A man stood upon a bridge over churning water, facing the firing squad.

It was difficult to breathe. It was impossible to move his hands, tied behind his back with familiar cables that caught on the ridges of the body glove. Black and white spots danced in front of his vision, bursting into light like stars before dying before they were swallowed by the dark.

The water spitted and roared, the spray hissing upwards before returning to the water. It moved in rhythmic, intense motions: a hissed rise and a careful retreat, a hiss and fall.

He heard a man call ready.

His heart was seizing strangely. Not from fear. His throat tightened, cutting off his air.

He heard a man call aim.

Why has nobody ever…

A man called fire.

The man felt a terrible impact in his chest, an explosion of crumpled pain. He jerked back, foot slipping on the greasy metal, and with a dizzying lurch the world upended itself and the man fell downwards.

The forest of foam-covered rocks in the sea underneath hit his neck in just the wrong way, and the man felt his neck shear and rip.

Fox sank.

Fox broke for air.

He coughed, spitting out mouthfuls of stale water and hacking up flecks of bile. He struggled upwards, swimming upwards and pulling himself out of the water so he could gasp and wheeze. He bent his knees and tried to swim up, but when he unbent them his feet touched hard tile.

Fox opened his eyes, still coughing, and blearily squinted and looked around as the water cleared from his eyes.

Three children were staring at him, all different species but dressed in identical little white outfits. The Rodian’s jaw dropped. The human gaped at him. The Dug dropped their little red ball, sending it spinning on the floor.

“Uh,” Fox said. A stream of water hit his back, dripping down his legs. “Sorry.”

Another stream of water hit his back, and he turned around only to see that he was standing in some sort of unnecessarily nice fountain. The kind you’d see in one of the million Senate building courtyards, supposedly atmospheric. He looked down, and saw that the water went to his shins. What the…

“Are you a ghost?” The Rodian asked, high and reedy.

Fox scanned the area, finding only more fountains. And more fountains. And more fountains. Why the * fountains *? Why were there identically dressed children playing in here? Was this a warehouse for fountains? That didn’t even make sense.

“Sure, whatever,” Fox said, not listening at all. “How do I get out of here?”

The children gaped further. Fox had the feeling he should say something more reassuring, but he wasn’t wearing anything other than his bodysuit and he felt horrendously exposed. He stepped out of the fountain, shaking himself off and brushing the water out of his hair.

“A Force ghost!” the human cried furiously. “I * knew *they were real!”

“But clones aren’t Force sensitive,” the Rodian pointed out. “How would -”

“He’s * here *, isn’t he?” the Twi’lek said reasonably. “So it has to be the Force.”

“Sure, whatever,” Fox said, uncaring. “Do you have a direction out of here?”

They all pointed unanimously west. Fox thanked them, and started walking.

It was five minutes before he escaped Endless Fountain Hell and climbed a broad marble set of steps before he realized he was in the Jedi Temple. He had already guessed as much. You only ever woke up in fountains if the fountains were in ridiculous locations.

He checked a large shadow clock projected onto an alcove and with a sinking feeling in his gut he realized that he had to be at work in an hour. Not enough time to get back to the dorms, shower, and change. Shit.

He’d have to go straight to the Senate building from here. It would only be about twenty minutes. Fox set off down the hallway, dodging the streams of running children or shambling elderly people. None of them paid him any mind, the sight of a clone unremarkable in the Temple even if he was dripping wet, and Fox somehow made it through the cavernous yet austere hallways into the grand entrance and passed by the red cloaked guards through the main doors.

He glanced back one final time to check the clock, squinting over the sea of dismembered skeletons and rotted flesh, and saw that he was already running ten minutes behind.

Fuck.

Riding the air trolley to the Senate building without his helmet or armor was a humiliating experience, and the only saving grace was the fact that the vast majority of Coruscant had no idea what a clone actually looked like, much less Fox. Which was pretty impressive if you thought about it - Stone called it the Coruscanti Guard’s best kept secret. The key was to never interact with a natborn off the clock, which Fox already excelled at.

It was slightly more embarrassing getting his way into the building without his identification card, but Fox glowered any questions away and gaslighted his subordinates into believing that they, somehow, had done something wrong. By the time he took advantage of the locker room shower, thumped his head against the wall a few times, and buckled on the spare armor kept in his locker, he just barely slid into the break room at 0900. He normally got his caff at 0830 so he could avoid the break room crowds, but he should have thought of that before he woke up in a fountain.

The room was already crowded with slacking Senate Guards, helmets dumped on the rickety table and chatting among themselves as they drank from biodegradable cups. Fox pushed past them, ignoring the inane chatter (“Did you hear we’re executing the Princess?” “* Finally *!”) in favor of glaring another subordinate away from the last cup in the pot and stealing it for himself.

“Commander! Finally decided you’re good enough for morning caff?”

Fox grunted, downing the cup as fast as possible. Stone just grinned at him. He was leaning against the counter, scrolling through a library datapad with his helmet buckled to his belt.

“Hey, I’m reading the weirdest biography. It’s about this famous anti-war satirist from Lothal. He’s really popular over there.”

Beside them, Lee thumped the other industrial caff pot with the palm of his hand. “Stupid hunk of garbage. What, they can afford their thousand cred brandy but they can’t buy us a decent fucking caff pot?”

“What’s a satirist?” Fox asked. He didn’t read much. Or at all. He read too many forms every day already, he preferred to spend his free time staring at a wall.

Stone just shrugged. “It means he makes fun of war and calls it stupid and a waste of time. Hey, easy for him to say, right?” Fox grunted. Natborns. “But get this. This guy’s so dedicated to talking about how stupid war is that he follows it around! He decides to hop planets and travel to Jakku to watch their Gold Revolution. Just to get more material for his book!”

The caff pot rattled, and with a thunk the front panel of the machine fell off. Lee abruptly stepped back, looking pointedly in another direction. “Uh - someone broke the caff pot?”

“And then he * disappeared * ,” Stone said with a final flourish. “He was * never * seen * again *. Isn’t that ironic? I bet he died in that revolution. The Gold Revolution was really bloody, you know. It’s actually fascinating, that planet used to have bodies of water before the bombs -”

“You read too much,” Fox said.

But Stone just laughed, straight white teeth flashing. Every clone had perfectly straight teeth. Another edit - Prime’s teeth had been a little messed up. He said that it had been from getting socked in the face one too many times. Fox suspected that he hadn’t wanted to admit that he wasn’t genetically perfect.

“Try the murder mysteries,” he said. “Even rereading them is fun. It’s comforting, you know? The same thing happens every time. No surprises!”

“Our lives don’t have any surprises,” Fox said. He crumpled the empty cup and dropped it in the disposal, listening to the whirr and grind as the cup was ground into compost. “Make sure Squad 1 takes patrol route Besh instead of Alpha today, and assign Squad 4 to the war effort charity function.” Stone snorted. “I’ll be supervising the Senate conference today. Don’t let Thorn around Senator Aurek this time.”

From where he was rapidly shoving a ration bar in his mouth on the other side of the room, Thorn called, “He’s an asshole!”

“Nobody cares!” Stone yelled back.

“Back to work, everybody,” Fox said, and that was that.

Generally speaking, Fox had better things to do than guard duty. He especially had better things to do than bland Senate supervision duty, which in practice meant standing there looking like taxpayer dollars. But his orders had been clear regarding ‘security’ and ‘potential Rebel agitation’, so Fox organized his men and conducted the needlessly thorough security checks and triple secured all protective measures. It wasn’t as if he had formwork to do.

Fox stood in the back of the cavernous Senate hall, standing in front of the entrance to the main walkway and boarding ramps to the pods. All other exits and entrances were covered, and he had two other squadrons patrolling the premises. Of course, nobody had found anything. Sometimes Fox just felt like meaningless security theater, but most of the Senate was theater anyway. All it meant was that the masquerade had swallowed him and his men whole.

The politicians nattered on about so-and-so and this-and-that. Across the hall, Fox saw Mack block a furious woman in a white dress from entering. Fox’s mind drifted to organizing the next day’s patrol routes. He would have to split Stuart and Longstreet up next time. Those two couldn’t focus in a squad together. Every time they shipped out a new batch Fox could swear that they grew more and more immature and unskilled. Kamino’s standards were slipping.

Finally, the votes were cast - one side won, one side lost, both sides were unhappy - and the Senate broke for recess. An alert popped up on Fox’s comm, alerting him of the next meeting in his schedule, and he gave some final instructions to his men before heading for the Supreme Chancellor’s office.

It was a familiar walk, and Fox zoned out for most of it. The office was humbly located in the exact center of the Senate building, on the same floor as every other Senator’s office was located. His secretary was even placed among the others, although she had a certain intensity about her that marked her as unnervingly important. There was little to differentiate the office from the others except the isolated winding hallway, carpeted in dark red with weird portraits of other chancellors. They were a colorful mix of characters up until around one hundred fifty years ago. Afterwards, every following Chancellor was human.

Aype and Jubal were on guard duty that day, and they both saluted as Fox approached. He saluted back, relieving them, and knocked with three sharp raps on the thick wooden door. He waited for the buzz of the doors unlocking before letting himself in.

Lord Sidious was staring out the window, his back turned to Fox. The wide, oblong window peered out over Coruscant, sitting squarely at a comfortably luxurious position in the world teeming with sentient vermin. Fox stepped forward, the red carpet muffling the sounds of his boots and leaving his footsteps completely silent. He walked up the wide stairs, coming to a halt in front of the gleaming duracrete desk. He saluted sharply, although Lord Sidious couldn’t see it.

When Lord Sidious spoke, his voice was low and quiet. Forceful, every word spoken with great purpose. “At ease. Any interesting updates, Commander?”

“No, my lord.” Fox lowered his hand, although he remained at attention. “Skywalker and the 501st returned from Devaron last night. The 501st took heavy casualties, yet the battle was successful.”

Lord Sidious hummed. “I understand Anakin made a costly mistake during that battle.”

“Yes, my lord. The factory exploded prematurely. The reports of the battle will be disseminated to the Senate tomorrow.”

“Quash that. Blame the factory explosion on Seperatist aggression. That should silence some of the doves for now.” Lord Sidious swiveled around, staring at Fox for the first time. He didn’t make any more facial expressions than Fox did. “My future apprentice walks his path admirably. It seems all of the players have committed to their sides, Commander.”

“Yes, my lord.”

A corner of Lord Sidious’ mouth ticked upwards. “Where would you say your commitments lie, Commander?”

“With you, my lord.”

“Is that truly the right word for it?” Lord Sidious swiveled around again, looking out the window. The sight of Coruscant was the same as ever, like those toy hurricanes in clear plasteel boxes. Shake it and it bursts into movement, exactly the same every time. “Commitment implies a decision. Some would say just one, but I would name that a promise. Some would say a never ending series, renewed every second, but I believe that model does not account for inertia. I believe perhaps a commitment is a choice made so many times it no longer feels like a choice.”

Okay. Whatever. “Yes, my lord.”

But Lord Sidious just smiled again, the motion cutting shadowy grooves into his face. “Forgive me, Commander. I must be boring you. But everything bores you, doesn’t it?” Fox struggled to reason if that was a rhetorical question or not, but Lord Sidious kept speaking. “We will have to see where little Anakin’s choices lead him. I trust they won’t bore you.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“You’re dismissed, Commander.”

Fox saluted. “Yes, my lord.”

“My, you’re an uninteresting conversationalist.”

In the end, Fox got out of his meeting with the Chancellor ten minutes early. The extra time was welcome - he always got a massive headache around this time of day. Caffeine withdrawal.

In a depressing display of weakness, he made another trip to the break room for caff. It was a routine endeavour, albeit one taken in the privacy of his office. He felt oddly self-conscious about it sometimes. He had that meeting with the Chancellor three times a week and he walked out with a killer headache and a weird feeling in his gut * every *time. The man was annoying but not noxious. Maybe Fox just hated the stench of natborn.

One of the pots had an ‘out of order!’ note taped to it, so he jammed his thumb on the other one until it started spitting out turgid black caff into the pot. Two other clones were in the room, eating lunch and talking quietly amongst themselves.

Fox turned to look at them. “Am I an uninteresting conversationalist?”

They both stared at him, dumbfounded. Finally, one of them asked, “Who told you* that *?”

Left unsaid: who was brave enough to tell you that? “I don’t know.”

“Bet it was a Senator,” the other clone said. “No respect, those guys.”

“Yeah, one of the Commander’s worth twenty of them!”

“Sucking up won’t get you anywhere,” Fox said, grabbing his caff.

The rest of the day was spent in his office, filling out form after form after guard rotation after service request after bodyguard request after a depressed missive from Cody regarding General Kenobi’s liver. Would you send out the word that he’s not allowed in any more bars? He’s annoying when he’s drunk and he’s always drunk. Fox sent a persnickety message back about how the police were not babysitters, but he sent out the order anyway. Anything to make Obi-Wan Kenobi suffer. He would feel slight guilt for the blatant un-favoritism, but the Supreme Chancellor encouraged the meaningless suffering of Obi-Wan Kenobi. He said it built character. Sometimes Fox worried that the man had fucked the Chancellor’s wife or something.

At 1500, somebody sharply rapped at his door before buzzing themselves in. It was Stone, smiling cheerfully and holding two cups of caff. Fox didn’t look up from his comp, but when he held out his hand Stone deposited the cup in his hand. When he took a long swing, he found that it somehow tasted better than the kind he made for himself - but Stone’s caff was always like that.

“Boring, boring, boring day!” Stone said brightly. “The men will complain for hours that they aren’t out there on the exciting battlefield like our brothers.”

“They think the battlefield’s exciting?” Fox asked wryly, taking a long drag of the caff. “It’s a week of marching and waiting around before ten minutes of fighting.”

“The other starship always flies smoother.” Stone took a sip of his own caff, leaning against the doorway. He knew that if he came in and sat down Fox would complain about him disrupting his work. So he always stood at the doorway, just to give them both plausible deniability. “Hey, you’ll never guess what Stonewall said to Aype this morning -”

Blah blah blah, clone grudge matches, blah blah blah, did you hear about what happened to the Ersos? Shame!, blah blah blah, I think I have this weird growth on my back -

“Can I ask you a question?”

“If it’s about your growth I don’t care.”

“Hah, hah.” Stone took a final drag of his caff, draining it before crumpling the cup. He used too much force, practically squeezing it into a perfect ball. “Anyway, so you know I’ve been reading all these biographies and nonfiction and everything. Interesting stuff! And there’s this whole genre just of war novels. Fiction, nonfiction, for adults, for kids, everything. And obviously they talk about famous planetary Civil Wars and whatnot - there’s this entire series on the 100 latest Mandalorian Civil Wars, fascinating - but that’s not what most of the books are about!”

“Usually there’s * only *civil wars,” Fox said flatly. “Nobody found that the censure from the Republic for having a militia over whatever percent of their population was worth it. Much less a military.”

“The last two years excluded,” Stone agreed. But he was growing a little excited, making a sharp gesture with his hand. “But that’s not what they talk about! They always talk about these grand, sweeping interplanetary conflicts. Like the Mandalorian Conquests, or the Jedi-Sith Wars, or the Yuuzan-Vhong stuff. But those conflicts haven’t * existed *for five thousand years, not since the Mandalorian Empire fell. The Yuuzan-Vhong were probably fifty thousand years ago, but here we are still writing books about it. These things don’t happen anymore -”

“The last two years excluded.”

Stone waved a hand. “Obviously. But I was thinking about all of this while on guard duty today -”

“You should think about guard duty while on guard duty.”

“Do you think natborns wanted this to happen?” Stone asked, speaking over him. “You know, do you think they - like - read all these books and listened to all of the Mandalorian pop music and learned about how cool these things were - and they wanted some of it for themselves? Do you think they missed it? Do you think they need it?”

A long silence stretched between them. Fox and Stone just looked at each other, letting the words hang in the air bearing down upon them.

Finally, Fox said, “I’m trying to decide if that’s seditious or not. Get out of here before I make a decision.”

Stone got out of there. Of course, Fox was bluffing - Stone’s words were not seditious at all, because whoever designed the rules and outlined what was and was not seditious could have never planned for a clone who was just a little too into history for his own good. Or the good of the GAR.

Fox should ban books or something. He made a note of it in his to-do column. Kamino already highly restricted what media the clones were allowed to consume (almost none), and most of the clones on active deployment had better things to do than spend all day with their noses stuck in literature (Cody, for example, read instruction manuals for fun). Only the Senate and Coruscanti Guard had this problem, because only they had reliable and unfiltered holonet access. Philosophy was a disease. Definitely ban the holonet.

The workday ended eventually. Fox closed out his work for the day at 2100, finally freeing himself of police reports and orders for anti-riot gear. He showered again, grabbed his now strangely smelling body glove, and headed for the back exit to the speeder shuttle pick-up points. His men passed him in the hallway, the night shift exchanging for the day shift, and they saluted or nodded at him as they passed by. Senatorial aides, seeing the influx of clones, hugged the walls.

As Fox walked through a back exit, he passed by a figure sitting on a sleek durasteel bench. She was wearing a white dress, and had her hair arranged in the typical ridiculously ornate hairstyles half the Senators seemed to wear. She was leaning forward in her seat, every muscle coiled and tight, staring blankly at the opposite chrome wall.

She was counting under her breath, relentlessly. As Fox walked past he began to hear her low voice whispering under her breath, and as he walked away the sounds continued.

“One billion five hundred thirty five thousand and seventy two. One billion five hundred thirty five thousand and seventy three. One billion five hundred thirty five thousand and seventy four…”

And on, and on. Fox kept walking, and caught the speeder shuttle just as it was taking off.

He entered the dorms without processing it. He washed his body glove in a fugue. He walked past the men yelling and chatting and wrestling in the hallways. He walked past the soldiers preparing to go out for drinks, and past the one clone with his nose pressed against a datapad. He straightened his room, looked at the work he had yet to do, and looked around for something he did for fun. He found nothing.

And, bored, he fell asleep.

Fox broke for air.

He coughed, spitting out mouthfuls of stale water and hacking up flecks of bile. He struggled upwards, swimming upwards and pulling himself out of the water so he could gasp and wheeze. He bent his knees and tried to swim up, but when he unbent them his feet touched hard tile.

Fox opened his eyes, still coughing, and blearily squinted and looked around as the water cleared from his eyes.

Three children were staring at him, all different species but dressed in identical little white outfits. The Rodian’s jaw dropped. The human gaped at him. The Dug dropped their little red ball, sending it spinning on the floor.

“Hm,” Fox said. A stream of water hit his back, dripping down his legs. “...sorry.”

He turned around only to see that he was standing in the exact same fountain as yesterday. He looked around only to see that he was in the same obscene fountain warehouse located squarely within the Jedi Temple - which, in retrospect, was probably for serene meditative reasons.

“Are you a ghost?” The Rodian asked, high and reedy.

“Not really,” Fox said, not listening at all. He climbed out of the fountain, shaking himself off like a wet dog. “Does this happen a lot?”

The children gaped further. Guess it didn’t. Fox would be surprised too if the same person (perhaps) climbed out of a fountain during their regularly scheduled morning playtime twice in a row.

“A Force ghost!” the human cried furiously. “I * knew *they were real!”

“But clones aren’t Force sensitive,” the Rodian pointed out. “How would -”

“He’s * here *, isn’t he?” the Twi’lek said reasonably. “So it has to be the Force.”

“You should tell your adults that there’s something wrong with your fountains,” Fox said. “Goodbye.”

“Goodbye,” the children chorused as one. Creepy Jedi motherfuckers.

This time, it was much easier to leave the Jedi Temple. The place was a maze, and only Fox’s experience with it the first time let him escape without losing two hours to its back hallways. He contemplated flagging down a Jedi to let them know that their fountains likely needed maintenance, but when he checked the shadow clock he saw that he only had forty five minutes before work. He’d submit a maintenance report from the Senate - he still had Captain Nemo’s personnel logins.

Once he hit the entryway he glanced back one final time to check the clock, only to see a hallway of dismembered skeletons.

Fox gaped. The hallway was littered with them, thrown carelessly aside with snapped necks and piled on top of each other. A group of little children’s remains, cleaved in two or jumbled together until they were one indistinguishable mass, were shoved loosely against a wall. A larger body, desiccated, was lying on top of a smaller one, as if they had tried to shield them. The air stunk heavily of tombs and ruin, the ghostly stench of blaster bolts and cauterized fresh hitting Fox’s nose heavy and pungent.

Then he blinked, and the sight was gone. The group of children were walking in a group, holding hands and laughing as a harried padawan tried to herd them. The knight and padawan pair looked to be arguing about something - from the sounds of it, about sneaking out to see a new girlfriend. The air smelled like standard purified and recycled air.

Fox rubbed at his eyes. Fountains had too much chlorine.

He grabbed the first speeder he saw to the Senate, sitting on a hard molded durasteel chair and dripping water in slow rivulets onto the floor. Coruscant whipped by him, hyper-real and faded, and as Fox brushed water out of his hair he found himself looking at the skyscrapers just a little longer than usual. Maybe he was just trying to scrub that weird hallucination out of his eyes.

The skyscrapers looked...nice. They arched upwards like a clone jokingly reaching up to brush his fingers against the top of a door frame, their sides burnished and clean like the winding halls of Kamino. Nothing about them was friendly, but something about their solidity was reassuring. It was comforting, which made Fox uncomfortable.

Unfortunately, he had to make his way into the Senate building without his identification card again. Fortunately, neither of the guards on duty seemed to notice, and Fox’s embarrassed glower scared them away from any questions or emotional security in their own competence. He rushed through the locker room shower, stared at the wall for a minute trying to see if there was blood on it, and buckled on the freshly laundered bodysuit and suit of armor in his locker. He sniffed the bodysuit. It didn’t * smell *freshly laundered. Maybe he’d submit a maintenance report for the Senate launderers.

He slid into the breakroom silently wishing into existence nobody noticed that he was showing his face in the breakroom with everybody else twice in two days. It paid off this time - nobody gave him a second glance, too wrapped up in their own exhaustion or drinks.

Fox pushed past them, ignoring the inane chatter (“So where do you think clones go when they die -

Fox stopped short, turning around in confusion. The clone - Stonewall, leaning against a wall and chatting easily with Tuco - was stuffing a ration bar in his mouth, easy as anything as he contemplated his mortality.

Contemplated his * mortality *? Who did that?

“I mean, we can’t go to the same place as everywhere else,” Tuco pointed out reasonably. “Most religions that believe in an afterlife incorporate a review of your choices made in life. I don’t think I’ve made a single choice in my life. Maybe we go wherever, like, droids go.”

“I’d be pretty fucked up if droids went anywhere. Our brothers kill a shitton of those guys every day.”

“Well, they kill a shitton of us.” Tuco nodded thoughtfully as Stonewall conceded the point. “The Alderaanians believe that death is the first step in ascending a heavenly mountain. You ascend the mountain, and once you reach the peak you can look out over the whole world and your whole life. They say if you’ve made a beautiful life you see a beautiful world, and if you have led an ugly life you see nothing but fires and ruin.”

“Then what? Do you stay on the mountain?”

But Tuco just shook his head. “Nah, if you do that then you stay a ghost and you start haunting people. You’re supposed to jump into the heavenly lake at the base of the mountain. If your life created beautiful things, then you float to the top of the lake and you get to live in that good world you made. If your life created ugliness, then you just sink to the bottom.”

“So what happens if you’re us?” Stonewall asked.

“Maybe you just keep falling.”

Fox opened his mouth, then closed it. Talking about the afterlife and death felt seditious somehow. He should ban it. Yes, that sounded right.

Dazed, Fox retreated to the caff pot, only to see that a subordinate had always stolen the last cup in the pot. He robotically made another pot, watching the turgid black liquid sputter and cough.

“Commander! Finally decided you’re good enough for morning caff?”

Fox slowly turned to see Stone, grinning easily at him. He was leaning against the counter, scrolling through a library datapad with his helmet buckled to his belt.

“That’s it,” Fox said. “I’m banning books and the holonet.” He might let them keep holomovies, since they were restricted to strictly propaganda anyway. Stone looked wounded, so Fox leaned in and hissed. “If the men are contemplating their own deaths we have a problem.”

But Stone just stared at him blankly. “We have an average life expectancy of six months once deployed.”

“Congratulations,” Fox said, “you’ve found the problem.”

“You know what this reminds me of?” Stone asked. “This weird biography I’m reading. It’s about this famous anti-war satirist from Lothal. He’s really popular over there.”

“So I’ve heard.” Fox looked around the break room, unable to fight a strange tingling on the back of his neck. He would say it felt like he was being watched, but he felt watched every second of his claustrophobic little life, so that wasn’t it. It felt more like he was being noticed. * That *was uncomfortable. “What’s the point of satirizing war, anyway? If he wants to stop it, he’d do more good on the front lines.”

Beside them, Lee thumped the other industrial caff pot with the palm of his hand. “Stupid hunk of garbage. Decrepit and obsolete it shambles on, much like the lumbering corpse of this parodic Republic. With all the money they save from our slave labor, you’d think that they can buy us a decent fucking caff machine.”

“You know,” Stone said, “I don’t think he really wanted to stop it at all. I think he just thought it was interesting. A lot of satirists like to talk about stuff they think reflects ‘the sentient condition’.” Stone made air quotes around the word, confusing Fox greatly. “Maybe he just thinks sentients are dumb, and that war’s the dumbest thing a sentient can do.” He brightened. “In fact, this guy’s so dedicated to talking about how stupid war is that he follows it around! He decided to hop planets and travel to Jakku to watch their Gold Revolution. Just to get more material for his book! And then he -”

“Disappeared?”

Stone blinked in surprise. “How’d you know?” He paused a second in thought, working through it all. “Maybe calling war stupid and then following it around * is *the dumbest thing a person can do...like performance art, almost…”

Fox deeply wanted to tell Stone why he’d been late the last two mornings. Stone was a thinker, disconcertingly intelligent - a useful thing in any officer pushed to the brink on the battlefield, occasionally problematic if the officer had too much time to sit around and read books. He might know what to do. But that would involve Fox admitting that he had been late twice in a row for work, and the sheer embarrassment kept his mouth shut.

“You have to admit our genesis is a ridiculously convoluted series of events,” Jex heckled from the other side of the room. Fox jumped slightly, on edge. “Like, what the fuck, Prime? Just get a surrogate.”

“Or, like, adopt?” Rys said to him. “That level of obsession with your own genetic perfection and purity is kinda -”

“Fascist?”

“Well, he’s in good company.”

“I can’t believe the Senate bought all that crap about the Jedi placing the first order,” Thire said, taking a long drag of his caff. “If they had enough money for * that *, they’d have enough money to split financially from the Senate. And if they had enough money for that, they’d be on vacation in Scarif right now.”

“Uh,” Rys said, “not Scarif.”

“Oh. Right. Shame.”

“I’ve decided that I personally detest the intricate, confusing, and downright bizarre series of events decades in the making that put me * here * , * now * , * right in front of this hunk of junk *-”

“I don’t know,” Hound said, almost randomly. “It makes perfect sense to me.”

Everybody quieted and stared at him expectantly.

“Well?” Rys said, “what is it?”

Hound opened his mouth.

“Back to work!” Fox barked, ending the conversation right then and there. Behind him, the caff pot rattled, and its front panel fell off.

Nothing was going right today. Bad enough that he had woken up in the bottom of a fountain again. Now his men were speaking nonsense, distracted beyond their duties. If this kept up, he’d have to start taking disciplinary action. Fox held a tight zero-tolerance policy on lack of discipline. He expected strict discipline in his men, and it was a guiding ethos behind both the Senate guard and the police force. His life would be a lot easier if the Senate had just a little bit more discipline. Maybe Coruscant as a whole. Sometimes, in his weaker moments, he fantasized about every sentient being in Coruscant abiding by a rigorous schedule and perfectly obeying every one of the government’s many rules. Everything would be organized, and nobody could bother him.

When Fox double checked his schedule, he found it depressingly similar to yesterday. Guard the Senate meeting for the next two hours, one hour meeting with the Chancellor - those meetings could * always *just be emails - and then formwork the rest of the day. At least he wasn’t getting blown up all the time. Small favors.

Fox jammed a bucket on his head, mindlessly organizing his men and sending their patrol down the cavernous Senate hallways flooded with harried aides and every variety of species in the galaxy - or, at least, every variety of species on a planet where they politically and numerically outnumbered humans. He lead the procession down the hallways, already plotting out the new patrol routes for the squadron, when he found himself in a nightmare scenario.

“Guards!”

Fox stopped short, the men behind him stopping too. It was a short woman in a white dress, breaking away from a conversation with another senator and rudely walking directly away from them to stalk down the hallway towards Fox. The senator didn’t seem to notice she was gone, but Fox was forced to stand up straight at attention.

The woman had a cherubic face with a tight, nasty expression - par for the course with senators. It took Fox a second to recognize her. It was the same woman as yesterday, mindlessly counting on that bench. She didn’t look mindless now. Instead, she seemed to be on the warpath.

“Guards, I demand an escort to the Senate chambers this instant.” Her roving, bossy eyes skipped over Fox’s men and landed straight on Fox, honing in on him as the leader. “Are you the captain? What’s your name?”

“Captain Fox, ma’am.” He made a gesture at Mack, who stepped away from the formation and nodded. “My officer can escort you to the Senate chambers now.”

The woman leaned to the right, glaring furiously at Mack. “You’re the guard from yesterday. What’s your name, officer?” Mack glanced around, uncomfortable, and the woman scoffed. She turned back to Fox, who was silently cursing Mack out. “He’s no good to me. You’re the only one I’ve seen around here who pays attention to anything. You’re escorting me. Lead the way, Captain.”

Mack was getting Mas Amedda’s guard duty for a month. Fox saluted sharply. “Yes, ma’am. This way.”

He gave the hand signal to his men to continue on without him, and with misplaced confusion they did so. He’d be five minutes late to his posting, but it wasn’t as if his men could chew him out for it and it wasn’t as if anybody else would notice. He was forced to turn and head in the opposite direction from where he had been going, aiming for the main senator’s entrance instead of the guard entrances. Out of pure dedication to keeping to his important schedule, Fox set off down the hallway at a quick clip and forced the woman to almost jog after him.

Horrendously, the woman tried to make conversation with him. “You’re a little short for a stormtrooper, aren’t you?”

Fox grunted. They were all short. It wasn’t as if he cared or anything, but Captain Rex bitched incessantly about having to crane his head up to talk to General Skywalker. Fox liked to send him charts for the adult heights of Togruta women, montrals and all, just to piss him off.

“And a terribly interesting conversationalist,” the woman said dryly. Wow. First time he’d heard that one. “Not that anybody here is an interesting conversationalist. I swear, the Senate is stuffed to the gills with enough mealy mouthed, soft headed, walking Chandrila roundworms that I hardly get any interesting conversation when I’m awake, either. Normally if I talk loudly enough they stop ignoring me, but my usual tactics aren’t proving effective.”

Fox grunted, and walked faster. He mentally stored away the Chandrila roundworm comment. That was actually pretty good.

The woman was craning her head around the hallways as they wove around churning streams of sentients. Their boots clicked almost inaudibly on the glossy white tile, softly complementing the off-white walls. They were panelled with rich velvet tapestries every few meters, cutting up the white with red fabrics and intricate patterns dripping opulence. The woman eyed them interestedly, even stopping to stare at a few before quickly catching back up.

“There’s quite a bit of aliens here,” the woman said, loudly and rudely. “And some truly beautiful art I’m sure was burned to shreds a long time ago. Your Senate’s quite impressive, Captain Fox.”

“It’s a jewel of the Republic, ma’am,” Fox replied rotely. * Your *Senate? Strange woman.

The strange woman barked a harsh laugh. For somebody so small and dainty, with a gentle white dress and a stupid hairstyle, she had a laugh like an alcoholic Wookie. “You sound like my father. Did they teach you the right words to say, Captain? Or were they encoded into those protocols they taught you in the factory?”

Something strange prickled at Fox’s skin. The woman was staring at him, even as she practically barreled through the hallway in an effort to keep up with his steps. Her eyes didn’t skip over him, or pass through him, or glaze over him. If it wasn’t for the helmet, Fox would swear that she was looking into his eyes. It was the same unsettling feeling Fox always had whenever he had to escort a Jedi. As if they * saw *you.

Fox didn’t want to know what a Jedi saw when they looked at him.

Finally, Fox managed to dredge up the right words. “The Senate Guard is a highly trained, elite force tasked with your safety. Ma’am.”

“What a clumsy evasion of my question. Do people not ask you many questions, Captain Fox?”

“Do you ask everybody you meet this many questions?”

The minute he said that he regretted it. It was far beyond the handful of stock responses he gave senators, and it was only when he went off-script that he ever entered trouble. But the woman just laughed, a light and quick scoff that somehow spoke of both amusement and complete derision.

“I believe you know much more than you say. You must see everything that happens in this building. Why wouldn’t I question somebody with such an interesting perspective?”

For some reason, Fox thought of the Chancellor smiling at him. “I have nothing to share that would be of interest to you, ma’am.”

The woman looked forwards again, seemingly dismissive. “You’re right. I’ve heard this song before. Honestly, I was expecting something a little more…I don’t know, hellish? Demented? Torturous? This is simply the kind of torture I get paid for.”

“Sometimes something is only tortuous once you get used to it,” Fox said.

The woman looked at him sharply, big brown eyes narrowing, but Fox strategically chose that moment to arrive at their destination. The large durasteel doors opened and closed as streams of senators filed in, pressing their ID badges against the podium in front and waiting for the light to flash green before the doors opened.

He brought them both to a stop, the woman almost tripping over her feet at the abrupt end. “Here you are. It was a pleasure to meet you. Let us know if there’s anything else you require.”

“I’ve never heard a more insincere expression of gratitude in my life,” the woman said curtly. She looked at the door, crossing her arms. “I said escort me, not dump me at the front. Let me in through the door and I’ll release you.”

Fox automatically moved to open the door for her before halting as the protocols marched through his brain. Slowly, he said, “For security purposes, I’ll ask that you admit yourself into the chambers.”

The woman rolled her eyes, as if Fox was being purposefully obtuse. “My identification is twenty minutes across the building in my office. It’s not worth being late to this vote because of a technicality. Just let me in.”

“I’m afraid we have to abide by protocol, ma’am. For security reasons.”

“I think democracy is a bit more important than protocol, Captain. Will you simply let me in? We’re wasting time with all this arguing.”

Very, very slowly, something clicked into place in Fox’s brain.

“You’re the woman who tried to sneak into the Senate chambers yesterday.”

“I wasn’t * sneaking * ,” the woman who tried to sneak into the Senate chambers yesterday sneered. “I was attempting to attend an * important * vote and take my place as * senator *before I was rudely intercepted by one of your men. It was a very routine endeavour.”

“You need identification to enter the chambers, ma’am.”

“And you need to get your eyes checked,” the woman retorted. “Don’t you know who I am? I’m her royal highness Senator Leia Organa!”

Royalty. Yikes. Nobody cared, lady.

“Wait,” Fox said, “is * this *why you wanted a guard? So I could open a door for you?”

“Of course not,” Leia * shamelessly * lied. “It’s very important I attend that vote, Captain. Everything depends on my ballot in there. You’re letting a little - a little * bureaucracy * get in the way of democracy!”

What was the difference? “Why is your attendance vital?” Fox asked. “What’s so important about this bill?”

Leia stared at him. Something changed in her face. It didn’t soften, but it didn’t harden. It just shifted. Maybe into something a little more desperate. Not lost, but turned around and left to find her own way home.

“I don’t know,” Leia said. “It’s just important, that’s all.”

“If you don’t know, it can’t be that important.”

“It’s * important *,” Leia insisted. “I have to fix it, I have to help -”

“It’s just legislation, your highness. It’s not meant to help.” Fox straightened, nodding sharply. “If you continue attempting to access restricted areas, the guard will be forced to remove you from the premises. If you excuse me, I have to return to my post.”

“Never trust a stormtrooper,” Leia condemned, but seeing as Fox didn’t know what that meant he didn’t really care.

In the end, Leia didn’t attend the Senate meeting. Fox did.

He stood in the back, playing his part in the security theater. Meaningful and important, preventing upstart princesses from entering rooms they weren’t allowed in. She wasn’t a real senator. She probably just thought she deserved to attend because some nothing planet with a GDP less than the net worth of one of these senators pretended to do what she said. She was about as important to these proceedings as Fox was, and somebody else probably paid just as much money to place them there.

But she had been so furious. So certain that this was important. Certain in her * own * importance, certain in what she was owed, but certain in something else too. Arrogantly sure that she was the only person who could help - but equally sure that something * needed *help.

Well. There was a chance this might become Fox’s problem. It was within his duties to check. It was his job to prevent problems.

For the first time in his two years attending senate sessions, Fox opened up the routine mailed brief on his comm and leafed through it. He listened to the senators argue, and argue, and argue.

The argument seemed to be split between what Fox privately thought of as the two parties. There were real parties - about one hundred seventy two and counting - but Fox didn’t know anything about those. He only knew two.

The Chancellor’s side. And the other one.

Fox mentally called them ‘the Dissidents’. He also mentally called them idiots. They hated banning perfectly reasonable things, like books or independent news. They negatively impacted the war effort, of course they had to go.

They grew smaller every session. Fox didn’t pay attention, but he didn’t have to. It was the same every time. You had a senator loyally vote against every bill that increased the reach of the state and decreased freedoms. They didn’t like prolonging the war and they wanted to end it as quickly as possible. They wanted autonomy, and they’d fight for it. They loyally fought against each bill that opposed these values - so, most laws that the Chancellor had personally guaranteed would hit the floor.

At first. Then a very reasonable bill would appear on the floor. It would be called ‘Save All Babies’ bill or something. It would advocate for saving the war orphans or what the fuck ever. Only some kind of baby killing idiot would vote against it, and the bill had come from one of the guys on the Dissident’s side anyway, so of course the Dissident would vote for it. And they wouldn’t really notice the little clause in there that surrendered certain planetary property to the Republic - or if they did, they couldn’t remove it. Think of the babies.

They thought they were voting to promote the Dissident’s agenda. They were, or they were at first. Then they started voting for Dissident bills that the Chancellor had subtly placed on the floor. Then they started voting for the Chancellor’s bills that fit in with their platform, or didn’t contradict it * too *badly. Five steps later, they were on the Chancellor’s Party, and the Dissidents shrank by one. Every time. One by one.

These efforts paved the way for the less subtle bills. That was the one on the floor today. It was called, sure enough, the Loyalty Act. So far as Fox could pick out from the debates, speeches, and briefings, there were four main parts of the bill.

It expanded the government’s ability to look at records on an individual’s activity held by third parties. It expanded the government’s ability to search private property without notice to the owner. It widely expanded the reach of Republic intelligence agencies. And it legalized a wartime tactic that Fox was very familiar with - tap and trace searches.

Basically, it allowed the government to destroy privacy and root out any dissenting voices. Fox watched in bemusement as Senator Organa empathetically disagreed with the bill, braying something about the death of liberty and privacy. Other Dissidents murmured in agreement. Members of the Chancellor’s party reminded everybody that planets were * losing money out there * ! There were traitors * within the Republic * ! And the traitors…were * costing them money *!

That wouldn’t do. The bill passed. Everyone clapped.

In the end, Fox still didn’t see the big deal. The Loyalty Act passed every week in here.

When Fox left the senate floor it felt almost like breaking for air in a mysterious fountain. Boring place. The kind of boredom that pressed down on your chest like heavy stones and made you wheeze for breath. That kind of bored.

Just like yesterday, Fox robotically started walking towards the Chancellor’s office. He let his feet make the trip as his mind wandered, trying in futility to pull it in any direction other than Princess Leia and failing. He’d never seen anybody work so hard and so blatantly to be a security risk. He ought to inform the * real *senator of her planet, hopefully so they could