#Palpatine is dead because he wouldn't give Fox a sick day and Fox's body decided that it was going to get one

[varpusvaras]

Continuing on the Fox and other posts. There was this one post somewhere (maybe on reddit?) about someone having a cold and deciding to just pop in a nyquil/dayquil and go to their uni lesson, while drinking a can of redbul or something (please don't do this) and ending up completely blacking out for the rest of the day and just going through the motions while having no idea what's going on.

Fox wakes up one day at 4 am (because he has so much work he has started to wake up an hour early so he can get an early start), his head is pounding, he's tired and achy and sore and cold. He doesn't have the time (or privilege) to stay in bed so he goes and takes the cold medicine he has stashed in his office for days like these. He's still tired after that, and he doesn't have the energy to go get a cup of caf, even if a hot drink sounds good, so he just decides to also pop in a stim (his CMO has banned energy drinks after the mixing episode that gave Fox a resting heart rate of over a hundred) just to get the day started.

Except. Fox sits down on his desk, opens up a datapad, and the next thing he knows is that his lying on a bed in the medbay and there is an absolute chaos around him. He's feeling sore and achy again and he really needs to sneeze, so he tugs a junior medic that was passing by at the sleeve and asks for a tissue.

This just causes more chaos, because now he's awake and that is somehow a huge deal. His CMO comes to him running and asks what drugs Fox has taken. Fox doesn't understand the question. His CMO is losing his mind. He says that it's almost 8 pm and this is the first time Fox has said anything during the whole day and now Fox is losing his mind as well. He was just at his office, ready to start his day, what do you mean it's 8 pm already?

Little by little, Fox gets the story. He had, apparently, been found at the Senate Dome in the late afternoon (Fox has absolutely no memory of this) by a very kind Senator (Fox doesn't even need to ask who it was, he knows and he knows he will be hearing about this later), and that he was absolutely unresponsive, even though he was walking around. The very kind Senator had flagged down the other Commanders (Fox is definitely going to be hearing about this later), who had brought him back to the HQ. Fox had, apparently, looked absolutely high out of his mind under his helmet, and had just been lying in the bed after being pushed down on it while the medics had tried to figure out what the fuck he had got in his system.

Fox is just about to explain that all that was in him was one (1) cold medicine and one (1) stim tablet, when some poor trooper comes running in, gasping for breath, and barely gets out that the Chancellor has been found dead. In his office. Estimated time of death somewhere late afternoon that day.

The medbay falls silent. His CMO turns slowly to look at Fox. Fox stares back. Fox gets a feeling. That feeling that only blackout drunks, or people who have blacked out for estimated fifteen hours recently for others reasons, can get.

His CMO slowly pulls a blanket over Fox, turns to others and says that it's a good thing that the Commander has been here the whole day because he has a cold and couldn't risk the Chancellor's health, since, as you know, the older you get, the frailer your immune system becomes. Everyone nods. Fox kinda wants to argue about it but his CMO glares at him, and, Fox is achy and sore and tired and his head hurts, so he decides that it's maybe for the best if he just goes back to sleep. After all, this is the first time no one is going to tell him to go back to work while sick, because, well. There isn't anyone to do that anymore, is there.

(He's never really sure what happened or if it even was him, but he can't really complain. And no one else does, either, after they find some really interesting things in the Chancellor's office while investigating the crime scene)