I was thinking about how exactly the Royal Squad came to join the family, because adopting five clone cadets isn't exactly an impulse decision, and like
Fox interrupting Breha's schedule and approaching her as his queen, not his wife, and asking her for several million credits. And she knows that something is up because he's calling her Your Majesty and using corporate-speak and swearing to find some way to repay her. And neither of them are idiots, she knows there's nothing he can do to bring back that kind of cash no matter what job he gets.
So Breha, obviously, has questions. Maybe a thought or two in the back of her mind that Fox might not know what a spam email is. Fox is generally very calm and even-tempered so she wants to know what's going on and why he needs so much money.
Fox says that Kamino is going to sell off everything they can to recoup losses from the latest batches of clones that they're no longer being paid for. He says most of them will be sold to slavers. He says the ones that can't be sold will be killed. He says none of them are more than five years old. He says there's ten thousand of them and he knows it will be expensive, but he could never live with himself if he didn't find a way to save at least some of them.
Breha is weeping long before he's finished. She's seen his scars, she's heard him wailing with terror from nightmares, she's felt him flinch when she touches him without warning. She loves him, but she would do anything to change his past. She will do anything to spare his little brothers from the life that can never stop haunting him. She thinks of darling Leia, two years old and safely at home with Bail doting on her every move, and is sick at the thought of any baby being treated in the way Fox just described.
She gives Fox carte blanche to bring home every last child. He falls to his knees and kisses her hands, thanking her in jumbled words and eyes shining with tears. She has no regrets for the financial havoc she's just caused herself and will never let him repay her.
Fox brings home ten thousand and five children. He snarls at anyone who comes near the youngest, holding the runt of the litter his every waking moment, his hands always gentle but his eyes glaring a lethal warning. The legion of social workers deployed to help find homes for the children, well, they unanimously decide that that's someone else's problem.
(There's a bright spot in all this hustle and drama. As it turns out, selling children into the Core worlds... it's just so incredibly unbelievably illegal. Breha gets back every credit that Fox spent, and a reward for alerting the police to what the Kaminoans are doing. Clones have human rights on Alderaan, after all.)
Eventually, after several months of several thousand people working twelve-hour days, all ten thousand clone cadets have been placed with loving families all across the planet. There's still welfare checks and such to be done, but for now, everyone is safe, happy, and in no more danger from the Kaminoans.
This leaves five.
Fox finally goes home to the palace, after being one of those people working twelve-hour shifts, and says, "I adopted some. I didn't mean to."
Breha says, "I heard you cold-cocked someone for suggesting an adopted family for them on their third day here."
Fox has to say he did, yes, and he didn't mean to do that either, and he already apologised several times.
Breha smiles and says that Bail's been excited to meet them for weeks now, and won't Fox come to dinner?
Fox does come to dinner, and brings his tubies, far too nervous at the idea of leaving them with anyone else, even Leia's nannies. It doesn't surprise him when Breha is the first to bring it up.
"Bail and I talked about it, and we understand if you want to be their only legal parent. We know there's complexities around their adoption. Whatever support you want from us, you'll have it."
Fox doesn't expect his eyes to blur with tears, or for them to feel like tears of joy.
"Leia's my daughter," he whispers, "and these are your sons."
"Helio is a family name on my side, you know," Bail mentions. He smiles at the tubie in Fox's lap, who giggles and waves back with his little hand clenched around a green bean. Then Bail's gaze meets Fox's, and the fatherly love already in his eyes... it takes Fox's breath away.
"My parents once said that they planned to name me Vidal if I was a boy," Breha adds, and takes a sip from her glass. "Though I suppose some of them might have names already?"
Fox shakes his head. There were so many other things to be busy with that he's just been calling them by the last two digits of their CT numbers.
"I wasn't sure what to call them," he admits, "but I was sure you would love them."
They beam at that, and Fox manages to smile back, despite how exhausted he is from the past few months. There's still so much waiting in the future, but for tonight, he can take the time to breathe.
He falls asleep quickly that night, with his head in Breha's lap and her hand in his hair, Kit already fast asleep and curled into his side, listening to Bail read a bedtime story to all six of their tubies.
