Agen digs his fingers into the silver-veined bark, smiling a little. Pushes upright, flicking his hair back behind his shoulder, and pulls his outer robe off, draping it over a branch. “A trooper in distress,” he says, stepping forward. “I believe Jedi are supposed to rectify such things.” Two pairs of dark eyes snap to him, and Fives's widen with glee. He wriggles harder under Echo's pinning weight, like a landed fish, and cries, “General Kolar, help! I'm being overrun!”

This, Fox thinks, staring up at the fabric of the tent above him, is absolutely not what he remembers from before he closed his eyes. Right along with the realization comes the desperate, sinking sort of feeling that what he was most afraid of happened again. One step down the hallway in the Senate, heading somewhere, and then—

“I presume,” Mace says with a flicker of amusement, ghost-white fluttering in the corner of his vision, “that that relief isn't solely for my own benefit.” Ponds has the decency to look chagrined. “I'm glad you're safe, sir. When the droid hit you…” He pauses, meets Mace's eyes, and his expression is a little rueful, a little grim. “Not everyone took it well.”

Fox was fine, most days. He went on patrols, chipped away at the mountain of datawork in his office, delicately soothed the egos of ruffled Senators. (Helped the medics forge decommissioning certificates. Went on missions for the Chancellor that left him shaking apart in the sonic.) And on the days that Fox wasn’t fine, they had a system.

Quinlan can’t take it anymore, and if he sticks around for one more minute, he’s going to have a reaction that’s entirely inappropriate given the discussion that’s happening above his head.

“Those are some thick gloves you're wearing,” Quinlan observes, light. “And here I thought the weather was actually behaving today.”

It’s probably a bad sign that Cad Bane, of all people, is judging his life choices.

Everyone is whispering that a Jedi saved the Mand'alor’s aide.