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“You used to tell us stories.” Fox swirled the water in his hand. His eyes were distant, looking at the ground of the tent that they were sitting in. “Well, you told the Alphas stories and they passed it along to us and we passed it along to the CTs. No idea if the stories are even remotely the same anymore. Word of mouth and everything.” He took a sip of his drink.
Jango had no idea where Fox was going with this, but still he sat in the chair where he had been watching the men at work through the opening of the tent.
They were on a forced break.
Mandalore was healing, painstakingly slowly but neither had wanted to stop working. It was funny that he was realizing more in the past three years than the entirety of the time he was on Kamino that the clones were incredibly similar to him. Not just in appearances but their actions and personality too. Cody had his stubbornness. Wolffe his ferocity. Rex his recklessness and Fox his work ethic. Neither wanted to stop until the job was done. Singularity focused on their task regardless of health and sleep.
“Then one day you stopped.” Fox paused. “The others never knew why, but I did. I just happened to have been at the right place at the right time.”
He leaned back in the chair, staring at the green roof of the tent, “I can still see him. The man in red. I remember every detail of his red cloak. You couldn’t see his face due to his hood, but he had a pale arched nose and I knew he was grinning. Always grinning. I couldn’t see it but I knew.”
Jango, unfortunately, remembered none of this. Cold dread washed down his spine.
“His voice was cold and evil, it sent chills down my spine. It made me want to run, to hide. To take my brothers and disappear.” Fox’s hands shook as if he was still feeling that cold chill.
“You were angry. Yelling about how you had been tricked. How you never would have agreed to this if you had known the price. And the man kept smiling. Just kept smiling as if you were telling him good news and not shouting inches from his face.
“You threatened to break your contract. And the man just grinned wider and said ‘Then every child here, including your little, what’s his name? Oh, that’s right, Boba, would die. And it would be on your hands. Would you risk that, little Mand’alor? Would you risk your son?’
“Silence.” Fox took another sip, “You told him that he wouldn’t get away with it, that you would find a way to save us.
“You should have kept quiet, but I guess you’re like Thorn who can’t keep his mouth shut when he’s angry. The number of stupid osik I had to pull him out of cause he couldn’t hold his tongue…” Fox rolled his eyes. Despite the irritation on his face, Jango could see the fondness hidden in the slight uptick of the corner of Fox’s mouth.
Jango snorted.
Fox shook his head and continued, “he stopped smiling, the man in red. He stared at you and said that if you were going to interfere then he had no choice. It was too bad you were too useful to kill.
“I don’t know what he did. He had just been staring at you when you took a step back and put a hand to your head. ‘You will behave,’ he said, ‘you will be a good little soldier and do as you're told. You will ask no questions, you will seek no help. You will fulfill your contract without causing any problems. Do you understand, little Mandalorian?’
“You were on your knees by this point with both hands gripping your head tightly. I could barely hear the small sounds of pain from where I had been hiding in the vents. ‘Yes.’ You had said, soft and lifeless, your hand falling to your lap, ‘I understand, Lord Sidious.’ And then you just got up and left. I watched you go down the hall before I heard the man in red say, ‘resourceful little thing, aren’t you?’ He was staring at me, through the vent covering. He knew I was there. He had always known I was there. He grinned at me with his glowing yellow eyes. ‘I hope to see you again, little commander.’
“I have never moved so quickly in my life and the whole time he was laughing.” Fox shook his head, “It's funny how I knew who the Sith Lord was from the second I saw his eyes again, even though they were blue, but I couldn’t do a thing about it due to my chip.” Fox took a slow sip, “I think that’s why he kept me so close. Even when I was a cadet, I knew too much. I think he found it funny to give me all this information and watch as I couldn’t do a thing about it. To watch as I had information that could save my men, save my brothers, and I couldn’t do anything but watch them die around me.
“That’s why I trusted you.” His golden eyes turned towards Jango, “When you said that you wanted to save Rex, I believed you, because I knew a part of you wanted to help us, wanted better for us. It may have been locked away by Palpatine, but it was always there.”
He looked away again, “As the Marshal Commander of the Guard and Palpatine’s personal play thing, I had access to a lot of information my brothers didn’t, even if they were Marshal Commanders themselves. I saw every battle report, every KIA report. The 212nd had one of the lowest death rates and part of that is due to you. Rex would have died a long time before we were deployed if it wasn’t for you. I would have died when I was a cadet if it wasn’t for you.
“So it’s always been there, you just had to find it.” He put down his cup, “Just don’t go around Sith Lords and lose it again.”