Archive of Our Own ^beta

He tries not to complain when sand keeps slipping in his boots, even if it felt like he could feel every grain in each step he takes.

Thorn clearly doesn’t bother to try hiding his disdain, spitting and muttering curses, and from the corner of his eye he sees Thire kicking sand off his boots, though it clearly isn’t working.

At this point, Hound is the only one with the sense to at least keep his complaints to himself, and if this weren’t such an important expedition, Fox would’ve stayed with Stone inside the ship. Where it was considerably less like a sea of sand that gets in every article of clothing you have on, rubbing and clinging against his sweaty skin.

The two suns settled high up in the middle of the sky didn't help either, with its scorching heat and blinding light. And as tempting as it was to head back and wait for nighttime, he wasn’t willing to wait more than he already had back on the ship. Not for this.

Fox halts to a stop, his cape billowing along with the sand carried in the passing breeze. He’s never felt grateful to have a helmet on—despite the heat of Tatooine’s two suns, it was more than enough to hide whatever expression he’s wearing on his face.

In front of him and his men stood a ship, or at least what remained of it, and he can’t help but feel a bit apprehensive, perhaps nervous. There was a chance that the intel he got from that Miralukan informant from Nar Shaddaa was wrong, leading him to yet another false trail and a dead end.

He was getting sick of it at this point, but Khali had at least shown some credibility with her clients and gathering information. And she had certainly been more easy to talk to, in his personal opinion.

After a long moment, he lets his eyes drift up at the warped metal reaching into the sky, and it vaguely feels like the remains of a beast, left to decompose into nothing but bones. Most of it was buried in the sand, a clear indication of how long it’s exactly been here, and Fox begins to feel a bit more hopeful when he sees a tattered cloth hanging like a curtain. It barely covered the open ramp with its frayed edges and holes ripping through the yellowish fabric, which Fox was sure to have been a pristine white once upon a time.

The cloth was a poor attempt for a door replacement, but seeing as how there was barely anything but sand for miles, Fox doubts there was anything appropriate enough to do so. The ramp’s door was either jammed or had malfunctioned, though there was a high chance that it had probably been inoperable since the damage done and the current state of it.

“The rest of you stay,” he says, loud enough for his men to hear through the comms when the wind picks up. “I’ll go in alone.”

He could practically feel Thorn rolling his eyes before staring at the back of his head, wholly unimpressed. “That sounds like a terrible idea,” he tells Fox, and like the bastard he is, he deliberately says, “Your Majesty.”

Fox doesn’t sigh, not quite, but he slightly turns to give a pointed look at Thorn that he most definitely deserves.

Before he could say anything, Hound steps in, with Grizzer at his heels. By the looks of it though, the massif seems just as eager as Fox was to go inside, tugging at his leash and glancing between the ship and Hound. “Grizzer definitely found something,” he says, but he tips his head to Thorn. “But Thorn is right, you shouldn’t go in alone when we don’t know what could be in there.”

Fox hates to admit it, but he agrees, only because they can’t quite risk being compromised so far out from Coruscant and the rest of his men.

“Fine,” Fox says, wholly begrudging. “Thorn, you come with me, the rest of you stay.”

Thire almost seemed to want to protest, but he keeps quiet when Fox shoots him a sharp look. It appears that only Hound had the mind to speak when he needed to, although Thorn was very much the same, except he’s a bastard so he’ll keep talking anyhow, saying whatever comes to mind.

They separated from the others, walking ahead towards the ship on their own. Another gust of wind swoops down and carries a cloud of sand, and like dust, it flies between them with the breeze. His cloak twists between his legs, and the closer he gets to the wreckage, it feels as if his armour has become too tight yet too big for him. The heat of the whole planet is a lot more suffocating than it had previously been, and Fox tries to breathe through the heavy air, trying not to pay attention to the way his heart pounds in his chest.

“You think it’ll be for real this time?” Thorn asks all of a sudden, voice so low that it could’ve been carried by the wind. But Fox hears it clearly, with how his head leans in close towards him.

He doesn’t respond for a moment, staring absently at the ship as they steadily approach it, his mind completely free of any thoughts at the moment. Thorn lets him keep the silence, adjusting his grip on his blaster as he walks a step behind Fox, who closes his eyes shut in the hopes to find a brief moment of respite from the harshly heated light of the suns of Tatootoine.

It doesn’t quite help, nor does it really work, much to his disappointment. “It better be,” he says, a little too sharp. If it isn’t then he wouldn’t know what to do, he doesn’t quite say it, but it’s whispered in his mind, seeping into his thoughts. And all of a sudden, his mouth couldn’t be any drier, his fist clenched tighter.

Fox swallows the budding doubt and anxiety, and he opens his eyes, slowing to a halt. If it isn’t, he thinks, then he might just crash into Nar Shaddaa and drag Khali by her cloak for making him go all the way to a desert waste.

Thorn goes to respond, but he stops short as the shadow of the ship falls over them, a looming structure of the remains of a ship. Fox feels his heart stutter, like it skipped a beat, and he takes a slowly deep breath.

Deliberately, he takes a step forward, putting distance between him and Thorn, who snaps to attention. He looks at him and knows what Fox wants, but for all the times that Fox calls him a bastard, he’s much more of a bastard himself.

Before Thorn could say anything, or take a step to follow him, he held up a hand; a simple yet cutting gesture for him to stop and wait, to not follow after him the moment he steps inside the ship.

“Your Majesty,” Thorn says, demands, very obviously giving him a pointed and narrow look under his helmet. “Fox, I’m coming in with you.”

“That’s disobeying me, Thorn,” Fox retorts, with not a hint of amusement, and entirely unwilling to humour Thorn. “If this is the real thing, then you won’t need to worry about who’s inside.”

There’s a moment of silence between them, and it lingers, threading through the thick air like bitter tasting molasses. A beat of heavy silence passes, then he hears Thorn let out a deep breath. “I’ll keep an eye out here then,” he relents, but when Fox finally turns his head to look back at him, he tips his head. “But if you get murdered in there, don’t think I won’t tell you that I told you so.”

Fox snorts, grinning at him with teeth, and Thorn knows him long enough to know without seeing even with his helmet on, sighing as he mutters curses to himself.

He lifts a hand to wave off the others in the distance, telling them to stay put, and Fox feels grateful. Even if Thorn would rub it in his face if he does get jumped and murdered, which is to say if he really is walking into his own grave. The thought alone is upsetting in more ways than one, seeing as how Fox has yet to see Padme with his own eyes.

It was all over every screen he had set his eyes on, every holopad he got his hands on, and it’s—

Fox believes that if there wasn’t a body found, there could be a chance—no matter how slim, that she was still out there. The senator was good like that, and so, in the slightest chance she was still alive, Fox was willing to search the whole galaxy and scour every planet to find her.

The Jedi were gone as far as he was aware, but so were the Sith. He remembers the way he nearly died going after Skywalker—Vader as he had politely reminded him then. But Fox is here, alive and tired. He took that kriffing bastard down like a dog, like how he deserved after everything he had knowingly done, and in the process Fox had nearly considered to take him down with himself if what he had wasn’t enough, but—

Somewhere deep down, no matter how desperate it would’ve seemed, Fox had thought of Padme and where she could be even after all this time. She was dead, he was told. Dead because her own husband had choked her to death, but to Fox, after that fact and reading that report that there was no body found was the one hope he had clung onto. The one reason he shoved that damn Sithspit off of him and let him die, with Fox still here, alive and breathing.

The sound of boots clunking against the sand dusted ramp hits his ears, bringing him back to the present and away from the recesses of his mind. It has been a year—nearly two, since the Sith had died. Nearly two years since Fox has taken the seat for himself, in the hopes to better the galaxy, to fix what the Sith had done, and to protect all of what he has left. And—

Three years. It has been at least three years since Fox had seen Padme for the last time. At that time, he hadn’t known it, but it hurts just as much as it pains him to know it now, to know why.

He stares at the tattered cloth for a long moment, watching as it sways and flutters with the passing wind, but after a while he forces his legs to move, his feet to take a step. He could hear how loud his breath sounds under his helmet, and he spares a split second to wonder if he could be heard through his vocoder, even if he knows that he’s muted himself.

His heart sounds just as thunderous, pounding against his chest, and Fox feels far too aware of every beat, and of every long measured breath he takes. Every step he takes falls in rhythm with his breathing, slow and careful, always making sure to keep his steps light in spite of the heavy bulk of his armour.

The inside of the ship that he could see past through the small gaps was dark, but as he crept up at the ramp, he slowed to a stop in front of it. With a tentative hand, he reaches out and pushes the cloth aside, but he stays there, straining his ears for any noise that could indicate a possible sign of life.

But all he hears is the shifting sand, the flutter of cloth, and the clatter of armour behind him, where Thorn grips his blaster firmly as he casts Fox a silently grim look.

Still, he waits for a moment longer, and only when he hears nothing does he dare to fully drag the cloth aside, letting himself in.

He sweeps a look in the dimly lit area, his eyes lingering at the hole pierced through the ceiling, covered only by a barely big enough thin piece of cloth. The hole was big enough for an average sized person to fit through, but Fox could only look at the sunlight streaming in before he let his eyes drift away from it, looking at the different stray objects laid about.

The silence is apparent, seemingly louder than his own footsteps as he idly saunters across the ship, and—

This place was clearly lived in, every surface clean enough to be manageable, and with the cloth covering the hole, it helps prevent any huge piles of sand from slipping in. Fox takes note of the makeshift table, poorly made due to the lack of proper equipment and materials.

In the corner are patched blankets frayed at the edges piled on top of a thin mattress laid flat on the floor, and there is a crudely sewn plush, its thread pulling at the seams as if it's been sewn over and over again. Despite how it looks, he knows how used and well-loved the plush was, with its worn appearance and the amount of times it must've been sewn back up after getting ripped.

Something warm, small as it is, blooms in his chest and Fox lets it wash over him as he finally brings himself to move. He steps over one of the blankets that were carelessly thrown on the floor, and when he reaches the pile of blankets, he slowly kneels down beside it. And with a careful hand, he gently scooped up the plush, turning it in his hand as he eyed it with interest.

Then, just behind him, he hears the familiar sound of a blaster being drawn, light, soft footsteps following right after. “Don’t move.”

Fox feels himself go still, and the urge to flinch away—to jerk back up to his feet to turn around was overwhelming. But he doesn’t, mostly due to the fact that the blaster is quite clearly aimed at his back, waiting to shoot if he does so much as move. Fox wasn’t willing to find out whether or not the person behind him had a trigger finger or not, but he wasn’t about to sit still to let anything happen either.

He grips the plush in his hand, gauntlet lightly creaking at the pressure of it, but he breathes in, then out, letting the plush go altogether. “It seems that our intel was correct in leading us here,” he says almost to himself, keeping it evenly calm as he deliberately kept his hands out in complete view.

“You wouldn’t happen to know where your intel came from, do you?” she asks, hardy and firm. Clearly she won’t let Fox leave unscathed if he tries to, but he’s not about to run, not with the rapid beating of his heart, sounding far too loud for even his own ears. It scares him a little to wonder if she could hear it, even through all the pieces of his armour and the distance between them.

There was a long, drawn out moment of silence, and Fox couldn't help the curl of his fingers, digging into the inside of his palms as he clutched his hand where a soft and worn plush once was into fists. Without another thought, Fox pulls himself off from kneeling on the floor, swiftly standing up whilst ignoring the blaster carefully aimed and ready to shoot.

“An informant from Nar Shaddaa told me that there would be a Human in Tatooine that perfectly matched the descriptions that I gave to her,” he tells her, voice low as if to not further agitate her. He doesn’t turn either, doesn’t move more than necessary, and the longer he’s drawing things out, the more he feels restless at the feeling of hope and bone aching relief creeping up his entire being. “She wasn’t wrong, she was right.”

The moment those words left his mouth, slipping past his lips like a whisper, Fox couldn’t help but shudder at the thought, at the possibility of what he could have—of who he has standing only but a few steps away behind him. So that, to him, is like being one step to a confession, of something he once thought was far out of his reach. And yet—

Padme is here, and Fox knows, he knows even without looking.

He’d know her by the way she spoke, the way her voice would sound sweet yet sharp, and that despite her small figure always dressed in elaborate dresses where he knew daggers would be hidden away in its many folds, he’d know it was her with how her mere existence seem to loom over him and his battered heart.

Padme is alive, but Fox has always known it—has never once doubted, even when dark thoughts plagued him in every waking moment where she isn’t and he would find her body, there, pale and lifeless.

“I know one of your men is waiting outside, with the rest just barely in the distance that it won’t take long to get here,” she says after a long second, and Fox hears the brush of cloth, then feels the muzzle of the blaster digging into a gap between his armour not long after. “If you’re here to drag me back to Coruscant, then you are wrong to think I’ll stay still and pretty for you.”