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Cody’s comlink broke thirteen minutes into the battle, shattering into useless shards. He spat a curse and flashed a quick hand signal with one hand while he shot a droid into even more useless shards with the other.
Time passed in a blur of noise and flashes of color as Cody fought, and he ducked behind a downed ship to catch his breath, blaster fire pounding relentlessly into the far side. Cody felt the impact even through his armor. One of the newest medics, Rem, stopped beside him just long enough to hand Cody a spare comlink along with a hurried explanation that it was only connected to local frequencies, before hurrying back down the line of injured men currently taking shelter behind the ship. Young, selfless, and reckless, Rem didn’t stay behind cover for long.
A clone several meters away, separated from them by a thick wall of blaster bolts, fell and lay twitching weakly in the dirt. Ignoring Cody’s warning cry, Rem vaulted over the top of the ship, ducking and weaving across the field to bend beside the injured soldier.
There was nothing Cody could do but watch as the blaster bolts sliced through Rem, and he jolted, then crumpled to lay motionless beside his fallen brother.
Their names would be remembered, could be mourned after the battle but there was no time to do anything but spare half a second of grief before Cody was off again, leaving the bodies of his brothers far behind him, broken and alone.
The battle was over, but he could hear the occasional sound of blasters firing as pockets of fighting broke out like embers that hadn’t quite died out yet.
“Sir?”
Cody turned from surveying the battlefield to see Axis, one of the captains, approaching. “Transmission from Coruscant.” Axis said, holding out a long range comlink. “Highest level, urgent.”
Cody nodded in thanks and accepted the comlink, but something made him hesitate.
There was some feeling—some shifting in the air, some instinct tightening his gut. General Kenobi would have said that he “had a bad feeling about this.” Cody had always told the General that their luck was quite bad enough without tempting fate, mystical Jedi powers or no, and Obi-Wan had always snorted, eyes crinkling in quiet laughter.
Cody pushed the thought from his mind and accepted the call anyway—
And CC-2224 quickly forgot any fond memories of Jedi traitors.
Looking back on it, Cody will remember the next few minutes only as flashes of memory, brief moments of confusion and fog that nevertheless would be seared forever into his mind.
The sound of his footsteps in the dirt as he approached the traitor, who turned to look at CC-2224 with a smile that quickly turned to confusion when CC-2224, expressionless, opened fire. (finish the mission, kill the traitor)
The lash and hum of the traitor’s blue blade, desperately deflecting fire away yet not getting anywhere close to CC-2224. (coward, his mind whispered, traitorous jedi coward)
Satisfaction flooding through CC-2224, as a well-aimed blaster bolt sends the traitor’s lightsaber flying out of his hand. (idiot Jedi, he’s not even trying)
Ribs aching after a panicked force-shove from the traitor sent CC-2224 flying into the dirt, knocking the wind from his lungs. ( failure is not acceptable)
The traitor, approaching where CC-2224 lay, with concern on his face and hand outstretched, but CC-2224 had a vibroblade in his boot ( and he’s a good soldier, a good soldier, a good-)
CC-2224 lunged, stabbed deep and ripped across, the elation at successfully eliminating the traitor filling him at the same time that the Jedi’s fingers reached his forehead and something in his mind snapped —
—and Cody woke up with his vibroblade buried deep in his general’s guts, and his hands coated with his blood.
Cody didn’t move, frozen in shock. His eyes shifted from the viroblade in his hands, now buried deep in Obi-Wan’s chest, up to meet the pained eyes of his general. Obi-Wan’s gaze never left Cody’s face as he slipped through Cody’s grasp and crumpled gracelessly to the ground.
Cody didn’t—he didn’t understand . What had he done? Why had he done this? What happened to him? Frantically, he pressed his hands against the gushing wound, trying against all hope to stem the blood quickly soaking through the layers of tunics. “No. No, wait—”
“Cody,” Obi wan raised a trembling hand to Cody’s cheek, leaving a smear of blood behind. “There you are,” he breathed out. His eyes fluttered shut, hand sliding from Cody’s face and limply falling back to his side. Cody caught it, clutching it to his chest.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered through numb lips.
But there was nothing Cody could have said that would change what happened, no apologies he could have said that Obi-Wan would be able to hear. Obi-Wan was still, his body limp and lifeless.
Cody gave himself five minutes. Five minutes to grieve, to indulge the complicated, twisted emotions knotting in his chest.
He sat there with his head bowed in silence, Obi-Wan’s steadily cooling hand in his own, with the wind drying the tears on his cheeks and rustling the fabric over Obi-Wan’s motionless chest.
His mind was thick with guilt and grief and confusion. The memories of the past minutes repeated over and over in his mind, an endless parade of guilt behind his eyelids.
He remembered the feeling of something taken over his mind, being stripped of his identity, his choices, forced to—
Cody felt sick.
Even worse was the thought that the same could be happening to the rest of his men, to all the clones, all his brothers, that they had also had their minds taken and stolen and twisted—it made his mind go white with rage and his hands curled into fists. He would find whoever had done this, and he would make them pay .
Cody exhaled, shoving any remaining grief and guilt to the back of his mind. He got off his knees and stood, the crimson orange of the setting sun throwing dark shadows over the body at his feet. There was blood on his gloves, on his chestplate, his cheek.
A flash of light in his peripheral vision caught his eye. Cody turned, and saw the slim cylinder of the lightsaber, lying motionless and abandoned on the ground, the sun glinting off the smooth metal.
His boots scuffed through the dirt and sent up soft puffs of dust as he hesitantly approached it. Before he had even consciously decided, his fingers had already wrapped around the handle and he lifted it off the ground, brushing off the dirt. The lightsaber lay heavy and cool in his hands. As he held it, the memories came flooding back.
The careful way Obi-Wan would clean it after a battle, gently wiping off any blood or grime. Walking in to see the General meditating on his knees, with the individual pieces that made up his lightsaber floating around him, as secure in the air as if he had been holding them in his hands.
The countless times he had heard Obi-Wan scold Skywalker or Padawan Tano, tone scolding but fond as he would admonish, “This lightsaber is your life .”
The tired, rueful smile, the one that crinkled in the corners of his eyes, that he would give Cody after Cody would hand Obi-Wan back his own lightsaber, after yet another battle that somehow ended with his general’s main defense ending up a good thousand feet away from him.
A new kind of war was about to start. The future stretched out before Cody, unsteady and uncertain. The Republic needed him, and above all his brothers needed him.
But before that, before he turned and walked away, leaving Obi-Wan’s body alone behind him without a burial or a marker, just as Cody had to leave so many countless other brothers before him—
Cody returned his general’s lightsaber to him, for the last time.