Chapter Text
Who Is in Control?
The Kaminoans had built up the Jedi into near-mythical creatures.
They can control people with their mind.
They are mighty warriors, wielding laser swords.
They can use their powers to crush rocks and throw people and steal weapons right from your hands.
They can wreak havoc on a battlefield and turn insurmountable odds into victory.
And all of that’s true.
But with all the buildup, they aren’t soldiers.
And it’s frankly disappointing to Cody to realize how little they know about things he’s had flash-trained and drilled into him since birth.
High General Obi-Wan Kenobi isn’t completely hopeless (if what Cody’s heard from his brothers about some of their own Generals and Commanders is true).
He’s got an eye for strategy; one Cody knows will get better if it doesn’t get them killed first.
But he doesn’t know how the GAR is structured.
Cody doesn’t have enough fingers and toes to count the number of times in the last week alone that his new General has referred to a trooper as “my dear” instead of “Sergeant” or “Private.”
And it’s not just their ranks that seem to be giving him trouble.
He hides it well, but Cody has caught the man flinching minutely every single time someone calls him “General.” It’s a weighty title, for sure, particularly since the full title is ‘High General,’ and he’s meant to lead one of the ten system armies.
But the flinch seems to be less unsurety at a new address and more at what seems a familiar, loathed title. But Cody knows now that the Jedi were a peacekeeping body, not soldiers. So, he watches for the flinch, and tries to understand it, and sometimes calls the man “Sir” instead of “General” just so the tension through his shoulders will ease a little.
Another thing driving Cody to twitchiness is that General Kenobi doesn’t seem to understand that Cody and his brothers all know their role. They don’t need him to introduce himself to each one of them and ask their name and seem interested in what they do.
It’s…well, it’s nice. Cody won’t lie. He asks for their names, their chosen names, and then he remembers and uses them. He requisitions them supplies when a brother expresses even the slightest interest in a hobby. Cody becomes used to seeing crates stuffed with tattoo inks and hair dyes and armor paints and exercise equipment and datachips filled with holovids and books arrive on their ship during resupplies.
And maybe that level of compassion is appreciated, but compassion doesn’t stop battle droids.
Then they hit their first battlefield.
And Cody realizes the Jedi aren’t soldiers. His Jedi isn’t a solider.
But what he is is stunningly powerful.
Cody watches General Kenobi walk onto the battlefield and ignite his lightsaber (a beautiful sapphire blue). He’s drawing in the breath to shout at him to get back when the General moves.
And then he’s sweeping away clankers with a wave of his hand and his invisible Force, decapitating machinery with a swing of his wrist, pulling brothers back to the line of medics, shouting commands to the troops, relaying coordinates to the fighter squadrons, changing battle tactics on the fly with Cody’s backup, and earning them victory in a quarter of the time Cody estimated with two-thirds fewer casualties.
The Jedi are not the mythical creatures the Kaminoans described. They are not soldiers.
They are chaos and compassion incarnate.
And with High General Obi-Wan Kenobi leading the way, Cody has hope for the first time that he and his brothers may see the end of the war someday.
Panic Attack
It’s the eyes that get to Obi-Wan.
All of the clones may have Jango Fett’s rugged face, but their soft, gold-brown eyes are their own. They reflect their youth.
Their innocence.
And so it happens when one his shiny new troopers, a lad who calls himself Yung, looks up and calls him “General” with awe bordering on reverence.
It’s completely innocuous until it’s not. He calls Obi-Wan that title, with those young, innocent eyes, and suddenly Obi-Wan isn’t commanding the 212th during their mop-up operation on Vorrana.
Instead, he’s back on Melida/Daan. Yung is just another member of The Young, looking to him for guidance and food and protection.
His breath solidifies in his lungs, the little air he’s gathered stabbing into him like thousands of tiny vibroknives.
“Sir?” someone says, the voice familiar.
“Cerasi?” he chokes out, reaching out. A hand grasps his, but it’s too big to be Cersei’s, even if the blaster calluses are the same.
And then he remembers her weight in his arms, the way it felt as she breathed her last. Hers wasn’t the first death he experienced. It won’t be the last.
“No, sir. Would you like to sit down?”
The children are dying all around him. Their screams as their parents gun them down explode in his ears, leaving them ringing.
He starts feeling the weight of his responsibilities crush him. The Young are relying on him, but he failed them. Cerasi is dead. So many of the Young fell to blaster bolts, but more to starvation and sickness. He let them all down.
“Sir?”
And now there are so many more relying on him. So many thousands more lives. The weight of them is crushing. He’s responsible for so many thousands of lives, each of them a bright light in the Force that the Dark is waiting to snuff out.
He tries to breathe under that weight, but feels his knees fail underneath him instead.
“Sir!”
“The children,” he manages to force out. “They’re dying.”
“What?”
The children are dying, and the vode aren’t children, not really, but they’re so young. They’ve been created for war, a fate no sentient should suffer. And Obi-Wan is using them. He’s letting them down, again.
“Sir, I think you need to breathe.”
But it’s hard. It’s so hard.
“Hurts,” he gasps. The hand around his squeezes hard, and then he feels a heartbeat under his fingertips, strong even through his gloves.
The beat is calm and regular, the skin warm.
“Just breathe, sir. Nice and steady.”
And the heartbeat is steady, so he follows it. He matches the even cadence of breaths with his own, even if every breath feels like it’s drawn through a pile of ash and sand.
It takes time, but he regains his normal even keel with each breath that doesn’t burn on the inhale and stab on the exhale.
He reaches out into the Force before he opens his eyes.
It’s Cody at his side. Cody, who is confused, but is still guiding him to breathe. Cody, who cares for his brothers. Cody, who he trusts as implicitly as he’s ever trusted anyone, and who is starting to trust him in turn.
“I’m okay,” he says finally, wincing at how scratchy his voice sounds. He opens his eyes and Cody is there, kneeling next to him, still pressing Obi-Wan’s fingertips into his carotid in the open space above his blacks. They’re alone, shielded in a little copse of bright purple trees.
“With all due respect, sir, you’re not,” Cody says, distinctly matter of fact.
“No,” Obi-Wan agrees. “I suppose I’m not.”
“Should we not call you by your title, sir?”
Obi-Wan flinches a little, even though Cody has skillfully worked around saying the word.
“I was a General once before,” he says instead. He pulls his fingers from between Cody’s and instantly misses the warmth. As a replacement, he waves for Cody to sit beside him on the ground. He leans against the man’s bright gold presence in the Force. “Did I ever tell you that?”
“You haven’t, sir,” Cody says. He settles in at Obi-Wan’s side, leaning their armored shoulders together. It’s a kind gesture. A move of solidarity Obi-Wan has seen Cody use on his brothers. A rap on a helmet, a hand on a pauldron, a bump of shoulders. It’s humbling to have Cody do the same for him. “But I’d like to learn.”
“It started,” Obi-Wan says, and the words feel like lancing a wound. Painful, but like the infection and pain will flow out of him with every word, “in the middle of a civil war on a planet called Melida/Daan.”
Obi-Wan wraps his arms around himself. Looking out over the war-torn landscape, he sees both the damage here and the carnage rent into a backdrop completely different than the one in front of him.
But Cody, dear, trusting Cody, is here to anchor him down if the memories try to drag him under again.
For now, it’s enough to let him draw another breath.