Chapter Text
It is a bright day on the planet beneath them when Cody meets his general. Shipped inwards after Alpha-17’s retirement, he’s left behind the squadmates he’s bled and screamed with. An aching, pulsating tug remains at his back when he steps off the transport, even though he knows they are not behind him, but some indeterminate direction parsecs away in three-dimensional space. Still, the ache remains.
The system’s star shines bright through whatever windows it can reach, and Cody longs once more to be on-planet. The metallic walls on all sides are a familiar feeling, all-too-similar to Kamino, but the unobstructed beams of light, the constant thrum of the ship, they just compound Cody’s already-present headache.
He’d been a senior commander, that was it. He’d led a brigade, pointing too many of his siblings to their final resting places, and he was good at it. His new promotion, to marshal commander of all things, feels too sudden, too soon. Yes, he’s among the older of his brothers, but the war’s been on for scarcely three months. He doesn’t have the experience – none of them do.
So, with dread pooling in his gut, an invisible line tugging him back where he came, and a headache topping off the wonderful trifecta, Cody marches forward to meet the Jedi General he’ll be serving directly under.
As the robed man strides to meet him, Cody snaps into a textbook-perfect salute. “Sir!”
“Hello there,” his new general greets him, folding his hands into his massive sleeves. He quirks one eyebrow up, but his face and voice seem pleasantly open. Cody doesn’t move from his salute. “I assume you’re my new commander?”
“CC-2224, reporting for duty, sir!”
“Ah, you’re the one Alpha recommended, aren’t you? Commander…Kote, was it?”
He says Cody’s name oddly; the emphasis falls slightly off, the first consonant sharper, the ending more ‘ay’ than ‘ie’. Cody blinks twice beneath his helmet, confused. It’s his name, but not quite. He chalks it up to a mispronunciation. “Just Cody, sir.”
“Of course, Commander.” He bows, an action that leaves Cody feeling wrong-footed. “I am Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi. Let’s get you situated, shall we?”
He whirls about, his robes billowing behind him rather dramatically, and Cody, nursing what threatens to become a rather unpleasant migraine, drops his salute and follows after him, the first repetition of what will soon become a pattern.
Mandalore runs through Cody’s very genetic material. How could it not? For all that the Kaminoans have clipped their claws and blunted their fangs, their template was, for a long time, the first name that came to mind when someone mentioned Mandalore. They chose the Prime because he was synonymous with the warrior culture, raised to wage war. In their textbooks, they read about the Prime’s life: how loss melted his scythe, how his father reforged it into a blade, and how Prime himself tempered it into one that could cut down Jedi. Cody and his siblings are made of the same stuff; the only difference between them and Prime is that they have never been anything else. The Kaminoans shaped them well. They are perfect blades.
But Cody knows this as well: they are blades, but they are not Mandalorian ones. How could they be? He spent his childhood told tales of a system mired in tragedy and loss, one that provided rebirth to those who sought it. The clones have been brought up to long for Mandalore, to treasure the glimpses of it they could get. But it was the Prime and his Cuy’val Dar who constricted them. They wear only a sea of identical white plastoid; it pales in comparison to the intricately designed beskar their trainers flaunt, nearly impossible to pierce but certainly incapable of missing. Cody doesn’t know a lick of Mando’a. There are occasional curses, caught by keen clone ears, but none of them know what they mean beyond something filthy. Sometimes, Cody thinks the trainers make a point of keeping their language from them. It is something sacred, something Mandalorian, and, well, Cody and his siblings? They are the furthest things from that.
For all that the Cuy’val Dar – or at least those among them who follow the Prime – follow their code, their Resol’nare, Cody does not know what it contains. The code of a clone is a simple thing: you were made to die for the Republic, for the Jedi. Make the most of the time you have before that.
There is something in his veins that Cody knows is Mandalorian, beyond what the trainers jealously guard, but he will live and die for the Republic before he ever sees it. He will live as a clone, and he will die as a clone, another identical face on a distant battlefield full of them.
He longs for Mandalore, for the promise left unfulfilled. But he looks over a sea of his siblings and he feels at home in a way that Mandalore could never provide.
Cody plunges into battle with the same ease he always has, like a Mon Calamari to the sea. He needs it to live, to breathe, but occasionally he must surface for air. He loses himself to the haze of firing and reloading, ducking behind cover and vaulting forwards, the roar of his heartbeat drowning out the drumbeat footsteps of battle droids.
His blaster cartridge is empty, he knows this without having to look down at it. One-two, he ejects it, pulls a replacement from his belt, and twists his deecee to click it into place. An explosion rings somewhere off to his left; he feels bits of dust and debris ping against his plastoid armor. It doesn’t bother him. Cody continues on as he always has: giving inches to take miles, clawing through the tides of droids, kicking and punching when a gunshot is impossible. Every moment is an action, every action is an intention, every intention has a result. And the result is always success. Cody will not allow anything else.
A droid is a cruel sort of enemy. An army of them? Even more so. They do not feel pain. They do not feel exhaustion. They do not feel doubt. They do not feel at all. Shoot a clone and a brother will dive down to pull him from the battle; that is two fewer guns. Shoot a droid and there will be another trampling over it as it marches on. There are ways to disable clones: hands, feet, shoulders, torsos, heads. There are many ways to hit a clone while still missing. You cannot miss when it comes to droids. This is a lesson Cody has learned long ago. A droid without legs will still lean up and shoot. A droid without arms will still keep marching. There are only two places you can hit a droid: the head or the chest. Anything else is failure, is death.
There is so much death. He knows it, he can practically feel it in the air. His bucket filters out the stench just as it filters out bits of sulfur and charcoal, but Cody can tell all the same. Blood trickles down his throat, tangy iron coating his tongue. A scream; another clone gone. Cody watches a brother – just two battles past shiny status, his paint still drying on his armor – shout a hoarse battle cry and climb out of their trench. His gun is held high and defiant when the shots slam against his helmet and send him toppling back down.
Cody is numb, operating on muscle memory as he pulls the bucket from his brother’s head. Please, let him live. He’s so young. Even as he knows the hope is a vain one, Cody still sends his wishes out into the atmosphere. Maybe whatever Mandalorian gods there are will listen to the plea of a hollow imitation. Maybe the Jedi’s mystical Force will hear him and all his siblings crying out as they fall in droves. Cody doesn’t know. It hardly matters; whatever higher powers there might be, they don’t listen. His brother is dead, another number to add three simple letters to: KIA.
He cannot move him. He is at the forefront of the battle, red blasterfire soaring over his head. To attempt it would mean death, would mean failure. Another one to add to an ever-growing list.
He has so many siblings left behind on the battlefields where they fell. How long, he wonders, will it take for them to rot? For their flesh to fall away, identical faces giving way to identical skulls, until the only thing to set the bodies apart is the armor they wore in life? At least, he thinks, there will be those of his siblings who he could identify. Even with their skin picked from their bones, their armor will remain, the weathered paint telling him all he needs to know. It is much the same when they live: their faces are the ones they choose, crafted painstakingly in late nights lit only by cold white fluorescents. He looks down at the brother who lays next to him, the way the first rays of the dawn alight upon an empty body. With a pang of distant, muted grief, as hazy as a sandstorm on Geonosis, he resettles the helmet over his fallen sibling’s head. Better to leave him in his battlefield of a grave with the dignity of wearing his face. He taps his vambrace with two trigger-numb fingers: once for the fall, and once more for the return to his feet. Then, resettling his hands around the blaster whose grip his hands are molded to, he dives back into the fray.
Downing yet another B-1 among the countless others, Cody registers a distant shout. The timbre is all wrong to be one of his siblings, whose voices, though subtly different in speaking patterns and pronunciations, carry the same resonant undertone. Considering the lack of sentient Seppie opposition on the field today, there is only one person it could be. “General!”
“I’m quite alright, Commander! Keep pushing!”
“Yes, sir!”
He readjusts his hold on his deecee and, ready to continue onward, finds his gaze suddenly catching on a familiar silver glint several meters away from him. Dank kriffing farrik.
Well, there’s nothing for it. Tucking his blaster away, he darts to the side, rolling to avoid enemy fire. It takes only a scant few seconds of breathless dodging to reach it, but the fact that this scenario was entirely avoidable rankles, just a bit. Still, Cody reaches it unharmed and scoops the precious hilt up. It – if Cody were the imaginative sort of man to think of things that way – hums in his hand, first almost angrily, then settling into something closer resembling contentment. Cody dismisses it as he ducks and runs, the hilt unfamiliar and oddly warm in his blaster-shaped palm. There isn’t some sort of easy carrying band or anything, nor does Cody have a place to holster it in the meantime. Cursing, he slams himself into cover. There’s another clone next to him – Trapper, Cody thinks. That thought is secondary to his frantic analysis of his options.
He can’t tuck General Kenobi’s saber underneath his arm and go back to battle; it will hinder his own ability and leave the General unprotected. He’s unarmed even now, somewhere Cody cannot see, doing Force only knows what. He needs to move fast before his reckless mess of a general gets himself shot.
He can’t run out wielding the lightsaber, either. Cody doesn’t know how to use it, and a trial-by-live-fire is not a proper plan. Besides, he has no idea what kind of cultural implications it could have for the General. It might be nothing, or it might be sacrilege to the Jedi. He doesn’t want to risk it.
He sighs, the sound drowned out by a grenade exploding off to his left. “General Kenobi!” he shouts, hoping against hope that it’ll be enough above the battlefield din. Leaning back, Cody winds up and launches the saber hilt into the air. He loses sight of it, his vision blocked by smoke intermittently lit with blaster bolts.
There is no response for several heart-wrenching moments as Cody crouches next to Trapper, clutching his deecee tight. Then, wonderfully, the familiar cshrkk of a lightsaber blade igniting slips between the constant sound of firing, and Cody knows that his general will be alright.
“Thank you, Commander! I’d been wondering where this got to!”
He hears Trapper snort beside him, and indeed, beneath the worry, Cody feels a wry turn of amusement. “We’d appreciate it if this was a one-time occurrence, sir!” he responds, the cold dread in his gut fading with every saber slice that reaches his ears.
Cody cannot see General Kenobi, but he can hear the General’s unique sort of smile, a twist of his lips that he just barely cannot contain, as he jokes, “I will endeavor to fulfill that request, my dear!”
Something must be in the air on this planet, because normally Cody would not say what he says next: “What is it that General Yoda says? ‘Do or do not, there is no try?’”
General Kenobi barks out a laugh somewhere further forward on the field, the mechanical march of droids reaching a lull. “Quite right, Commander Cody! We’ll make a Jedi of you yet!”
“I’ll leave the Force shenanigans to the professionals, sir!”
There is suddenly a head above him, General Kenobi blocking out the sun as he leans over the barrier, bits of orange-gold light haloing around his dishevelled hair. “Shenanigans, really? Reduced to paltry parlor tricks. Oh, if my Master could see me now.”
“You’d make a fantastic performer, General. You’ve got the dramatic flair already,” Trapper quips beside him.
“Why, thank you, Trapper.” He holds out a hand to each clone. “Shall we begin the cleanup?”
Cody and his siblings know war intimately well. Raised with reg manuals for bedtime stories and a gun range for a playground, they know it far better than they will probably ever know the life of a nat-born.
But, as much as the clones have been brought up to revere the Jedi, Cody does not understand them.
Staring up at General Kenobi as he floats cross-legged in the ship’s cargo hold, he thinks that fact has never been more true.
“Sir?” he starts, hesitant. “What are you doing here?”
“I could ask you the same question, my dear Commander.” The General doesn’t move from his midair seat.
“I’m doing a check on the munitions for requisitions.”
“Oh, really?” General Kenobi hums mildly. “I was under the impression that was the duty of a lower-ranked soldier.” He opens one eye, and Cody suddenly finds himself short of breath. “Like Maiv, for instance.”
Maiv, who had been the one to actually submit the report Cody claims to be doing. Cody glances down, his muscles tense.
Surprisingly gentle, Kenobi unfolds his legs from under him, softly falling the last few inches to the ground. Little creases form around his eyes as he stares at Cody. “What really brings you here, Cody?” All Cody can see is softness; there are none of the hard edges of a clone to be seen on Kenobi. His robes soften the lines of his body, his beard softens the curve of his jaw, his wrinkles soften the sharpness of his gaze. It hits Cody, then, that the Jedi were not made for war as Cody was. Especially not Kenobi, who asks his enemies to surrender at any chance he gets. Who wears overlarge robes and hides his hands in the sleeves. Who dropped his only weapon on the field of battle and kept going.
Kenobi isn’t made for war. And, despite having lived and breathed it all his life, Cody gets tired of it, too.
“Nobody looks for their commander in the cargo hold,” Cody admits, his voice dropping just this side of a mumble.
“Well,” Kenobi says, and Cody braces himself for – he doesn’t know. He doesn’t have a metric with the Jedi. The longnecks would never have questioned him, too confident in the perfect obedience of their product. The trainers? It varied among them. Skirata would have just reprimanded him; Gilamar might have even praised him. Priest or Reau? Laps until he dropped would have been a light punishment. Prime was never around the rank and file enough for Cody to ever know.
But the Jedi? They’re not quite the warrior mystics of their training modules. They’re something greater, something more. Cody can feel how the label is incomplete.
Cody doesn’t know their Code. Nor their language. Nor their weapons. But what he does know is this: Kenobi is something new.
“We certainly can’t spread the location of such a good hiding spot. Won’t you join me, Cody?”
Whatever he was expecting to hear from Kenobi, it wasn’t this. Not an acceptance of his lie, much less joining the conspiracy. And not – not the way his name sounds right, this time, coming from Kenobi. He’d never paid attention to how quickly the General had fixed his mispronunciation of Cody’s name. But now, in whatever odd in-between moment they’re in, it practically rings in Cody’s ears.
“Of course, sir.”
Kenobi pats a spot on a crate next to him, hopping up to sit on it. “None of that ‘sir’ business here. After all, there aren’t any generals or commanders here, are there, Cody?”
A spot of warmth grows in Cody’s sternum, matching spots heating his cheeks. He feels abruptly naked without his helmet to hide in. Voice leaving him, he simply nods, taking the spot next to Kenobi.
The General crosses his legs again, resuming the same position Cody found him in, if less airborne. They sit there, just two silent presences, a hairsbreadth apart. A haze permeates the space around them, a foreign warmth Cody cannot identify. Slowly, so slowly he doesn’t even notice, his posture relaxes, until he blinks blearily to find himself slouched against the wall and Kenobi once more floating. To his own surprise, he doesn’t even reflexively snap to attention. The tension he felt upon finding Kenobi is gone; his muscles ache in just that perfect way after a stretch, despite the fact that he hasn’t moved; a crick should have formed in his neck by now with his awkward position, but there is nothing, no pain.
Maybe some of that too-good feeling is loosening his tongue, or maybe he’s still affected by whatever was in the air of that nameless planet. Whatever the cause, his mouth opens without permission, and the question spills out. “So how do you do that?”
Perfectly serene, Kenobi responds, “What? The floating?” Cody nods. “A simple, if somewhat frivolous application of the Force. I am simply…hmm, how to phrase it? I’m telling the air molecules to hold me up.”
“You’re…telling the air.”
A tiny hint of a smile forms at the corner of Kenobi’s mouth. “It would, perhaps, be more accurate to say that I am telling the Force to tell the air.”
“Right.”
“Yes, yes, I know, it sounds like magic. I assure you, it’s not.”
“Of course, sir.”
“What did I say about titles down here?”
Cody finds himself grinning despite himself. He might have to check the hold later for contaminants from the planet. Now, though, there’s an unfamiliar thrill to continuing. And Cody and his siblings thrive on thrills. “Who’s to say I’m not just calling you ‘sir’ in a civilian sense?”
Kenobi chuckles. “An excellent point, Cody, you’ve got me there.”
They ease back into silence, Cody straightening up before his spine decides to give out on him. He opens up his datapad and sifts through his inbox. There’s a munitions request from the 501st, a report from Scorch Squadron on their recent skirmish, a disciplinary form for a shiny who tried to pick on the medics. Key word: ‘tried.’ Cody snorts as he reads through that one and checks the box for ‘no further action needed.’ He’s not going to punish a medic for protecting their own. It’s a lesson the shiny needs to learn: medics are always higher ranked than you, no matter what.
“What happened this time?” Kenobi asks.
“Someone learned the hard way not to mess with the medics.”
He smiles. “Ah. Indeed, it seems like it would be common sense not to pick a fight with the person who knows every weak point on your body, would it not?”
“Evidently not. This one might have needed more time in the tube.”
“What a shame,” Kenobi says with faux-seriousness.
Cody nods in agreement. “The Kaminoans just don’t decant them like they used to.”
Something in Kenobi seems to shutter, his lightheartedness faltering, and Cody feels like he’s said something wrong. A prickling feeling of guilt bubbles up in his gut.
“Cody,” Kenobi asks, carefully, gingerly, “how do-” He falters, the Negotiator’s tongue giving out. “How do you and your siblings…feel about the circumstances surrounding your creation?”
Ah. Perhaps he should have known about that particular conversational minefield. Cody sighs. “To be honest, sir-”
“Cody.”
“- Kenobi,” Cody allows, “we don’t really think about it much. Or, at least, I don’t. It varies from clone to clone.”
The General lowers himself back to the crate, brushing invisible dust off his robes. “You do know that-”
“That our existence is illegal in the Republic? That we don’t count as sentient beings? Yeah.” He stares at a spot on the floor, watching the way it decidedly doesn’t move. “But, well. I can’t help but be glad we exist at all.”
“Me too, Cody.” He hears Kenobi shift beside him, but he can’t bring himself to look. “Me too.” A sigh. “If there was anything more we could do, I could do, I promise that I would.”
“I know.”
“Everything about this whole mess – you and your brethren, the entire blasted war, the Senate being so stubborn – I wish people could take a step back and stop thinking with their pocketbooks and start thinking with some logic!”
Cody turns and stares at the outburst. Kenobi usually isn’t – no, he’s never like this, so upset. He’s never even seen his general raise his voice outside of battle. Cody doesn’t know whether to feel unnerved or oddly flattered. To think that Kenobi trusts him this much, enough to express this side of himself. It’s a vulnerability Cody’s seen before, in siblings holding their faces perfectly neutral until they’re back in the privacy of the barracks. Suddenly, he is reminded, oddly enough, of Fox. Fox, who practically lives in his bucket, a living statue on duty, two shots from blackout drunk in the rare moments he’s off of it.
“You don’t agree with the war?” he asks tentatively.
“I think the Senate and the Chancellor were far too quick to jump to violence as their first course of action when faced with the Separatists.” It’s so casual, so smooth, as if Kenobi’s thought it before, as if it isn’t treason spilling from his lips. “We’ve tried so many times to negotiate a ceasefire, but the Senate keeps rejecting it. As if the planets that want to leave can’t. No, it’s not like there are other planets in the galaxy that aren’t part of the Republic. There is no need for this loss of life, especially from you, who aren’t even afforded basic rights!”
“We’ve been raised to love the Republic, sir,” Cody murmurs, and this time Kenobi doesn’t chide him for the honorific. “We wouldn’t exist without it. It’s all we know. But if you all hate this war so much, why,” he pauses to take a deep breath, “why participate at all?”
Kenobi looks at him, and it wrenches an emotion Cody can’t identify from his chest. It’s just – he looks so sad: his eyes are glossy, his imitation smile so shallow it barely moves his mouth, his head bowed just so. Cody wants to pull the words back and pretend he never said anything. But he’s been taught never to retreat. With an odd pain in his throat, Cody stares at his general.
“We are Jedi. We can dislike it all we want. In the end, it is our duty, and we will not shirk it.”
And there is a note in his voice Cody knows well, the particular sort of resignation that comes with the word ‘duty.’ He’s heard it often, listening to dissenting siblings whisper quietly about futures outside the war, about deserting and death.
He never knows what to say to those siblings. They chafe against duty, taking whatever chances they can to skirt around it. Often the first to volunteer for relief missions or onboard jobs, they never seem fully comfortable with their blasters. Their deecees don’t mold to their palms like Cody’s does.
They are the siblings whose names often end up with damning three-letter statuses next to them.
Cody has never been made for anything but duty. He cannot picture himself outside of what he knows: a blaster in his hand, a sibling by his side, a battle cry in his chest. Duty and its consequences don’t scare him; he knows that he will die in service of the Republic. It is the vague, formless possibilities beyond duty that leave him lost.
Cody does not know what to say to those siblings, not when he cannot understand them. He doesn’t know what to say to his general, either. That’s the good thing about General Kenobi, though. He fills in the gaps on his own.
“We are a people not our own, Cody. To be a Jedi is to belong to everyone but yourself. It is not a rewarding life. It is not a peaceful one. Many times, it is not a happy one.” He seems to unfold, his shoulders easing back and his hands coming to fiddle with the frayed sleeves of his robe. “But I do it so that others do not have to. So that, someday, looking back at it all, I can say that I have done more good than harm. That is what I have dedicated my life to”
“Do you think you’ve succeeded?”
“To be perfectly honest with you, Cody? I’m afraid to look.”
There isn’t any good way to respond to that, so Cody doesn’t. He lets the silence grow, cultivates it like the plants he’s caught glimpses of in Kenobi’s quarters.
A sudden weight drops on his shoulder: Kenobi. Cody just barely keeps himself from startling. He’s not asleep, his breathing pattern is all wrong for that, but Cody doesn’t…he doesn’t understand. Why is his general so close? With him, a clone of all things?
It takes conscious effort to relax his muscles, one by one. It’s made easier, though, by the fact that this isn’t unpleasant. Kenobi isn’t saying anything, asking any questions, just sitting there, his head on Cody’s shoulder. It can’t be comfortable, not when Cody is still wearing his armor, but Kenobi doesn’t shift or complain.
When was the last time Cody was touched like this? Someone just being there, close to him, without any reason for it?
There’s a sort of distance that comes with being Marshal Commander. All the clones on the Negotiator are his siblings, but Cody’s batchmates are spread across the GAR. His 212th siblings form close bonds with their squads, but Cody, eternally holed up doing paperwork, struggles to connect. He’s an observer, a passerby. He watches them laugh and joke, and he smiles at the lighthearted moments they make for themselves amidst the war, but he doesn’t know how to make it for himself.
Maybe, he thinks, the General feels the same. His Jedi family are scattered around the galaxy, and, as the only Jedi on the ship, he must be feeling some of that same otherness.
Be brave, he tells himself, for all the quiet moments he wasn’t. Slowly, almost stuttering at times, Cody lowers his head to rest on top of Kenobi’s. His hair is soft under Cody’s cheek, feathery in a way Cody is unused to.
Kenobi sighs gently, and Cody prepares to be reprimanded. But nothing ever comes after it. It is just the two of them, close to each other, touching for all the times they’ve craved it.
He should feel awkward, uncomfortable. But here, now, all Cody feels is warm and slow, like standing in only his blacks on a sunny day planetside. The ship’s hum provides a welcoming lull, and Cody could never move again and be content with that. He lets his eyes fall shut, memorizing the input from all his other senses instead.
All the places where Kenobi is pressed against him seem to radiate heat, though it may just be the tantalizing sensation of another body against his, undulled by the chaos of battle. There is no distracting himself from it; the feeling is all-encompassing. He wonders, in the faint corner of his mind that won’t turn off, if this moment is as revolutionary for Kenobi as it is for him.
He leaves the thoughts unvoiced. He won’t spoil this moment.
Time is a blur; Cody cannot tell if silence reigns for mere moments or hours. He is content with either. Whatever he can get, he will take, just grateful for this gift existing at all.
“What do you call yourselves, Cody?” Kenobi asks out of the blue.
“Hm?”
“You and the rest of the men; it’s just crossed my mind that I’ve never asked.”
“What do you mean?” Cody suppresses the urge to shift positions. He doesn’t want Kenobi to spook, never mind that Cody himself is far likelier to.
“Like I and my brethren are Jedi, like Senator Amidala is Naboo, like Senator Organa is Alderaanian. What do you call yourselves?”
“I don’t - I don’t really know. We don’t really think about it. Just siblings, I suppose.”
Kenobi slides his head free, though he doesn’t move further. Cody misses the touch anyway. A familiar gleam of curiosity lights up the expression on his face. “Fascinating – so your primary group identification is your relationship to each other? Your brotherhood, for lack of a better term?”
“That sounds about right.” Cody pauses for a moment, shaping the words before he releases them. “If you don’t mind me asking, what have you been calling us? In your head, at least.” He wondered what he’d hear. The clones? The Mandalorians? The soldiers?
General Kenobi meets his gaze, smiling gently, and the bags beneath his eyes seem to lift, just a little, if only in Cody’s imagination. “Nothing in particular, my dear. Just the men.”
Like General Kenobi said, to be a Jedi is to belong to everyone but yourself. It is a sentiment Cody understands intimately, perhaps on a literal level the Jedi cannot fully grasp. His siblings – the clones – are a people not their own. But to Cody’s wonderful, impossible general, they are just a people.
Cody never knew he longed to be a person until now.
Cody spots chips in his paint one night that is no different from the rest. The ship hums as it always has, the metal walls vibrating faintly if he were to press a hand against them. Harsh fluorescent light still lights the halls like it always has, an eternal limbo between day and night. His siblings sleep in their bunks all throughout the ship, out of Cody’s sight, but never far.
It’s a nightly routine for many of the clones: strip off their armor, take up a cloth, and scrub away the dirt and blood. It’s both hygienic and personal. Nobody wants to take the battlefield back with them, especially not when the only blood that could stain their armor is that of a sibling. Some clones scrub harder than others, despite the materials adhering to their armor the all the same.
But tonight, as Cody washes his armor clean, he spots chips in his paint.
His armor’s design is a simple one, nowhere near as intricate as some of his more artistically inclined siblings. Some of their pieces astound him. How do they picture these things before they paint them? How do they pull the brushes into such neat lines? He’s seen whole whirling fractals and sprawling landscapes coating clone bodies. One sibling even painted, in tiny, perfect detail, a portrait of the General on their back. “So that he’s always watching out for me,” they explained to one of their batchmates as Cody walked by.
Cody does not have an artistic bone in his body; all his creativity went to engineering battle plans rather than shaping works of art. He makes war, not pretty things. That’s fine. He was made for this. If he can lead and plan well enough, then he can make sure that more of his siblings get to stay alive to make those pretty things.
Still, like any other sentient, beauty captures Cody’s attention, makes him stare in wonder and awe.
The first time he saw a sunrise, an impossibility on the perpetually-cloudy Kamino, he had stopped in his tracks. He can’t remember which planet – after enough time, they all blurred together in his memories, only told apart by the strategic gains and crushing losses – but he remembers how it looked, how it broke the dark night and turned it 212th-orange. Cody remembers the purple clouds streaking around it, the pinks and yellows that blended together, the way he got so caught up in the pastel skyscape that he missed the transition from indigo to azure. And, most of all, he remembers the way that, framed by the foliage his squad was trooping through, the sunbeams streaked against the sky, and wanting to reach out and touch them.
He knows he could never do that moment justice, that even the holopic he took has nothing on what it was like to stand there in person, but he had still wanted to honor that moment in whatever inadequate way he could. He came up with a few simple streaks, thick and harsh rectangles in gold-orange stretching across his body. It’s hard to recognize, and certainly few, if any, of his siblings know what his paint means, but he knows, and that’s what matters to him.
But there are chips in the paint.
As Cody scrubs his armor, finding release in the steady rhythm and the return to white underneath a layer of dust, flecks of his paint are coming off with the dirt. Feeling oddly detached, he turns his washcloth over and, sure enough, there are chips of gold-orange sunbursts mixed in with the grime.
Almost in a daze, he shifts backwards and stares at it. His eyes are looking at it but seeing nothing. There is gold among the blood, orange among the dirt. It feels wrong. It feels…it feels…
When was the last time Cody stopped to watch a sunrise?
He’s certainly seen many since that first one; many a long campaign has forced them planetside for weeks on end. Even just a few days ago, when they were still on-planet with an overnight battle that had continued through the dawn, he’d noted the transition. But it had been absentminded, his focus on the changing light levels and not the colors staining the sky. There had been a brother dead on the ground beside him, too many other siblings equally lost.
The sunrises have lost their beauty. They are as stained with blood and dust as Cody’s armor.
Blinking rapidly and shaking his head slightly, Cody resumes his cleaning. If his paint chips, then so be it. Sometimes ragged rectangles are just that.
He never pulls out the paint to refresh his armor. He can’t bring himself to.
Formos, sitting at the junction between three critical trade routes, is reportedly a thriving little economic haven, providing a nice switching point between the Kessel Run and the Pabol Sleheyron hyperspace route, which takes spice runners neatly to the doorstep of Nal Hutta. A smuggler’s den, apparently, with any number of semi-legitimate businesses dotting the populated cities.
Cody would concur with that assessment. He and the 212th are busy fending off Seppies, taking up fortified positions hidden in the mountains that encircle the main spaceport. He’s never been gladder for the devious habits of criminals before now, sending up a silent thanks for their foresight. There is no need for open warfare on the plains that linger just past the mountains, not when he and his siblings got there first.
They’ve spent the past several days fortifying their positions, little sniper’s nest camps popping up at every angle. The Negotiator has been sent away, looking to avoid a confrontation with whatever Separatist barge is dropping off the droids. For now, it’s just the best snipers of the 212th – of which there are many, thanks to the size of the battalion – and General Kenobi on Formos’s surface.
Whatever the criminal element here is, let it not be said that they are inhospitable. They have no particular love for the Republic – they are breaking its laws, after all – but they seem to appreciate the effort the GAR is making to defend them.
Or maybe it’s the opportunity to salvage droid parts once it’s all over. Who is Cody to judge?
Their improvised sniper squadrons have been treated to meals that, for once, aren’t rations, and it’s been a religious experience for many of the men. Cody watches Longshot dig into some dish that’s practically glowing with spice, turn bright red, start coughing, and still come out of it laughing and asking for seconds. Threepwood has discovered ice cream and Cody swears that he starts crying at the sight of a vendor any time they pass one. He may not begrudge his siblings their tastes, but it’s still his duty as an older brother to stock up on blackmail material.
Cody is glad for this campaign. It’s a rare thought to think, but it’s true. Already it’s looking like a relatively bloodless battle, one with moments of downtime for the clones who need it, and the locals are friendly enough that Cody’s starting to actually accept their bribes and turn a blind eye to little indiscretions he spots. At least the milder ones; he still grabs the predatory-looking woman and drags her by the collar of her vest away from the twi’lek who’s been doing his best to fumble away her advances.
Now, though, it’s his shift in the nest, and he’s got his mildly-modified rifle in position, just hunkering down to blast any droid with the Geonosian-made balls to poke its head out and march onto the open plain. Honestly, at this point Cody welcomes the attempt; it’s nice to have a taste of adrenalin on a soft mission like this one is turning out to be.
General Kenobi plops down beside him, his approach unannounced. Cody doesn’t move a muscle. “How goes the front, Commander?”
“They're taking it slow, sir, but we know it’s just a matter of time.”
“Excellent, excellent. Who’s been on duty the longest here?”
Without looking, Cody points off to his left. “Vell, sir. She’s been on about six hours.”
“Well, let’s give the good woman a break, shall we?” He directs his question to the trooper in question. “Vell! Go take some rack time!”
“Yes, sir!” she responds, as eager as any veteran clone to take rest when it’s offered. But, with the sharpness that got her this post, she asks, “Who’ll be taking up my spot?”
“That would be me, Vell. Enjoy your rest!”
“Yes, sir!” Mollified, she darts to her feet and disappears down the path to their camp.
With an ease that speaks of muscle memory, General Kenobi slots down into Vell’s vacated position, flicks his hair out of his face, assembles the rifle that he’s brought with him, and starts adjusting the scope. The butt of the gun rests on his shoulder, his form perfect not like a textbook, but like a broken-in set of armor: molded to fit him.
Cody lets him get situated quietly, his vision narrowing to just the field ahead of him. While the General settles down, Cody fires off three shots, downing three droids when they advance. He hears the General comment only on the last one: “Excellent shot, my dear.” Cody nearly fumbles his rifle at it, then chides himself. This is hardly the first time the General has used the endearment, and here he is jumping like a shiny fresh off Kamino all the same.
He spots another droid starting an attempt to cross the field, though this one is different from its compatriots. Craftier, faster, painted in dim grey camouflage to match its surroundings: a commando droid. Cody curses, rushing to get his shot lined up on such a cleverly-programmed target. Before he can get there, though, the muffled pop of a different rifle fills their nest. The tone is off from GAR-issued rifles, interestingly enough, even the modified ones like Cody’s own. It’s tinnier, a bit more segmented, and Cody tenses to keep himself from startling.
“Nice shot, sir!” says Longshot, settled between himself and the General.
Sure enough, the commando droid lies listlessly on the open stretch of land, its head fully blasted off.
For a target that Cody knows was zig-zagging for its life, General Kenobi had dispatched it remarkably quickly.
Another shot, another droid down, before Cody even registered the newest group. They’re B1s this time, which he’s grateful for. The group of snipers takes turns picking them off, and Cody gets the honor of shooting down a B1 as it starts shouting about the loss of its comrade.
“You’re good at this, sir,” Threepwood remarks, his gun going off a moment later. “Thought you called these blasters ‘uncivilized.’”
“Well, how can one know unless they’ve tried it? I’m not about to pass judgment without first knowing what I’m talking about.” The General laughs quietly, and a few of the clones join in.
Cody, though, breaks through the moment of levity. “That’s more than just trying it, though.” A bit belatedly, he adds, “Sir.”
The chilly air grows colder with the weight of something yet-unspoken. “Ah.” General Kenobi coughs slightly, clearing his throat. “Yes. Well. This is hardly my first time at war.”
Something in that doesn’t connect in Cody’s head. He, his many siblings, they were made for war and its horrors. They’ve been trained for it, taught how to live for it so that nobody else would have to die for it.
The Jedi, though. Cody has seen how it weighs on his general in the quiet spaces between engagements, how his brow furrows as he meditates, how he fiddles with the bits of armor he’s deigned to wear, how he flies through datapads of information as quickly as flash training. He’s heard his general speak of how much he hates this war, for all that Jedi aren’t supposed to hate. Kenobi and war don’t fit together in his head, like trying to fit a deecee’s battery pack into the rifle he’s wielding now.
And yet.
And yet.
“It was nowhere near the scale as this one, certainly without any ‘grand’ army, but. For all that the violence was constrained to a single planet, it was deadly all the same. And quite pointless, the kind of war that’s just revenge stacked on revenge until nobody even knew what started it in the first place. We still don’t.”
A shot between breaths.
“It wasn’t the most enjoyable time, I will say that. I wasn’t much older than you are now when I began.”
Cody is thirteen. He exhales slowly, fires again.
“But circumstances decreed that sniping was a far better way to wage war than just all-out combat. Especially when there were so few of us, never mind those who could fight. We had to get creative.”
His heart beats too loudly in his ears. He fiddles with his scope.
“And in the middle of all that, I suppose I got used to living out of tiny nests with only a pile of scattered ammunition, whatever foliage I’d been able to put together into camouflage, and a gun. One not too dissimilar to this one.”
Battery packs don’t scatter; they’re powered by gas. Cody readjusts his legs.
“When you’re alone with only a rifle for company, you get to know it fairly well.” Kenobi ends his sentence with a sort of finality of a story coming to a close.
Cody, restless, practically vibrating with emotions he cannot name left to simmer, opens it back up again. “Why did you stop?”
“I couldn’t feel them die.” The statement, said with all the authority of absolute fact, blindsides Cody. He can tell his siblings are similarly confused.
“I thought that'd be a good thing.”
“For a short while, it was. It certainly hurt less. The thing is, though, that because I was so far away, because I couldn’t feel them die, I started going for the kill first. And that, well…” He trails off.
This is a man who offers enemy generals surrender before he begins a campaign. This is a man who empathizes with feral gutkurrs. This is a man who launches himself to the front lines and turns himself into a living wall, a shield for the clones to shelter behind.
“Sir?”
“A lightsaber can be used for many things: carving through metal, lighting a path, defending, intimidating, and, yes, killing. But a sniper rifle?” He shakes his head morosely, though his gun doesn’t move an inch. “It only ever has one purpose.”
Kenobi fires another shot; Cody watches the droid fall, lifeless, to the ground.