Work Text:
He let his headset hang around his neck, muting the microphone but not the receiver. Intermittent chatter filtered through, always the same words: we found another one.
The open channel was entirely for the benefit of their troopers—Jedi did not need to be given directions to sift through the dead. But it gave the clones something to listen to other than silence, and the sound of their brothers’ voices crackling inside their helmets was about the only relief they could afford right now.
Obi-Wan planned his footsteps carefully, walking between the jagged rows of fallen clones. The ground beneath them was spongy and moist, pulling at his boots with every step. The field had been wet from rain before the battle, making for miserable terrain; it was one of the several reasons there were so many bodies now.
“Another one here,” he heard crackle over the line. It was Rex.
“I’ll take it,” Anakin responded. “Ahsoka, dont.”
“I got it.”
“No, you don’t,” he repeated. Anakin’s voice grew soft. “Snips….”
There was a pull to Obi-Wan’s right. Tuning out their conversation, he shifted course, still taking care not to step on any limbs, and followed the fading pulse. It had been a while since he’d felt anything but silence in the field. He hoped that meant they’d be done soon. It wasn’t often that they had the luxury of doing this, but when they did, it always took them hours.
Here. Obi-Wan knelt down, the mud immediately soaking through his trousers. The bodies were thick here, stacked two or three or even four high. As gently as he could, he pushed the nearest dead trooper aside, the body rolling onto a fellow fallen brother. Beneath it was another clone, but this one was still wheezing, still writhing around in pain in the mud.
He placed a hand on the trooper’s chest, removing their helmet with the other and looking at the markings it bore. Painted on its cheek was a small, yellow bird, scuffed from wear.
Obi-Wan pulled his mic up to his mouth, clicking it on. “Cody?”
“General.”
“The man with the yellow bird on his helmet.”
A long pause followed before the commander spoke again. “That’s Chickadee, sir.”
“Thank you.” He let his headset drop again, looking over the trooper. It was obvious what had felled him; a sizable blaster round had torn through his right shoulder, and judging by the wet, rattling breaths the man drew in, the burn had reached one of his lungs.
“Chickadee,” he said quietly, cupping the man’s face in his hand. The clone gasped, eyes rolling towards Obi-Wan, but there was no recognition in them. Only pain. No final words, then.
“All is as the Force wills it,” he whispered, the broad of his palm flattening across the man’s cuirass. The trooper went lax, the air rushing out of his lungs in shaky relief. He could not ease the man’s pain, but he could calm his mind and allow him to let go.
The pulse persisted for one moment, then another, and then it went still, too.
Obi-Wan took a breath of his own, closed the man’s eyes with a sweep of his fingers, and stood up. Surveying the field, he saw the men still alive pick through the aftermath, sticking out like spikes. From far away, the field could be mistaken for a snowy plain. In all directions, white armour glinted under the weak heat of the planet’s red dwarf. Up close, though, there was no mistaking what lay here.
Wiping his hands on his robes and leaving smears of red, he continued to search for other echoes. The combined forces of the 501st and 212th had collided during the battle, although delineating where one battalion ended and the other began was impossible. Troopers in yellow and blue mingled, alive and dead. The former sought out their men, collecting what salvageable gear they could. Trinkets, too, from any dying clone who wished to pass it on.
Obi-Wan felt another ripple, though not from a trooper. It was much stronger, much clearer. A tear of sorrow in the air, and the shape of its grief was easily recognisable. He began to walk in the opposite direction now, towards Ahsoka. She was difficult to pick out amongst the bloodied, uneven landscape, but he didn’t need his sight to find her.
As he drew closer, he saw her cradling a clone in her arms, her shoulders shaking with tears she’d been trying to hold in. He knew without looking that the man was already dead; the only living trace for hundreds of metres around them came from her. It was almost impossible to walk without stepping on a body, and with a tired wave of his palm he forged a thin pathway towards her.
Her breath came out much the same as Chickadee’s had—ragged, uneven, disorganised. She was trying to breathe around a wound, too.
He crouched beside her, placing a hand on her shoulder. If she noticed the touch, she didn’t make any indication. “Ahsoka.”
“We were—” She hiccuped, not looking up from the clone. She’d removed his helmet, his face cupped in her hands. “We were—playing cards yesterday. He was so bad at—at—”
Her voice broke again into a sob, and Obi-Wan drew her into his chest. She didn’t resist, but she didn’t let go of the trooper, either.
“I didn’t even get to say goodbye,” she whispered, so quiet he barely heard her. “He didn’t—he couldn’t say anything—”
“It’s alright,” he told her, knowing that wasn’t true. He pressed his cheek to her head, hating how strong the scent of blood was on her. “It’s alright.”
She trembled. From the cold, from exhaustion, from grief. The sun was high in the sky now, bathing everything orange. Pushing through his own weariness, he sent her a calming nudge, smoothing the edges of her own ragged trace in the Force.
It seemed to work. She cleared her throat and spoke. “Thank you.”
He nodded, pulling back to look at her. “I don’t want to rush you,” he told her. “But we must move on.”
She nodded, letting out another hiccup. “I don’t—”
Ahsoka stopped again, closing her eyes and drawing in a steadying breath. He watched her struggle with herself, pushing down her grief until her face scrunched with the effort of it. “I don’t want to just leave him like this.”
He glanced down at the trooper. Obi-Wan didn’t recognise the clone, but that wasn’t surprising. He was from the 501st, his armour peppered with lines of blue. Not a new transfer, then. He’d been with them a while.
“Is there anything you can take with you?” he asked. It wasn’t a good idea, encouraging her to collect personal effects from the body of clones. The ghosts would only pile up, and it would do her no good to dwell on the dead.
But it was also not a good idea to let someone as young as Ashoka administer last rites. She was supposed to be back with the dropships, helping transport the wounded—the ones still strong enough to push through their injuries. But she had taken too closely after her Master, he thought with a twinge. Hardship was something only to be faced head-on; anything else was cowardice to her.
“He’s got, um,” she sniffled, reaching for his belt. Her fingers fumbled on one of his pouches, drawing out an old set of paper cards. They’d been folded up in foil to keep the wet off of them. “He’s got these.”
“Good.” He began to stand, tugging her up with him. “We must move on, Ahsoka.”
“I know.” She wiped at her face, leaving behind mud and streaks of crimson on her skin, and let Obi-Wan pull her to her feet beside him. The clone fell to the earth, heavy and still.
“What was his name?” he asked, watching her fold away the deck in her own belt.
“Diamond,” she whispered, letting out a laugh that carried no humour. “You know. Like the suit.”
He smiled at her. “I do know.”
Ahsoka looked around, still sniffling, and he saw her eyes catch on Rex in the far distance. He stood next to Anakin, their heads bowed as they spoke softly to one another. “I’m okay now,” she told him, tearing her gaze away to look up at Obi-Wan. “I can keep going.”
He felt a clench in his chest as he watched her struggle to gather her resolve. She was most certainly not okay. “I’m bringing you back to the transport,” he told her gently, and began to guide them east. “We’re almost through, anyway, and you’ve done more than enough.” More than could ever be expected of a girl her age.
“I don’t need to be—”
“You do,” he interrupted, and the clench in his chest only grew stronger when he felt the fight go out of her shoulders. She didn’t argue with him any further; a very bad sign.
He swallowed around the sudden tightness in his throat and pulled his headset back on properly, clicking into the general comm channel. “I’m taking Ahsoka back to the landing zone,” he told all of them. It was mostly for Anakin’s benefit. “I won’t be long.”
“Is she okay?” Anakin asked immediately.
Obi-Wan looked down at Ahsoka, eyes cast low to the ground, watching the bodies as they passed.
“In time, perhaps,” was all he said.