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This was not the first time Fox had been tied to the table for once of Palpatine’s little experiments. Stripped of his armour and tied to the metal and painted in runes and bled and forced to drink foul liquids before the Sith chanted from a book.
This time had been no different, stripped and painted in some sort of golden liquid that didn’t drip and forced to drink something overpoweringly sweet and then the chanting started and the golden marking turned bright green and glowed and the world blurred and spun.
The weird thing was that Fox didn’t wake up strapped to the table.
He was still on the table, but he wasn’t strapped onto it.
And then the hand closed around him.
The whole hand.
He was chest down in their palm, fingers closed around his arms and legs and back.
He was in someone’s hand.
Palpatine's hand.
What the kriff.
“Well, that worked better than expected pet.”
This had been his plan?
But how was Fox supposed to get back to normal. How was he supposed to protect his vode. What was he supposed to do, how was he supposed to manage, why had Palpatine done this, what did he want from Fox like this?
“So, little pet, lets see if this is more or less useful than full sized. And don’t you worry, after a few days, I'll reverse this, hopefully, and you can go back to being good and protecting your brothers. If you’re good that is. Now, lets see if any of these fit you."
Dolls clothes.
Because he was about 4 inches tall.
Palpatine dropped him on the desk with a thunk, pain flaring up his shoulder. For a second, he considered running, but where would he go. He was tiny, Palpatine had pens longer than he was tall, and he was on a desk. The drop would kill him, or at least disable him so Palpatine could just pick him up again.
The three outfits were... well, two were decent. Simple and covering. The third was less so, and he bypassed it immediately. He settled on something that looked similar to blacks, material trousers and a Velcro close shirt, both black. Dolls clothes. For children's toys.
He was going to be sick.
Well no, he wasn’t. He had a very strong stomach, but he felt the nausea powerful enough to send him to his knees.
The nausea and the terror and two fingers grasped his ankle and he was suddenly hanging upside down, disoriented, high above the table, looking into Palpatine’s eyes.
“Uh uh, pet, you have work to do.”
He was dropped onto a padd with mountains of paperwork on it. The padd was bigger than him, far bigger, but he could swipe it with both hands and if he didn’t work, any chance he had of getting big again would be gone.
And if his hands shook as he auto filled signatures and worked through the files, he could only pray the Sith couldn’t see.
He wasn’t sure how long he worked for before a voice commed in to tell the Chancellor his next meeting had arrived.
Fox was 4 inches tall and, on the desk, in plain sight.
The fingers clasped around his middle and his ribs felt like they were creaking and cracking under the force, he couldn’t breathe, the hold was too tight. He slammed his hands on the fingers but they didn’t loosen until he was falling, landing on more hard wood with a thunk that stole his breath away, and before he had it back the thing he’d landed on was moving and then darkness.
A drawer.
He’d been shoved in a drawer.
Inside the desk.
Maybe... maybe it would... no, there was no point looking for a weapon. He needed Palpatine to make him big again, to make him a normal size again.
He was totally reliant on Palpatine.
Or else he’d die.
Starve or be stuck tiny, he could be crushed underfoot or die if he fell or worse. Getting from Palpatine’s office to the Guard Base would be like trying to cross a planet.
Impossible.
He closed his eyes, despite the draw being pitch black anyway, and breathed, in and out and in and out, slowly and counted up to ten and back down. He needed to breath, to focus, to process.
Palpatine had used magic on him, and now he was 4 inches tall.
If he behaved, he’d be fixed.
There was yelling above him and a thud and the entire desk shook, sending Fox flying and bouncing within the drawer, smacking his head into the side of it.
Fox woke being crooned over.
“Oh pet, did you hit your head?”
.
A week later and Fox was still 4 inches tall, but he was being taken back to the lab. It had been a hell of a week, he’d been thrown about, had his arms and legs snapped like twigs then healed up, he’d been shoved into the Chancellors pocket on several occasions, sometimes completely unable to move in the fabric, sometimes able to shift around but if he moved too much a hand pressed him against the thigh or side next to the pocket. It was awful and sweaty and claustrophobic and he could smell the chancellors perfumes, often overwhelming.
He hadn’t left the Chancellor since he’d been shrunk. If the Chancellor had gone somewhere, he’d been in a pocket. If he was in his rooms, there was a cage for Fox in the corner, a birds cage, if he had to guess. In the office it was the drawer or the desk.
But now he might get to be big again.
Normal again.
Back to his vode, back to being able to protect them.
So he let himself be painted again with the runes, a far more precise and fiddly process this time, held in the Sith’s hand, then forced to drink a potion, this one bitter, and then the chanting.
But the runes didn’t glow, and the world didn’t spin.
“Well, isn’t that odd.”
He was still small.
Palpatine sighed, and walked back over to the desk, rubbing the runes off of his skin as he went, not caring that he pressed hard enough to bruise.
Fox was still small.
“Don’t worry pet,” he said, placing Fox on the table, “I think you’re more useful like this, and I can keep an eye on you, make sure you’re not spilling any secrets. And you can still be a part of my experiments, still look after your little brothers.”
Fox wanted to be big, he wanted to be safe, he wanted to hug his vode.
He didn’t want this.
He wanted to go back to the Guard.
If Palpatine wasn’t going to change him back, then he needed to get back to base, somehow.
“Oh no, pet, none of that. You're mine, you stay where I decide.”
Fox gulped.
The hand closed around his chest and headed for Palpatine’s personal rooms. Not the ones in 500 Republica or his personal suite, but the one on the other side of his informal meeting room. It was practical, for someone pulling an all-nighter, and had a bed and a small kitchen. A nanowave and a conservator... and he was heading for the first. The Sith opened its door, and put Fox inside.
Kriff.
Kriff no.
“So, pet, 30 seconds, get you all warm and toasty?”
It would kill him. Even a 30 second blast. It would kill him.
Without even thinking he dropped to his knees, hands pressed against the glass.
One button press and he was dead.
“No? You don’t want me to turn it on, you don’t want to die today?”
The door clicked open and he was pulled out again, heaving panicky breaths shaking his whole body in Palpatine’s hand.
“I control your life, clone, all your lives. Behave yourself,” his fingers shifted and Fox could feel one on his back and one on the side of his head, “or we’ll see if your neck snaps the way your arms did.”
He was full body shaking, he couldn’t stop it.
He was totally helpless.
More than he’d ever been. Even before under Palpatine’s control he’d been able to fight as a last resort, but now he didn’t even have that option. There was nothing he could do.
And he was being lowered into the other unit, the conservator.
The door shut and it went dark.
It was cold, designed to keep food cold, but it was weirdly ok. It was like the icebox, cold and dark and at Palpatine’s mercy, he was just smaller this time. But this, he could do. Sit in the cold and dark until his shift was up, and pray he was let out before he succumbed.
.
It had been two weeks, two weeks of being small, two weeks since he’d seen anyone but Palpatine.
And this was, well it wasn’t the worst punishment, but it wasn’t good.
He'd been squeezed through the opening of a glass bottle, landing at the bottom and slipping bare foot instead of managing to land. And Palpatine laughed. There was enough space in the main bottle for him to sit, legs extended, though his feet and back touched a side each, and it was half his height again.
And the glass was smooth.
He couldn’t climb out.
Palpatine had let him try.
Before corking the top. The cork had a hole in the middle, but it was big enough for air, and if he had to guess two or three of his fingers.
He was trapped and left on the side.
At first he stayed sitting, then he attempted another climb, managing to brush his hand against the cork, but it was wedged tight and barely had any purchase with two hands. One and he just dropped to the bottom again.
Palpatine laughed and Fox tried to work out a new plan.
This was glass, the desk was fairly high.
It might get him to the floor and get him free.
If Palpatine noticed him trying to shift the bottle forwards, he didn’t react, and Fox crept very slowly to the edge of the desk, closer and closer and the edge of the bottle was over the edge of the desk and he was dropping and...
He bounced around the glass, but it hadn’t shattered.
Or touched the floor.
Right.
Force user.
The bottle floated back up to the table, dropping into his hand, which shook Fox again and then the kriffer smiled, and rattled the bottle.
Fox stayed stunned at the bottom for a while after it had been put down, he wasn’t sure how long.
The first drop of water on his face, he didn’t register.
The second one had him blinking, and the third had his attention.
And the drops just kept coming...
He was filling the bottle.
.
.
.
Ponds hadn’t expected a comm from the Coruscant Guard, and especially not from one who wasn’t his vod’ika, but the contents of the message were concerning enough that he went straight to his General.
Fox had been missing for two weeks and the last place he’d been seen was going into the Chancellor’s office.
His General had his own worries about the Chancellor, his obsession with Skywalker, his increasingly poorly disguised animosity towards the Jedi and clones.
And now the suggestion he’d done something to Fox.
But an official GAR investigation into a missing Marshal Commander would definitely give them jurisdiction to search his offices whether he was there or not, and that he hadn’t reported Fox missing sooner was a definite mark against him. So while he headed for an extended business luncheon, Ponds and his General entered the Chancellors office.
It was orderly, but if there was evidence of what happened to Fox, or illegal activity, it would be in here, and they would find it.
Ponds had stepped back while his General had closed his eyes and reached out with the Force, and after about 30 seconds, a door in the wall opened.
Kriffing hells.
The Chancellor wasn’t just a criminal, he was a monster.
“Sith.” his general had hissed.
Inside were vials of all sorts of liquid, some which looked like blood, others he couldn’t have dreamt of identifying, and books with torture methods in lying open and a flat metal table on an angle with grates at the end and cuffs for the wrist and ankles and there were restraints and weapons on the wall and oh Fox’ika we left you with this monster...
There was a horrific flash of grief. Fox had been missing for two weeks, looking at the tools here... Fox’s body parts could have been scattered across the lower levels by now.
Or it was his heart sitting on the shelf.
His blood in the vials.
Fox had been left with this kriffing monster.
Unable to stay in that horrible room any longer Ponds stepped back into his office, now determined to find any proof of Sithly or illegal activities while his General catalogued.
Ponds looked over his desk, not believing for a second that the Sith would have it on the desk itself, but it had a lot of drawers, and Ponds pulled open the top drawer, but there weren’t any pads in it, or flimsi.
There had been a clink.
A clink?
Given some of the glass bottles they’d found had contained awful things, but they needed to be catalogued. Palpatine’s crimes were clear enough already.
He reached in and pulled it out, noting it’s weight and then...
Oh kriffing hells.
There was a clone in there.
A few inches tall.
He set the bottle on the desk and the clone inside reoriented themselves, resurfacing in the water, kriff there was too much water for the vod to touch the bottom.
The clone immediately started hammering on the glass, kicking to keep afloat and pointing at the stopper in the top.
Ponds didn’t hesitate to stabilise the bottle and pull out the top, trying to work out the best way to get the vod out.
“Ponds?”
Fox has been missing for two weeks. He was last seen going into the Chancellor’s office.
“Fox’ika.”
“Oh thank kriff. Ori’vod, please get me out, please.”
“I, yeah, if I tip the bottle on it’s side, can you get out?”
“I think so."
What in the kriff.
How...
No, get Fox out first.
He tipped the bottle slowly, not caring that the water spilled onto the overly expensive carpet, Fox’ika with his legs braced as the water emptied out, before Ponds placed it on the table and Fox shimmied and squeezed his way out. Realising his vod’ika needed leverage to help pull himself out, he put one hand on the glass and the other on the table so Fox could cling onto his finger and use them to pull himself out.
Fox dropped to his knees on the desk, shaking, and folded sideways, his head pillowed on Pond’s finger.
“Vod’ika, what happened?”
“Experimental spell, he... couldn’t or wouldn’t reverse it. Vod what are you doing here?”
“Palpatine was suspected of illegal activities, we have a warrant to search. I thought he’d killed you.”
“He... I'm so happy to see you vod. You... don’t have a towel or blanket or anything?”
Fox looked freezing, and he’d been in that water for kriff knew how long.
“General.”
“Yeah?”
“Can I borrow some of your robes?”
“For what?”
“I found Fox.”
Unsurprisingly, his General looked out immediately, and Fox pulled himself onto Pond’s hand, sitting on his palm, and nodding.
Ponds raised his hand, and the Generals jaw dropped.
But he did rip off part of his robe to let Fox wrap himself into.
After a little discussion Fox settled himself onto Pond’s shoulder, holding his pauldron and resting against his neck. Ponds was terrified he’d fall and get hurt, but he’d also been terrified he was holding Fox too tightly lifting him up there, and he was scared Fox would need a medic for the bumps and cuts he had and that he’d be too small to treat, or that his injuries would interfere with them making him big again, or that they wouldn’t be able to treat him until they made him big again, or that someone would squash him or squeeze him or hurt him without realising or...
Fox was fine, he was holding on and General Windu wouldn’t let him fall.
The Jedi would see if they could work out how to fix Fox, but he was alive, and they’d make it work.
He was Ponds’ vod’ika, and now maybe his kih’vod’ika.
But there was one thing Ponds did know.
Big or small, he was never letting anyone harm Fox’ika ever again.