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18 BBY
With the chip gone and no longer clouding their thinking, the 212 were left with a mess.
Like most of their vod, the guilt that they’d tried to kill their General was terrible.
Their General had literally done everything he could to keep them alive during a war he’d abhorred fighting, even when it was his skills that were particularly suited for being High General. Not every vod could say their jetii had actually known what they were doing when the job of leading them was forced on them, even if most did their best to learn as quick as they could. The fact that many of them had barely hesitated to shoot to kill was damning, and it hardly mattered that they couldn’t have fought it.
The guilt for most that actually killed their jetii was just as bad as if they’d killed a vod.
Those that had killed their Padawan-Commanders hadn’t hesitated to shoot themselves.
Then there were those like Appo and Grey that had originally shot themselves to save the jetiise shinies, and it hurt so much more to know that they hadn’t just died, but that they’d chosen to march away instead of killing their jetii, even in the grip of the chip.
It proved that they could have fought.
The 212 were split, because their General was alive – their Commander had even tracked down where he was after a not inconsiderate amount of effort since the Empire very much didn’t have even a clue – but they’d tried to kill him.
They wanted to go to him and apologize, even knowing there were no words grand enough for how much they regretted what had happened on Utapu, but they couldn’t. Going to him would just reveal where he was – and why he was in hiding.
It was a terrible place to be in, mired with guilt.
The best they could do was watch over their General at a distance, forced to keep in groups of twos and threes lest it draw attention, just watching.
Only ever able to watch until the day came that Cody managed to burn the Empire down from the inside, and it was safe for their jetii to come out of hiding.
~
It was hard just watching him struggle out there in the desert, particularly when in those first six months, he’d apparently tried to build a hut seven times before the eighth one succeeded, for a given value of the word.
Trapper did a very careful amount of digging because unless a hut was poorly constructed – and he couldn’t quite find it in him to believe his jetii could do something unrelated to taking care of himself poorly – he couldn’t think of a reason why seven huts would fail in a six-month period. Only, there was no real way to get an answer without asking their General – and the Commander found out what he was doing and shut him down faster than their General had the 501st’s about some of his crazy stunts.
He would claim complete innocence about the fact that occasionally, their General would go to a cantina and drink – and drink and drink and drink – until well past the point he wanted to stop the man before alcohol poisoning happened and Helix would have ranted about jetii who didn’t know how to take care of themselves. Every time, there would be tears in those sad eyes, visible even through security footage, before he made a scene by cussing out somebody – it varied, but it was usually someone named ‘Qui-Gon Jinn’ – in Mando’a.
Periodically amongst those curses he would find out that a hut would fail, and how.
Number eight apparently failed because their General hadn’t made the walls thick enough and Tatooine’s extreme heat baked the walls until it caused cracks.
Boil said number nine had something to do with a bantha herd just a week after it was made.
Number ten was because of the first flash flood in twenty years nearly six months later.
It took three vod to sedate the Commander when news of this had him nearly running off to Tatooine to be sure he was fine, under the man’s own orders when it had become clear the sort of luck that likely surrounded Obi-Wan on Tatooine after news of a slave raid involving an older man in dark robes had reached them before the ninth hut attempt, and the decision was made that they had to keep their distance for the man’s safety.
Hut attempt number eleven met an unfortunate end thanks to Tusken raiders a couple of days later.
Cody had a few white hairs by the start of the next year, well before any of his vod, except for Rex.
(Rex had gained a few himself, shortly after Ahsoka joined the Rebellion earlier in the year, when not even three separate near-run-ins with Darth Vader had done so.)