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Fox let his helmeted head fall face-first onto the desk, a deep sigh escaping. The stack of flimsiwork shifted, some fluttering to the floor, and an indignant mrrrp! sound came, followed by the thwack of a scaly claw on plastoid.
"Cucumber Salad. You're the only one who understands me."
"Mrrrr." A contentedly twitching tail smacked against his helmet, the tooka in question lounging next to the upended flimsi stack.
"This is also all your fault."
"Mrow."
To be fair, it actually began with Ermine and Diamond. Cucumber Salad and his siblings came later.
Thorn found Ermine first. He came back from a patrol with a pure white tooka, fluffier than any the Guard had ever seen before, wrapped around his shoulders. She purred contentedly from her perch, squinting her eyes balefully at anyone else who came near.
"What've you got there, vod?" Fox asked when Thorn walked into the barracks.
"Rations," Thorn deadpanned, setting down the pack in his arms, which did actually contain rations and other foraged supplies. The Senate hemmed and hawed about the budget, the GAR were fighting a war, the Jedi hadn't noticed...so Corries made do. They always did.
Fox narrowed his eyes, bucket off to give his brother his best You Are Disappointing Me Stare. exposed greying temples glinting sharply under the barracks' unforgiving incandescent light. "Very funny. The pest, Thorn."
"She's not a pest, she's very soft and wouldn't leave me alone," Thorn laced defensive fingers though her fluff, still gauntleted but seemingly appreciated by the tooka nonetheless. Her purr grew louder as Thorn sat down his prized scroungings and she thus received his full attention.
"She might belong to somebody. Vod, the hoops I'll have to jump through to fake-decommission you if you've stolen a fancy pet..."
"Nah, no collar, no ident chip pinged on my comm. She's a stray. A friendly one, though. Mine now. Deal with it." Thorn peeled off his own helmet and the tooka took the opportunity to bat at his long hair that came spilling out, seemingly fascinated by the coiling curls.
"We can't even feed ourselves, Thorn, how are we gonna feed a tooka?" Fox's voice edged towards despair and acceptance all at once, catapulting over other stages of grief as his fellow commander's shenanigans set in.
"Tookas hunt. We'll have less rations getting eaten up by rats with her around. And if she won't eat, I can ask Hound about the stuff they feed Grizzer. They're both carnivores, right?"
"...Fine. But any trouble she gets into is your problem. She got a name?"
Thorn grinned as his living furry collar went on playing with his hair. "I knew you'd cave!"
"Nice accessory, vod," Stone chimed in from seemingly nowhere and Fox and Thorn both nearly jumped out of their armor. Stone did that sometimes, silent as his namesake entering a room. He rifled through the rations Thorn had brought in, looking for his favorite, the meiloorun flavor pudding that tasted absolutely nothing like meiloorun. "Looks like one of those expensive furry things some of the senators have on their robes. Ermine or whatever."
The tooka chirped and sprawled out in a big stretch, somehow impossibly staying on Thorn's shoulders the whole time. Thorn turned his head and grinned at her. "You like that, huh little lady?"
Ermine purred and started chewing on Thorn's pauldron.
In a matter of days, every single Corrie fell in love with Ermine, and Fox knew to retreat when outnumbered. She soon disengaged from Thorn's neck in order to be spoiled by pets from all who would give them, but she always found her way back to Thorn's bunk at night, purring like an engine on his chest as he slept. That, more than anything, was the final straw that melted Fox's heart - sleep was sacred to the Corries, they got so little of it. And Thorn always woke up happier when he had fallen asleep with Ermine on top of him. Fox couldn't stay mad at that.
Ermine had even won over the two critics Fox had worried about the most - Hound and Jabs, their chief medic. Jabs had just snorted a laugh and said "'Bout time we had a pet around - they lower the natborns' blood pressure, and fuck knows we could use that. Grizzer and the other massiffs have jobs to do, we can't rely on them." Fox would have lingered, but the longer he stayed in medbay, the more he risked Jabs brandishing a hypo and knocking him out for involuntary sleep catch-up.
Grizzer took to the little beast immediately. Ermine trotted over to Hound and his faithful companion once after they got back in front a patrol, her tail held high, cautious, curious, and favored the massiff with a dainty sniff. Thorn froze from where he sat going over flimsiwork, staring at Grizzer with a protective eye. Hound also kept wary watch on the proceedings, but Grizzer simply panted happily after a moment and flattened her long tongue against Ermine's forehead in an affectionate lick. When Ermine tolerated this with nothing more than a grumpy sound and an urgent round of grooming, Hound softened up immediately.
Of course, whether GAR nor Corrie, peace was never an option for the vode, though the thing that broke it this time was thankfully, blessedly, neither oppressive orders from the Chancellor with their strange missions and foggy memories, nor harassment from the Senators escalating out of hand.
No, a week into Ermine's stay, that's when the yowling began.
"Thorn, if you can't shut her up, we can't keep her."
"Fox, it's not her!" Thorn gestured at Ermine, who was indeed asleep on the shredded mess she'd made of Rys' pillow. Rys had been inconsolable since Jek's transfer back onto the front lines, so Ermine had glued herself to the shock trooper's side whenever Thorn wasn't in residence.
The yowling echoed through the barracks, yes, but as Fox listened on he realized it was muffled, distant, but somehow reverberating louder than it should. "Oh kriff, there's one in the vents, then. Gotta be."
Thorn sighed. "I'll comm the latest batch of shinies, surely one of them's little enough to fit in there."
Hours later, the newly named Crawler, his unpainted armor scuffed from the effort, emerged from the vents holding a green tooka at arm's length. This one was Ermine's opposite in every way: sleek short coat instead of fluffy, wild eyed and with a chunk of an ear missing and scarring by his eye, filthy with lower level grime, and very obviously unneutered. His green iridescent sheen was broken up only by his black claws and a bright yellow diamond-shaped patch of fur in the center of his forehead. He hissed and growled and thrashed in Crawler's grasp, until Ermine hopped up from her resting spot with a cooing sound, rushing over to Crawler and weaving in and out between his plastoid-clad legs.
Just the sight of her calmed the ornery tom down, and with one last effort he twisted himself out of Crawler's arms and hopped onto the floor. The tookas nuzzled one another like reuniting lovers, the tom's growl lowering to something vaguely like a purr, while Ermine's purr picked up in volume, nearly drowning the other out. Clearly eager to be away from the beast that had clawed and bit him all the way, Crawler desperately looked to his commanders.
Fox dismissed the shiny with a nod, then gave Thorn a slow smirk. "Looks like you're a homewrecker, vod." He clapped Thorn on the shoulder and then retreated back into his office, resigning himself to the presence of another pest. The gobsmacked look on Thorn's face was worth it. And this one at least matched Fox in temperament. Fox didn't assume the tom would like him, but he felt mutual respect for a fellow warrior when he looked at the feral, desperate little thing.
Refusing to examine that emotion too closely, Fox dove right back into his work.
Diamond, as he was soon named after the yellow marking on his head, was a territorial little shit. He roamed far and wide, but always came back to the barracks and Ermine. He did not enjoy pets. He barely enjoyed treats. One day, Fox found him pissing in a random corner, declaring the building His, and almost threw the wretched thing out, but there was no time. The Chancellor had called a surprise inspection. So Diamond and Ermine were unceremoniously hidden under a bed with an earnest prayer to the small gods that they would neither come out nor make a sound.
Somehow by the end of the visit, Diamond had darted out of hiding at least twice, but never long enough for anyone to catch more than a shimmery green glimpse. With no proof, and all of Ermine's long white shed hairs meticulously cleaned up by Thorn, the Chancellor had no choice but to pass them on the inspection, though the wrinkled old shebs left clearly enraged that he had found no fault, his nose held high in the air.
During one of his stealthy escapes, Diamond somehow managed to piss all over the hem of the Chancellor's robes. The old man didn't find out until much later, while Fox was on shift in his office, and the creepy bastard's enraged scream filled Fox with a sort of unhinged glee. The weird ache through the surface of his skin and the holes in his memory after were worth it for that, the moment he couldn't forget even if he tried. When he returned to the barracks, Fox slipped Diamond an entire tin of foul-smelling canned fish that had come back from a ration patrol.
"Good boy, Diamond. You can stay."
Other than noisily scarfing down the treat, Diamond gave Fox neither attention nor a response.
Days, weeks, months went by on Coruscant. Guards died pointlessly to criminals and rioters, and others were shuffled into those lost brothers' numbers and ranks to give complaining Senators the impression that their demands for decommission actually amounted to anything. The GAR vode kept the secret that their batchmates still lived. It was early enough in the war, and their brothers had not yet grown distant and begun to trust and love their Jedi. Vode An reigned still.
Though speaking of Jedi, the Guard eventually picked up another stray, though this one was much bigger than a tooka. Fox arrested Jedi Shadow Quinlan Vos with a batch of other miscreants one night, and the man seemingly never left after that. Oh, Vos would disappear on some mission or another, but would always resurface, clinging to Fox like a stubborn set of blacks right out of the dryer.
The tookas liked Vos, though. And Fox had long accepted that the furry little beasts outvoted him among his own commanders. So Vos also stayed. This led to a trickle of supplies from the temple, bacta and real food, so perhaps the Jedi wasn't so bad.
"Your collar is getting fat, Thorn."
This was another consequence of the passage of time. Ermine grew rounder in the middle as treats and spoiling set in. What little they had, the Corries had to share, and Ermine was Theirs now, so she lived the most luxurious life they could spare her. Fish and meat food were prioritized for her and Diamond. She had a nest made of a silky scarf Senator Amidala left behind one day and hadn't looked for. Her purrs resounded through the barracks as everyone from the commanders down to the shinies spoiled her with scritches.
Weirdly though, Diamond didn't seem to be getting any fatter. And he still refused pets, holding his spine rigid and tail aloft when any seeking hands came near, so treats and praise were the only affection Diamond accepted. But the ornery little beast was as lithe as ever, and Fox was perplexed. Diamond had still managed to befoul the Chancellor's robes three more times and hadn't been caught yet. He was still Fox's favorite. So he shrugged it off.
"She is not getting fat, Ermine is a perfect little princess. Aren't you?" Thorn buried his face in her fur, coupling the embrace with vigorous ear scratches. Ermine purred contentedly, her claws flailing at Thorn's hair, which she remained fascinated by after all this time.
After a moment, Thorn yanked his head back in horror, Ermine yelping mournfully at the absence. "Fox, her stomach just moved."
Jabs managed to calm Thorn down, scanning Ermine and smacking Thorn upside the bucket when the result came in. "She's pregnant. Get on the holonet, start reading, I'm not about to be responsible for kitten care."
"How was I supposed to know? We came out of tubes!"
"While you're on the holonet, also spoogle remedial sex ed. I'm not explaining where babies come from."
Fox laughed so hard at Thorn, Jabs had to sedate him.
It wasn't long before Fox found himself sitting next to Thorn, who was panicking as much as Ermine was yowling, waiting for the spawn to emerge. Fox hoped that Stone and Thire had things covered, being down two commanders for something as trivial as a tooka's labor pains was frankly ridiculous, but Thorn had grabbed Fox by the arm and demanded that "my emotional support Commander" stay, so here he was. Amidala's former scarf was going to be ruined at this rate, given the assorted gunk coming out of poor Ermine along with the little ones. Her nest was set up on a table, so that Thorn could more easily reach and assist.
Diamond paced the perimeter of the room, as if on guard. Fox looked over his shoulder and glared at the tom tooka. "This is all your fault, you know."
Diamond did not dignify Fox with acknowledgement or a response.
"Fox look, the first one is coming out!"
The first kitten to come tumbling out of Ermine was fluffy like herself, a pale gold color, and female. She had a mighty voice for something so tiny, Fox nearly recoiled at the first small scream. Thorn gently guided her to begin nursing. "She's going to be pretty just like her mama. And look at that color!"
"It's like that bubbly drink the senators have at their big shindigs," Fox chimed in absently, not nearly as emotionally invested in the whole endeavor as Thorn.
"Champagne! That's her name now."
"Vod, it's only Champagne if it's from planet Champagne in the Spfrance system. Otherwise it's just sparkling wine."
"Well I'm not calling her Sparkling Wine, no matter where she was born," Thorn retorted, returning his attention to Ermine once little Champagne successfully found a nipple and began her first gulps.
"With the racket she was making, it would be more like Sparkling Whine."
"I'm telling Vos you're picking up his bad jokes."
"Don't you fucking dare."
Shortly after Champagne, another kitten emerged, significantly less fluffy, short haired like Diamond, but with fur as black and iridescent as an oil slick. A male, this one barely needed any guiding from Thorn as he made his way to Ermine's belly for breakfast, in fact he nipped at Thorn's fingers along the way as he tried to help.
Fox snorted a laugh, then looked back over his shoulder at Diamond. "I think she might be cheating on you." He wasn't certain how tooka genetics work, but even he knew that white plus green did not equal black. Once again, Diamond did not dignify the situation with his input.
"Ornery little fella. What should I call this one?"
"Don't know why you're asking me, Thorn. Though with Ermine, Diamond, and Champagne you've got a theme going...osik only the senate can afford."
Thorn pondered this for a moment, then nodded. "Caviar. Those gross fish eggs. The cheap stuff is orange, but the really fancy stuff is black."
Jab's scans had revealed three kittens, but enough time passed after Caviar's birth that Thorn was absolutely beside himself, and even Fox was worried. He wasn't prepared to console Thorn if one of the kittens didn't make it, and Force knew what hell would be unleashed through the whole barracks if Ermine had some sort of complications. Even Fox, curmudgeonly as he felt about the entire arrangement, would be sad to lose her. Diamond ceased his patrol by this point, giving Ermine encouraging licks on the forehead.
Thorn was so distraught by the delay that he missed it when a little shape finally emerged, much smaller than the first two kittens. The new arrival wobbled as its shaky black talons found purchase, taking big awkward galumphing steps. Too big, actually - the kitten blindly stumbled nearer and nearer to the edge of the table. On pure reflex, as the kitten stepped over the precipice, Fox cupped his bare hands and darted them out, catching the fuzzball just in time.
Small enough to fit in the palm of just one of his hands with room to spare, and more fur than body, the little thing writhed and mewed in Fox's gentle grasp. Fox stared at the creature, who had been seconds away from doom. He realized, distantly, as if not fully at home in his body, that he was trembling. Awe, Fox decided. He held an entire life in his hands. It hit him differently, somehow, than saving a person. Fox shook his head, snapping himself out of it, then examined the kitten in his hands. Male, with a color an exact mix of both parents, the iridescent green and the pure white blending into a pale color just like -
"Cucumber Salad," Fox blurted out. With gentleness he never knew he possessed, Fox set Cucumber Salad down next to his siblings. It took Cucumber Salad longer than the others to figure it out, and Fox let out a sigh of relief when the runty little guy finally started nursing.
"Cute name, I like it. Didn't know you had it in you, vod." Thorn smirked at him and Fox hurried to put the 'I outrank you' snarl back on his face. The effect was ruined by the way he kept glancing back at Cucumber Salad, making sure the kitten was still feeding and alright.
It turned out, Ermine was not a very hands on - claws on? - parent. Once the kittens' eyes were opened and they only needed her for food, Ermine took the opportunity to deposit them with an alternative babysitter as often as possible. Grizzer especially, the huge massiff went sweet and mellow in the presence of the kittens, and Ermine milked this for all it was worth. She would routinely drop the kittens one by one on the big hound's belly and then trot off to go do tooka things.
Hound was beside himself. "Fox, I'm a dog person. It's in my name. I don't know what to do with kittens."
"Just make sure Grizzer doesn't eat them. If she does, Thorn will make sure they never find your body."
An anguished howl much like his namesake escaped the ARF trooper.
The little ones had personalities far too big for their small fuzzy bodies, but grew into them day by day. Champagne, though a pretty little thing like her mother, had her father's immunity to affection. Visitors attempted to pet Champagne at their own risk, her nippy little teeth flashing brightly. She also inherited her father's voice. The one time Champagne escaped containment, she made it all the way to the Senate Rotunda, her yowls echoing mightily throughout the dome. Thire found her, scruffing her by the neck and stuffing her in his bucket, which he clipped at his belt, and booked it out of the building with her as quickly as possible.
The experience spooked Champagne enough that she never went wandering again, but the same could not be said for Caviar. The void kitten never met a door or window he couldn't defeat. And every time he returned, it was with some sort of corpse. Bird, vermin, fish - and Fox had to wonder where on Coruscant the little guy had found to go fishing of all things, because these were clearly not pilfered market fish. Every time, Caviar dropped his catch proudly in front of Thorn and then stared menacingly, an unspoken "Are you going to eat that, idiot, or do I have to teach you to eat as well as hunt?"
Cucumber Salad would never have made it if Ermine had given birth on the streets, Fox decided. The little guy was not so bright. He waddled into door frames. He stared vacantly at the Corries' improvised tooka toys instead of chasing or batting at them. And he would not. Leave Fox. Alone.
When Cucumber Salad slept, it was on Fox's desk or Fox's bunk. When Fox was in the barracks, Cucumber Salad trotted a half step behind him - in fact, Fox learned to slow his gait lest he accidentally kick the little kitten by mistake. When flimsiwork called, Cucumber Salad sat calmly on Fox's desk, purring as if all was right in the universe. And when Fox left on patrol or for Palpatine duty, Cucumber Salad cried and cried and cried. Not the mighty screams of his sister Champagne, no. Once Thorn showed Fox the bucket-cam footage, Fox was forced to conclude that these were more like the anguished sobs of a lost street orphan from some bygone era.
Nothing to be done for it. Fox would never endanger Cucumber Salad by taking him on watch in the Chancellor's office, or on patrol in the streets. But when it was just the Senate Dome or another low risk patrol, Fox would wear his breastplate a little loose, with padding, and with Cucumber Salad tucked gently between his pecs. The first time a senator asked him where the rumbling purr sound was coming from, Fox had blankly replied that the senator should get their speeder's engine checked. Never mind that they were both inside during this conversation.
At Jabs' insistence, the whole tooka family was smuggled down to a mid-level vet to get fixed once the kittens were old enough. As happy as he had been to have the tookas for health benefits and morale, five was plenty and they didn't need to be overrun. Vos paid for the procedure, glad to help. His steady stream of supplies and support to the Guard hadn't abated, and Fox noticed with quiet gratitude that senators who committed the more egregious crimes of harassment against the Corries since Vos took an interest often faced sudden retirement due to the emergence of blackmail. Fox still wasn't ready to call the Jedi "Quinlan".
Diamond fought and raged the entire way, and on the way home sulked and yowled at the betrayal and outrage to his person and manhood. Ermine bore it all with great dignity and seemed content sleeping off the procedure. The little ones barely knew what was happening, they were being treated early enough that they wouldn't know what they were missing. Though Caviar broke loose from his carrier no less than five times on the trip there. Vos laughed merrily as he recounted the story to Fox, the Jedi and Thorn had wrangled the tookas together for the trip. It was the first time Fox decided he liked a natborn's smile. He did his best to bury that thought.
Being neutered did nothing to soften Diamond's hard edges. The incidents with the Chancellor's robes continued. Fox wondered how every time, as the Chancellor had taken to avoiding their barracks as much as possible, calling the guard up to his office if he needed something. The ember of satisfaction that a creature under his protection was causing the Chancellor so much grief warmed him on the days when those calls came, the disorienting blood-soaked missions and the gaping holes in his mind.
Whenever Fox returned from a Palpatine call, Cucumber Salad would curl up on his chest and purr as hard as he could, so much that his little body shook and all his green fur stood on end and trembled. The cold, gnawing feeling in Fox after each of these missions would ebb slowly out of him in time with Cucumber Salad's purrs, leaving warmth, safety, comfort.
I would die for this tooka, Fox realized one night as he drifted off to sleep, his chest bare save for Cucumber Salad splayed across it, his fingers buried in warm fur. Granted, it's my job to die for people. But for him, I'd mean it.
One day, when Fox was on patrol in the senate, Cucumber Salad tucked contentedly in his breastplate, he spotted Jedi General Kit Fisto walking through the halls. This wasn't unusual in and of itself, the Jedi often having need to visit one senator or another to report on the war effort or, recently, to campaign for the rights of the clones - something Fox fought a mishmash of ugly and yearning emotions over.
No what was unusual about this particular senate visit was the tiny black shape stalking the nautolan Jedi, all predator grace and pure stealth. Only Fox had spotted it, but surely Fisto sensed something in that Force of theirs...
"Caviar, nooooo..." Fox groaned under his breath as recognition set in. With a flash of motion too swift for even his enhanced vision to follow, Fox stood helplessly as Caviar pounced, scrabbling his way up the Jedi's robes and sinking his teeth into a tentacle.
A long pause as Fisto blinked down at the tooka and Caviar stared blankly back, no longer sure what to do with his catch. A warm, fond laugh erupted from the Jedi, and he kept walking, allowing Caviar to dangle impotently from his tentacles the entire way. Caviar scrabbled and attempted to further make a meal of his oversized aquatic prey, but Fisto refused to play dead, just petting the little demon with great fondness.
Fox let it go. This far into the war, with stories from his vode on the front lines and Vos' frequent presence, he trusted the Jedi, at least as far as the care of tookas. He did, however, stop long enough to upload the last 30 seconds of bucket cam footage to the commanders' chat and ping Monnk. He deserved to see what had befallen his general.
After that, Kit Fisto showing up to the Corrie barracks to return Caviar after a long absence became the new normal. After the fifth time Fisto delivered Caviar, the tooka was wearing tiny little Jedi robes, and the master's lowest-hanging tentacles had scabbed over bite marks dotting their tips. Fisto seemed to wear the marks with pride.
"What the kriff is this?" Fox asked, gesturing to the robes as General Fisto deposted Caviar onto his desk. Cucumber Salad let out an annoyed trill at his brother muscling in on his territory. Caviar ignored Cucumber Salad and started to groom, flashing more underlayers of the robe. Fox blinked at the precision and detail, little obi and tabards and was that a tiny lightsaber. He prayed to the small gods that it was only a model, and if not, that Caviar did not know how to turn it on. Nothing would surprise him at this point.
General Fisto laughed. "This little fellow thinks that I am his dinner. The fish and I smell alike, I suspect that's his logic. I admire his ambition - to go after something so many times his size. A very Jedi attitude, "size matters not". " He said the last with a cadence that indicated to Fox that he was clearly quoting general Yoda. The whole guard was used to the Grandmaster's garbled Basic at this point.
"And you...rewarded his attempts to eat you, sir? With clothes."
"Oh no that was Mace's idea!" Fisto grinned widely, all sharp teeth that made him oddly resemble the little Jedi-tooka on the desk. "The little one followed me into a Council meeting. It was a top secret one for the war effort, not an open forum, so Masters only, no visitors permitted. When Mace noticed my companion, he knighted him so that he could stay. You're now looking at Jedi Master ...what's the little fellow's name?"
"We call him Caviar."
"Jedi Master Caviar. A fine and noble hunter. I look forward to seeing what sort of padawan he trains someday." With that, Fisto left, and Fox stared at Caviar for a long time, stunned.
An hour later, Fox's comm beeped. Cody. "What is it, vod?"
"Fair warning, Skywalker just came through here in a category five tantrum. Ob-I mean, General Kenobi couldn't calm him down. He might hit the Chancellor's office in the next couple of days to bitch about it."
"What was it about this time?"
"You know that bullshit about the Chancellor muscling Skywalker onto the Council despite the kid being abundantly underqualified, barely knight material?"
"Yeah I rememeber the stink Skywalker made about not getting made a Master along with it," Fox answered, dividing his attention between the conversation, his flimsiwork, and this left hand absently stroking Cucumber Salad's spine. He didn't care if his comm picked up the purrs. Cody could deal with it.
"Yeah, well, I didn't pick up all of the details, but something about Windu making a tooka a Jedi Master. Windu apparently looked Skywalker in the eye the whole time as he did it, too."
Fox thanked the Force and the small gods both he hadn't been drinking his long-gone-cold caf. He definitely would have spit it everywhere at that.
The next time Vos dropped by, Fox was in no mood for his shenanigans. Luckily, Caviar was in residence, not out on the hunt, and somehow still clad in the tiny little robes.
"Go away, Vos, we have our own General now." Fox gestured at Caviar.
"Very funny. This is the thanks I get for bringing you lunch?" Vos sat a bag of Dex's finest in front of Fox. Fox bit back a groan at the smell wafting through his bucket filter. Refused to give Vos the satisfaction. Once he schooled his expression in place, he took off his bucket and ate carefully, savoring the nerf burger and fried tubers.
"Not kidding," he said around his first bite. "Windu knighted him himself. That's General Caviar of the Coruscant Guard you're talking to."
Caviar mewed defiantly at Vos.
Vos appeased the tooka by handing Caviar one of his breaded nuna fingers from his own lunch. "I think the General and I can work together for the sake of morale."
"Bribing a general of the Grand Army of the Republic? That's illegal you know," Fox deadpanned.
"Yeah, but Caviar here's the only one it actually works on." Vos smiled and, when he finished his food, took one of his gloves off and scooped Cucumber Salad into his arms, cuddling the tooka fondly as he rattled off intel for Fox's various cases. Fox took notes on his comm, eyeing the little green traitor in the jedi's arms purring and soaking up the attention.
"That doesn't bother your force osik, petting him barehanded?"
"Nah. I handle unhappy animals with the gloves on, but happy ones? It's just soothing. Psychic feedback loop of contentment. Feels really nice after a day out there in the undercity." Vos looked Fox in the eyes, teasing tone dropping out of his voice. "This little guy really loves you, you know. You're his whole world. I can see the memory of you catching him when he was born."
Fox felt heat rise in his face and he looked back down at his desk, staring a hole into his flimsiwork. He dismissed the blush as his allergy to genuine emotions acting up.
The war raged on, grinding everyone, Jedi and GAR and civilian alike, down to their barest, meanest, most exhausted selves. Brothers died in the thousands, Jedi in the hundreds. And on the home front, the protection of Vos and other vigilant planet-bound Jedi kept the Guard safe from some of the indignities they suffered at the beginning of the war, before learning to trust one another.
But nothing kept them safe from Palpatine.
Kamino never bred fools. If you survived that haran, you learned to put the pieces of a puzzle together, and so Fox knew what the Chancellor was. What the Sith was. Only so many missions made of broken memory and horror could go by before drawing that conclusion. Fox tried to tell Vos, Fisto, Gallia, hell even Skywalker though the little shit for brains would never take a clone's side over his beloved friend Palpatine. His tongue turned to lead in his mouth when he tried, his lips would not part, the words would not form. The same voice that haunted his nightmares, the one that whispered good soldiers follow orders, hushed him into silence every time.
Fox drew comfort from two things. One, that Palpatine seemed to single him out for these missions. Occasionally Stone would get called up, but in general Palpatine favored the commanders, and Fox most of all, so the shinies and regular troopers were spared this particular horror. The second source of comfort was the love and constant companionship of dear, darling, dumb-as-a-rock Cucumber Salad. The tooka was fully grown now, and still couldn't navigate a hallway with automatic doors without bonking head first into them, but he could always tell when Fox needed him.
Champagne had taken to following Thire around, still a prissy little screamer. Diamond, oddly enough, made peace with Crawler, the shiny who rescued him from the vents so long ago. Ermine was still Thorn's faithful shoulder companion. And Caviar half lived in the Jedi Temple these days. Those fish? Turns out the little miscreant had been hunting in the Room of a Thousand Fountains. General Yoda complained for days once when Caviar beat him to a specific frog. Fox still couldn't quite believe he'd heard that tirade correctly.
But Cucumber Salad, sweet, silly Cucumber Salad was all his. Fox's little baby. His safe harbor after the storm that was silently serving a Sith Lord.
One night, alone in his office, with Cucumber Salad curled up on his chest, his work forgotten on the desk, Fox stared at the ceiling. Grey bleached the hair at this temples, his face worn from travail but softened now as he stroked behind his companion's ears. Lightning scars peeked up from the neckline of his blacks - they trailed down his whole body, but the Sith always left the face alone. Jabs gave him a stern look the first time Fox came back with those, but Fox couldn't explain. He tried, he really fucking tried. Just like trying to warn the Jedi, no words.
Fox looked down at Cucumber Salad, a thought striking him. He had failed to tell the Jedi. He couldn't commiserate with his vode, even the few fellow Corries that knew. But Cucumber Salad wasn't a person. He was a tooka. Whatever blocked him, maybe it would let him tell an animal. It wasn't like Cucumber Salad could say anything to anyone. It wouldn't accomplish anything, but it would make Fox feel better at least.
Determined to try, Fox turned on a scrambler, preventing recording or eavesdropping - to give himself a fighting chance against the thing in his head, assuring it that no sentients could hear. Just the tooka. Just Cucumber Salad, a being with an absolute absence of thoughts in his head.
"Cucumber Salad," Fox's voice cracked, the first words of the sentence forming sent a thrill through him. This just might work. Cucumber Salad replied to his name with an interrogative "Mrrrrp?", tilting his head to the side.
Fox's heart swelled with love for the fuzzy creature. "Cucumber Salad..." he choked out. "The Chancellor is a Sith. He makes me do things. Horrible things. Then he makes me forget. And I don't know how to stop him."
Tears surged in his eyes. He'd done it, he'd finally said it...not to anyone who could help, but that didn't matter now. Fox clutched Cucumber Salad to his chest and sobbed, and the tooka licked the tears from his cheeks.
The next day, when Fox got off shift, Thorn was waiting in his office, looking rattled. "Where's Vos?" Fox asked, "I was supposed to meet with him."
"I don't know, vod, he ran out of here like there was a fire under his shebs about ten minutes ago. Ordered the whole Guard on a comms blackout before he left, wouldn't explain anything."
"What the fuck," Fox went ahead and turned off his comm. At this point, he knew Vos wouldn't give them an order if he didn't have a good reason. He almost never used his authority as a Jedi with them.
"I know, right? One second he was in here, petting Cucumber Salad, waiting for you, then he froze up. Stared off into space, like he was receiving a transmission from offworld in his brain. Then he ran out. Dumped poor Cucumber Salad out of his lap too."
Cucumber Salad mewed pitifully from his usual spot on the desk until Fox scooped him up. Then Fox froze. Remembering Vos' habit of petting the tookas ungloved. And Cucumber Salad's most recent new memories. The tooka wouldn't understand what was being said, but Vos would.
"Enforce that comms blackout! Everyone back to the barracks now, we're in Lockdown Protocol Alpha. No one gets in or out, no calls. I'm going to make one last call to Cody, then we're shutting the system down." Fox chased his fellow commander out of the office before calling up Cody, praying that Vos wasn't doing anything stupid on his own.
"Cody where's your kriffing Jedi?"
"Fox, hang up, I've just been ordered to put the entire GAR on comms blackout. I can't talk."
"Oh thank fuck. Ret'urcye mhi, vod." Fox ended the call immediately. Cody knew, which meant Kenobi knew. Which meant Palpatine couldn't compromise the GAR and Vos wasn't running in without backup.
It killed him to wait, but Fox knew that whatever puppet strings Palpatine could pull made him and the vode a liability in this fight. Before he could get too lost in thought worrying about the outcome, a claw tickled his chin. Cucumber Salad looked up at Fox with dopey, adoring eyes.
Fox sighed. "It'll be thanks to you if we live through this. Come on. Gonna take you and your siblings down to the mess, let everyone spoil and play with you. If we live, it's your reward for the help. If the Jedi lose, at least the last thing we do as free men is have fun with some tookas."
Fox met his men in the mess, having rounded up all the tookas save Caviar, who wasn't home. They couldn't break the lockdown to look for the little guy, so worry for his safety piled on to the background fear for their lives that they chose to collectively drown out with tooka-nip and toys. It was a long day of worry, only made bearable by their furry friends.
Hours later, a beeping from Fox's office interrupted playtime. An emergency dead-drop Vos set up, it would receive messages from the Jedi but completely unconnected from the holonet and wider communications networks. For worst case scenarios only. Fox put down the tooka in his arms, Champagne for once submitting to attention, and bolted to check the message. He barely noticed Cucumber Salad darting after him.
Fox booted up the data stick that chimed its warning call, his heart hammering in his throat. Sliced senate cam footage. A fight. Lightsabers of every shade against two red, one in each of Palpatine's hands - Jar'kai, Fox remembered Vos calling that style. A blood-colored whirlwind of death. There were enough Jedi in the fight that none seem to have been killed, though a few were down for the count, injured.
The camera sat at a wide angle, and Fox glimpsed senators cowering in their pods at the edge of the footage. Fuck, Vos must have brought the Jedi in during a full senate session. Senator Burtoni's pod was sliced in two, the longneck trembling behind the wreckage. Fox refused to let the smug satisfaction distract him.
Skywalker was nowhere to be seen; Fox drew his own conclusions. Closest to the Sith, General Yoda weaved in and out, a blur of frenetic motion, Generals Windu and Kenobi closest at hand. Fisto and Vos weren't far behind with even more of the Council and Shadow Jedi.
Suddenly, a black shape leapt out of Fisto's hood. Fox bit his lip, holding back a scream.
Caviar, no!
The little robe-clad tooka landed directly on the Sith's face, gouging deep into those burning yellow eyes with his claws. The distraction threw Palpatine off long enough for Yoda, Windu, and Kenobi to strike all at once, three sabers impaling the Sith's chest, green purple and blue humming in harmony. A blast of dark force energy threw everyone back, including Caviar, who landed nimbly on his taloned feet.
The feed cut off. A text message popped up onto the screen.
Footage is an hour old. Caviar is fine. With temple healers now to cleanse. Safe to lift lockdown. Will update you soon. - Vos
Fox sank to his knees. A broken laugh escaped him, then another, his body wracked with uncontrollable laughter turning into sobs. They were safe. They were free.
Cucumber Salad hopped up onto his lap and purred.
Life went on for the GAR and the Jedi. Better than before, but with its own challenges. Skywalker needed enough psychiatric help to require confinement, something about Tatooine before the war and babies of all things. Fox dreaded the idea of Skywalker breeding. He refused to learn more about the situation.
The Guard learned to accept how their GAR brothers had grafted themselves inexorably with their Jedi, one whole family entwined rather than two. The council worked hard to disentangle both from the Senate, to make sure nothing like this war could happen ever again. Fox stayed out of it. He and his brothers and their tookas had relocated to the temple. Surgery on millions of sentients to remove a mind control chip was a long task, the mind healing to recover from long term exposure to the Dark Side even more so.
It only took a week before Healer Che and her staff realized that Fox was going to tear the walls down around him without some work to do. So reluctantly, they let him go back to his flimsiwork. A truly terrifying stack had piled up in his absence. He settled down and got to work.
As he toiled, he allowed little interruptions over the comm from his vode, a luxury he couldn't afford in wartime. Cody and Bly were finally getting feelings about their Jedi off their chests. Rex vented about babysitting, he and Tano had taken in the Skywalker twins since Amidala was under scrutiny in the Senate about the marriage and conflicts of interest and Skywalker was under confinement. Thorn sent holos of Ermine in her fancy new cat bed, lounging like royalty. Crawler added a few to the Corrie group chat of Diamond and Champagne patrolling the temple halls, exploring the new territory.
Caviar, hero of the Jedi order, had been officially adopted by General - no, Master Fisto. Caviar still tried to eat the Jedi on a regular basis.
But here, after eight hours of chipping away at the accumulated datawork, Fox let his head sink onto the desk. Che would be up his ass for working too long. Her lectures were even scarier than Jabs', who was taking a long vacation himself. Fox spotted Jabs lounging poolside in the Room of a Thousand Fountains the other day, sipping a colorful drink with a tiny umbrella in it. Fox wasn't about to ask where it came from.
"Cucumber Salad," he sighed, addressing his truest friend. The little green tooka never once left his side, not once during the long recovery period, save for during his surgery, when Cucumber Salad had paced outside the Healing Halls, yowling his pitiful orphan child howl until Fox was cleared for visitors.
"You're the only one who understands me." Flimsi scattered, and Cucumber Salad's tail thwacked against Fox's helmet. Cucumber Salad mrrrred softly in reply, pressing his forehead to Fox's in a kitty keldabe kiss.
"This is also all your fault."
"Mrow."
Fox scooped Cucumber Salad into his arms, hugging the purring tooka close. "Thank you," he whispered.