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—

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.

Fox was no stranger to being used as a subject for Palpatine's experiments and Sith rituals. But when Palpatine decided to test out a mysterious artifact on Fox, the results were beyond what anyone could have anticipated.

Anakin wasn’t sure how to ask, so he didn't. Instead, he waited until Master Kenobi fell asleep and stayed up to tinker in the dark, building his own scanner out of parts stolen from the trash. The chip was in his right thigh.

“What will happen to me now?” Anakin asks much later, voice very quiet as they make brief, fleeting eye contact in front of Qui-Gon’s blazing pyre. Obi-Wan doesn’t have an answer for him. ----- “I swear to you, Anakin Skywalker, no one is going to own you while I breathe,” she tells him fiercely.