Chapter Text
Ponds is well-adjusted.
Considering the state of disarray of his brothers, you could say he’s doing well. Enough of the vode eat their blaster in the month after the war that the Jedi change their offer for housing from for the critically injured to any vode who is willing to contribute to their society. And Ponds understands the caveat; the Jedi themselves are in shambles and need some kind of assistance from their sheer amount of manpower; but this time it is for even exchange. And for the men who can’t work, minds or bodies or everything broken, the Jedi house and clothe and hold them as they stare at spaces where nobody stands. If the Jedi just gave, and gave, and gave, they themselves would collapse under the weight under their compassion. So, most of the vode they house work to earn their keep once they can.
The good news is that the dissolved GAR is full of good men with bloody hands that desperately need a project. Vode are picking up sewing, gardening, agriculture, diplomacy— they are learning skills of peace instead of skills of war. The medics take residence as an adoring team of Che’s pupils, assisting with both the hurriedly assembled and ratified Aid Corps off-world and the swaths of patients in the Halls of Healing. Some of them have entered school to become full-blown licensed physicians and nurses, and others have entirely pivoted away from the trauma of emergency field medicine. The engineers work to dismantle their enormous warships and turn them into smaller, personal ships to help groups of vode move offworld to begin anew. The ones who want to leave Coruscant are free to do so after the Clone Rights Bill finally passes three months after the war, and they take off with dust in their wake. More, like Fox and his commanders, move to another county but remain on the planet.
After much of the dust settles, the clones left in the Temple turn into a much smaller faction of permanent residents who work alongside Jedi to foster the community. They slowly transition from refugees to guests to members of the eternal rolling cycles of the lullaby world of the Jedi.
Ponds, somehow, ends up in this leftover group. It’s not really intentional, but there isn’t much else for him to do. He never was the most ambitious soldier. He woke up, ate a ration bar, went to war, spent a minute in the sonic, then went to sleep. He rather liked the rigid monotony of his world inside the war, and the sudden crumble of stability after the war hit him hard. Nearly all of them suffered from some type of genuine existential crisis in the wake of their freedom, and Ponds had little urge to kill himself, so he considered himself quite alright.
Of course, he says this and then he works the bark in the woodshop until it seems like putty under his callouses, carving it with knives and his thumbs and whatever tool is in his reach. The scent of sawdust becomes a comfort that he can’t shake off his clothes or the floor of his quarters. He goes to the woodshop every day and helps cut, carve, set, and polish what they need for furniture and training sticks and occasionally little pencils for the students in the Creche. He makes the walk there clean, and the walk back dusted with a thin layer of blonde wood that lightens his skin and sets in his ever-growing hair.
He walks alone in the halls, aside from the stray curious tubie-Jedi that will trail him for a few moments. He was a commanding officer, a CC, not just during the war but from since they were all decanted. It’s odd, to be told you’re different and better for your entire life, for every single dawn to dusk, and then to walk away after everything crumbles and learn there is no difference, and there never really was. The CTs are able to walk away with a camaraderie that Ponds hasn’t experienced since he was a cadet with his batch. They were designed to be ‘less independent’, yet somehow they’re able to laugh without the chips in their heads. Ponds feels the scar on his temple and feels its absence like the end of an addiction.
These days, the other vode leave him be aside from necessary perfunctory conversations, and he moves through time feeling like a shiny in a veteran’s weathered skin.
He finds a new routine. He wakes up, eats in the Hall alone, goes to the shop, spends two minutes in the sonic, then goes to sleep. There’s not much too it, but the wood yielding under his hands and the ache in his shoulder blades feels good in a way nothing did before. Months pass. General Windu tries to speak with him but Ponds cannot converse with his superior without acknowledging the crushing weight of shame over his pointless contributions to a pointless war.
Then Cody shows up on his doorway with a trembling Captain in his grip, knuckles white and eyes red-rimmed.
“What the kriff?” Ponds asks, hushed, when Rex is left curled up on his side and unseeing on Ponds’ bed. Ponds and Cody leave him be to stand in the quiet communal lounge, which is practically empty at this hour of night.
“He’s not doing well, vod,” Cody says, and for a man who insists he can’t cry he’s looking pretty close to the edge. “He’s not doing well at all. I found him in a seedy bar when another vode recognized him and commed me."
Ponds blinks at him. Rex was always Cody’s vod’ika, not their batch’s. Sure, they let him tag along as a cadet, but that was more an enabling service to Cody than some kind of kindness to the actual kid. Rex was a little too much a vocal dreamer for Fox and Wolffe to handle him, and Ponds was always… he just followed what they did. Bly didn’t notice either way.
Cody was always the one who gave Rex advice, who pointed him in the direction of the bullies and whispered in his ear, see them? do they scare you? good. they are your targets. Cody was the one to sneak him jello that one month they attempted positive reinforcement with food for the CCs. Cody was the one who hauled him to the front of the troops and shoved him forwards, made him prove himself in front of his brothers (which mattered far more than his worth in front of the trainers.)
But Cody can’t stop looking at the ground. Fox hasn’t been seen in months, Wolffe has lost his good eye, and Bly is wearing skirts and smiling again. So much has changed that trying to cling on to old dynamics is laughable behavior.
“Why can’t you—?” Ponds tries, but aborts when he thinks it through. “Right.”
In the aftermath of the final battle, General Kenobi was gravely injured. Ponds has refused any invitations from Cody to go to his apartment for lunch or any kind of connection, but he knows enough from his brother’s brief explanations and the Temple’s shockingly efficient gossip web. General Kenobi is permanently using a hoverchair, and can’t move or feel his lower legs at all. There’s more to it, something about his insides being scrambled by the lightsaber to his abdomen, but Ponds doesn’t know the grits of it.
All he knows for sure is that Commander Cody lost the ‘Commander’ after the war as easy as Commander Ponds lost ‘Ponds’ during it. Cody is a man born anew, which means he mostly wears sweats with kaf stains on them. He holds his rigid spine at a curve, always has tissues in his pockets, and has softened at the edges with a lack of manual labor and an influx of rich food. Ponds would be jealous if he were unhappy, but he notes the difference without much investment.
Cody’s registered as Kenobi’s caretaker. Ponds doesn’t know nearly as much about this as he could, so he can’t really say how much of a toll this takes on his brother— the last he knew, Cody had an impossible crush on his confident and eloquent General. It’s blossomed into something real and solid, and Ponds is happy for him, really, but in the light of the kitchen he sees the bags under Cody’s eyes. He loves a sick man, and he’s paying the price for it.
Or maybe he’s fine, and Ponds is overanalyzing it. He wouldn’t know. He’s never asked.
“Take him.”
“Take him where?” Ponds demands, sweeping his hands. “If it’s as bad as you think it is, he needs to go to the Halls.”
Cody shudders, and the ricochet sweeps his posture. He shifts to lean his hips against the counter. “He can’t, and the Halls are swamped as it is. He’s… he doesn’t need meds or Force-healing. He just needs another vod.”
“Why not his actual battalion? Didn’t he get plenty of support there?”
“That’s… a mess.” Cody rubs the insides of his eyes with a morose sigh, and Ponds feels a flare of pity. Cody may be the youngest of their batch, but has always been the ori’vod to nigh half the GAR. It must be exhausting. “Kix is missing. I think he shot himself, honestly, but I didn’t say anything to Rex yet. Tup has brain damage, can’t even hold a fork on his own. Echo and Fives are doing alright but they’re recovering with 99. Jesse’s thrown himself into Reserve Corps planning.”
Ponds barely knows any of these people. “So you’re sticking him with me.”
“Ponds, just to get him back on his feet. You know how much a brother’s support can help—“
“Yes, and I’m saying there’s plenty of other—“
“What are you so afraid of?”
“—vode that—“ Ponds registers the interruption and breaks off.
Cody’s head has lifted to steadily pin him in place with a merciless gaze. “Hm? What is it? Why can’t you communicate with me? Fox, fine, but you? Ponds, you’re better than this.”
“Am I,” he manages. “Kriff. Fine, Kote. I’ll take the goddamn Captain.”
Cody breathes through his nostrils, and he lets the fight go. That’s another thing that has changed, and Ponds finds himself almost wishing Cody still had his trigger-happy minefield of a maladjusted personality. “Okay, good. But he’s not a Captain. He’s just Rex.”
“Just Rex.”
Cody grimaces and claps him on the shoulder. “I need to get back to Obi-Wan.” The High General’s first name fitting so comfortably between his lips is jarring.
Ponds lets his little brother leave in silence, and sits and mulls over his poor decision making skills alone until he hears a thump from the other room.
He makes it to the door quickly and jiggles the handle only to find it locked.
“Rex.”
“No,” Rex says, muffled.
“Rex, vod’ika.”
“Go away.”
Ponds groans and knocks his forehead against the door hard enough to ring in his ears. “It’s my room.”
“You left me in here.”
“What are you, four? You weren’t decanted yesterday; get it together.”
A muffled, mildly hysterical laugh from the other side. “Stop acting like you care. I’ll get off your hands in a second; just gimme a minute.”
“I can’t do that. Cody—“
“Cody doesn’t know shit. He’s living peacefully stupid with his riduur in a cozy Temple apartment while the rest of us have dirt and blood under our fingernails we can’t just wash off so easily.”
Ponds sighs. “Have you talked to Commander Tano?”
“She’s a Padawan. And no, Ponds; I, a grown man with shell shock, haven’t tried to reach out to a teenager who was never supposed to be in a war in the first place.”
“Has she tried to reach out to you?”
The resulting silence is telling. Ponds is the last person who could judge him; he’s been ignoring General Windu’s attempts for months.
He echoes what he ignores. “You need to let people help if they want to.”
“Yeah, because it doesn’t matter what I want, right?”
“That’s not what I said.”
“That’s the truth. It doesn’t matter what I want; it doesn’t matter that I don’t actually want to drink, Ponds, I just don’t know what else to do. Either I lose myself in a bottle or a blaster, and I definitely can’t shoot myself because that would make me a coward.”
“Rex.”
Rex barrels on as if he hasn’t heard. The words are tumbling out of him, now, accelerating with the alcohol and the safety of a door between him and his confessions. “The war is over, yeah? But it’s not so simple. There are no heroes to this war, there are just men that pulled the trigger and men like us who told them to do it. I’m— It makes me a shitty soldier to wish we were still at war, but at least it made us useful. At least when we died, we died for a reason.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“Don’t I?” he asks.
“Fuck you, Rex. We did not survive the war just to die staring back at it.”
There is a long silence, then the stumbling movements of a hand and the click of a lock disengaging.
Ponds exhales the breath that’s been trapped in his chest, and he gently nudges open the door.
Rex looks up at him with watery eyes, limp hands crossed against his drawn up knees. He’s a sorry sight, and Ponds grimaces before he moves forwards and heaves to sit next to him.
They sit in silence until Rex tips forwards and drops his face to his hands.
“I’m scared, Ponds,” Rex says through the gaps between his shaking fingers. “I know I’m not supposed to be; I know I wasn’t even supposed to be able to get scared. But I’m so afraid. I miss—“ He takes the worst inhale Ponds has ever heard and exhales into a hoarse sob. “I miss Jesse, and Kix, and Echo and Fives.”
“Rex,” Ponds says gently. “They may have marched on—“
Rex lifts his head. “They didn’t— they’re not gone.”
“Oh,” Ponds responds awkwardly. So those were the vode Cody was talking about.
He snorts wetly. “Right, which is why it’s stupid I’m feeling everything so violently.” He hits his chest twice. “I’m malfunctioning, Ponds,” he says despairingly.
“No,” Ponds murmurs, and finds he has very little to say after that. “Look. Stay with me, huh?”
Rex looks up at him.
“Take the bed. I’ll take the couch in the lounge. Nobody will care; most of these brothers sleep through the night. Well— they probably don’t, actually, but in any case they keep to their bunks.”
“I’m not taking the fucking bed.”
“No, no, you are.”
Rex snorts half-heartedly. “I’ll share it. I’m not taking it.”
Ponds thinks of piles of CT vode he saw in the barracks when he entered searching for something, how all he could discern was limbs strewn on top of torsos and heads. He usually left if there was no emergency, unable to disturb the peace of a bundle of warm brothers. “Fine with me,” he responds. “But not until you get clean. You reek of booze.”
Rix nods with a lazy dip of his head, then resurfaces with a flare of panic in his eyes. “Ponds; I can’t go back. I can’t go back to this. I’m not—“ he fumbles with his words, but Ponds can be patient for this moment of clarity. “I’m not supposed to need help,” he settles on. “I’m not supposed to.” But I do, he communicates without saying.
“There’s programs for this kind of stuff.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. There is, uh, anonymous addictions or something like that. Programs? Self-help but with community involved; I know vode who really benefited. There are pamphlets with more info the Jedi keep in the Aid Corps offices.”
“Aid Corps?”
“Yeah. The—“ Ponds looks over at him. “You sound surprised.”
“I just don’t know what it is,” he mumbles. “I don’t keep up with the news.”
“Neither do I. Aid Corps are the first thing up from the leftover GAR that stuck around to still do things. Wolffe’s out with one of the cohorts. It’s sort of a scrambled mess, frankly, but it’s the main way to both give veterans a purpose and give aid to planets harmed in the war. As far as I know, they’re adding Reserve Corps in the next few months as a set group of vode who will bear arms for the New Republic in case of dispute or war or anything else. That needs more restrictions and stipulations and pay so it’s been cycled around the Senate for longer.”
Rex is quiet, then he nudges Ponds with a shoulder. “Aid Corps sounds like something you would’ve joined.”
“Yeah. Wolffe was surprised when I told him I had nothing to do with it.”
Rex hums slowly. “Clearly you know more about it than ‘not following the news.’”
“Aren’t you supposed to be drunk?” Ponds complains. “What’s going on with the— with this analysis of my thoughts bullshit.”
Rex shrugs. “I was just noticing. You’re my ori’vod, too,” he mumbles, half-awake. “Not just Cody.”
Ponds inhales, exhales, inhales, “Yeah, Rex’ika. That’s why I’m going to help you.”
And that’s the last thing either of them say for hours. Ponds will take to his grave how he carried his unconscious vod’ika to the bath and roused him enough to clean himself, then yanked on him some sweatpants and carried him back to the mattress. He doesn’t remember crashing next to him and falling asleep.
The next morning, Ponds extracts himself from his brother’s octopus-like grasp and goes through the motions of his usual routine.
As he eats freeze-dried berries nabbed from the public food pantry, he flips open his comm for the first time in a week or so and scrolls through his messages.
——
General Windu 6 Unread Messages
> From what Cody’s told me, it seems you…
——
kote (CC Cody) 19 Unread Messages
> how’s Rex?
——
wuss (CC Wolffe) 8 Unread Messages
> This text-to-speech device rizz horrible cat…
——
user3367485 2 Unread Messages
> Cody pawned a cat off on me. Do you…
——
twilek SIMP (CC Bly) 1 Unread Message
> hey! I know we haven’t talked in a while…
——
Monkey (CC Monks) 5 Unread Messages
> Have you reconsidered joining the aid…
——
Ponds blows out a breath and clicks away before he finishes reading all of his notification previews. He shoves it in his pocket and stands tense at the kitchen island. He taps absently at his stack of pamphlets (which are filled with surprisingly useful information that he perused out of boredom on his walk back from the Aid office) as he waits for Rex to wake, and then fishes the comm right back out with restless fingers.
direct message - Monkey (CC Monks)
CC Ponds: Will join Aid Corps if able to help administratively/remotely.
CC Ponds: Have some things to take care of on Coruscant.
Monkey: fuck yeah we have a committee social tmrow be there or be sqere
Monkey: r u allergic to the ‘I’ pronoun or what
Ponds leaves Monks on read just as he hears Rex’s groan from his room. His little brother has woken up to the shining hello of a hangover and Ponds can’t help but laugh a little to himself at the unexpected circumstances.
For the first time in years, he doesn’t care about the routine. He has a mission, now. A brother to look out for— not because Ponds is better, but because he can offer far more support than many of the vode. And maybe it’s as simple as that.
He grabs the pamphlets and a glass of water and heads into the room.