Chapter Text
It’s as they’re approaching the third year of the war that something inside Fox finally snaps.
He finds himself pushing the buttons of the people around him intentionally, almost welcoming the consequences that follow such behaviour. He knows that he shouldn’t, that if he keeps going perhaps they’ll just give up and send him away for retraining, but he also doesn’t want to stop. It brings him some twisted sense of control, and, as the punishments get more severe, a twisted sense of hope along with it.
One misjudged kick might bring Fox some peace. If he has no other way out, at least he has that.
Not that the Chancellor ever lets it go far enough for Fox to have any real hope of escape. He still claims that he cares for Fox; that all he wants is for Fox to excel, and that this is why his standards are as high for him as they are.
Fox knows that having the Chancellor’s personal attention should be an honour, but it no longer feels like it at all. All Fox feels when he thinks about it is the phantom ache of long-healed injuries. The Chancellor will praise him in one breath then order punishment in the next, and Fox can’t keep up with it anymore.
He wants to do his job, do his duty, but this was not a battlefield he’d been trained for. His programming baulks at the task.
In one of his weaker moments he considers trying to contact the other Guard commanders and ask them what they would do in his boots. Then, he remembers their usual frosty reaction to him these days, and the droid watching his work over his shoulder, and thinks better of it. They’re likely dealing with issues with natborns of their own. His brothers in the GAR, too, have the Jedi to reckon with.
Besides, he can’t get close enough to any of them to ask them in person. His access to the turbolifts leading away from his offices is restricted except in the most severe of emergencies. For security reasons.
There isn’t anyone else to turn to. Of the natborns he’s had contact with, none of them he would trust. Even the friendly maintenance director, the one who had been on his floor for a few months and had dropped by regularly, seems to have moved on to brighter (and higher) pastures. Fox can’t be certain, but he’s pretty sure that he’d seen them hanging around the medic’s office on a couple of occasions between his last few visits.
The details elude him - said visits often left him feeling rather hazy - but he does remember the irrational pang of betrayal that had followed the first sighting. They’d been a stranger to him, but one of very few that had been kind to him over the past few years.
It had been a completely irrational reaction. Fox is owed nothing from anyone, least of all kindness from a stranger.
—
The light at the end of the tunnel eventually comes in the form of a kill order on another trooper, of all things.
Fox isn’t the one guarding the Chancellor at the time, having only just been cleared for duty again by the med-droids, but he is still the first to receive their new priority directive: the apprehension of clone trooper ARC-5555, through any means necessary. Lethal force is advised, as the ARC is armed and dangerous.
It’s the first chance that Fox has had to leave the senate building alone in a long time, and he’s quick to act on it. He leaves the other on-duty commander to organise their own squad, and sets out by himself to get a headstart.
It takes some time and negotiation between different departments, but eventually he finds their trail and catches up with the rogue trooper.
He can see them in the warehouse below, ranting at someone else out of sight. Fox carefully pulls his blaster from its holster. Commander Thorn and his squad are on their way, but they aren’t near enough to do anything about the situation for a while.
Fox makes the decision to abandon his speeder and intercept the target himself - then pauses.
When has he ever had an opportunity like this? He has had no choice at all, really, in his involvement in the decommissioning of his brothers before this point. Now, he’s under orders to kill one directly, but who’s there to enforce them? What reason does he have to follow them, beyond some old and faltering trained obedience? Sure, there’s still the droid that hovers over his shoulder and watches his every move, but…
A blaster bolt does away with that particular problem.
Fox watches as the droid falls to the ground, visor shattered and smoke pouring out of the hole he’d left in its central processing unit. He pictures a brother laying in its place. He feels no regrets at all.
The whole city stretches out beyond, towering buildings of metal that would be all-too-easy to lose himself in.
His mind is no longer even slightly focused on his duty or the will of the Republic. It barely even lingers on the fact that he’s considering leaving all of his brothers behind, too. This time the thought of getting away from it all, away from the orders and the strict routine, is too strong a lure. Perhaps he can’t ever have a place amongst his brothers, but maybe he can carve out some life of his own elsewhere. The thought is terrifying. Where would he even start?
He looks at the speeder that he’d travelled out on. That was something.
He doesn’t waste any more time before driving off, a thousand thoughts and plans racing through his head. He can’t stick with either his speeder or his armour for long, easily-distinguishable as they are, but he still needs to put some distance between himself and the senate building before he trades either of them away. If anyone bothers to chase him from there, he’ll just have to leave a trail that indicates that he’s heading towards off-world transport. Then, he can go to ground in the city below.
It’ll be easy, in theory. So much so that he’s not sure why he never decided to do something like this sooner.
He’s still going over his plans when his comm unit alerts him to an incoming call. The alarm tone indicates that it’s the Chancellor who’s trying to contact him, and Fox wrinkles his nose.
He makes no move to answer. He’s heard more than enough of the Chancellor’s opinions on him over the past years, and there isn’t anything the old man might say now that’ll make Fox turn his speeder around -
The call picks up without his input.
A minute later, Fox is turning the speeder around.