers thought to ever mention to him. The chip that Vixen had screamed was the problem right before he died.

He pushes his fingers further in, nails scratching and tearing the organ. Despite his master dead, the former Commander can’t help but hate the thought of still being a slave to him, even after death.

When his fingers come in contact with a less than squishy part, a disc that is hard when pressed on, Fox wastes no time in pinching bits of his brain, squeezing his eyes shut and full on ripping the chip out.

He silently screams, blood pouring from his temple, but the pain is secondary to the relief he feels when he sees the chip for the first time.

He sobs at the sight. He sobs at how little an impact it makes when everyone he loves is dead.

Everyone he grew up with…

Fox wakes up with a hand to his temple, feeling only gauze and tape from where his chip wound was. The touch of cotton brings little comfort, and he attempts the tear the bandage off to truly ensure it’s gone when a hand closes around his wrist, stopping the action.

Eyes snap to the perpetrator and Ponds stares right back at him. His lips forms words that Fox can’t hear, irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. Ponds is still alive.

Before he can embarrass himself again with crying, Fox instead wraps his free arm around Ponds’ torso, sneaking his other arm around when Ponds lets his hand go in shock.

The one-sided hug is awkward considering his arms don’t reach all the way around, but Fox could care less. He hasn’t hugged his brother since…

Since…

He can’t remember if he’s being honest. Being under the chip for so long, it’s still hard to distinguish memories from dreams.

He doesn’t want to let go. Fox just wants to pretend that for just a couple more seconds, he’s back on Kamino and it’s just him and his batchmates, like it used to be.

His grief is broken when Ponds pats his back, not quite reciprocating the hug but not discouraging it either. He pulls back and he’s vividly reminded how small he is when Ponds smiles and stands up to sit next to Cody.

The chair next to him is taken up by Thorn. Even sitting down, Thorn is taller than him and it’s disorienting when Fox is the tallest of all the Commanders.

“Hey ad’ika,” he says softly, as though he was talking to a trapped animal. “What’s your name?”

Fox doesn’t answer.

He glances around as Thorn introduces himself and the others in the room. All of the batchmates are present, including Rex. Fox barely hears a word.

He instead focuses down on his hands, his body, his legs. They are all shorter than he expected. He stretches an arm out before pulling it back in, staring at his palm. He wiggles his fingers around and then his toes.

The blanket that hides them moves in response. It should not be as amusing as it is.

Still, Fox grins.

He has no idea how old he is.

That thought gets rid of the grin and it’s back to step one. Force, he should have listened to Vixen when he explained the spell. Maybe he can try to find the…

Man? Clone? Fox furrows his eyebrows the more he thinks. He can’t quite recall who Vixen was nor what he looked like. Was he just a hallucination he made up when under the chip? Was he actually real?

Maybe taking the chip out wasn’t the best idea he had.

Neither was the spell but that’s…he should have listened to the specifics when it was told to him. That was his fault.

“Ad’ika?” Fox snaps his head to the hand on his shoulder before tracing it to the man before him.

Cody stares at him, firm in his words. “I need you to pay attention, okay vod’ika?”

The warmth from his hand has Fox squeezes his fists, the urge to hold his ori’vod close building in his chest.

The feeling is disorienting and sickening and Fox bites the whimper that fights to leave his throat as though this is his actual brother. He can’t remember if this is his brother or an alternate version he came to.

His head throbs and Fox flinches, pressing hands against his temples. Cody moves his hand from Fox’s shoulder to his neck, and it’s…Fox knows he’s being treated like a cadet.

He’s being treated like a brother and it’s as unfamiliar as it is desired, and Fox hates it so much. He can’t focus on their comfort. He…War is coming. They need to be prepared. He has to save them.

“You’re gonna die,” he says as though it’s an appropriate response to Cody’s request but what else can Fox do?

How else can he warn them?

“Ad’ik-”

Fox interrupts him, cutting off the comfort lies that will be spewed. “Sidious is going to kill you all.” He stares desperately at his batchmates, eyes bouncing from one colored armor to the next. “He’s going to kill you,” and he’s going to do it by sending me. Fox bites that last part off. He shouldn’t say that.

The room is silent, filled only with shrugs and shaking heads. It’s broken by a nonchalant voice rising above to announce, “I told you he was crazy.”

Fox shouldn’t be surprised that it’s his younger self who objected his statements. Even unscarred, he’s still a paranoid bastard.

Fox still scowls at the phrase and wishes he bit him earlier in their tussle.

“What’s your name, ad’ika?” Rex is the one to ask the same question as before and Fox’s attention turns to the captain. While his stance is closed off, arms folded over his chest, Fox can see how little the harshness lines his body.

Fox stares at him for a couple more seconds, watching as Rex glances away from his gaze to Bly, who snickers at his discomfort. The deferment to the ori’vod’e has a side of Fox’s mouth tick upward.

Fox nods at his finding, about to reward it with an answer when he pauses. Fox is on the tip of his tongue but they already have a Commander Fox here.

“What day is it?” He asks instead. He cringes at the raised eyebrow Cody gives and hopes he doesn’t ask about the redirection.

“Shouldn’t you know that, cadet?” his ori’vod asks and it’s just like being scolded back when he was actually a cadet. Misplacing things, forgetting chores. It’s as aggravating now as it was then.

Fox shrugs his too small shoulders. “I can’t remember.” It’s not technically a lie. He truly is struggling with discerning reality from his hallucinations from the chip.

Thorn chuckles and Fox is addicted to the sound. When is the last time he heard his brother laugh so freely, so carelessly? He listens carefully when Thorn says his next words.

“How about you tell us your name and we’ll tell you the date?”

Fox refuses to roll his eyes at the stupid deal, an obvious sign that Thorn was meant to work with Senators. He’s good at mediating though this situation is much basic from what Fox remembers Thorn working with.

“I say that’s a good deal,” Cody backs up and Fox does roll his eyes at his easy agreement.

Suck-up.

“Vixen,” he says without thinking before his brain catches up with him. He internally winces at the answer. Osik, he thinks. How’s he supposed to find Vixen now when he just took his name? Oh, it’s going to be extremely awkward finding someone with the same name.

If he’s even real.

Fox shakes his head at the bad thought before nodding to Cody. “My name is Vixen.” No turning back now. Figures he’d name himself after a hallucination.

Cody glances to Not!Fox who shrugs before nodding in acceptance. The date he gives in return is…

6 months before everything turns to osik.

Fox groans.

How’s he supposed to fix everything in six months?