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Life Day wasn’t something clones celebrated until after the Clone Wars began.
The kaminii didn’t participate in the holiday and saw no point in them doing so, either.
Hanging glowing orbs on a tree, stringing lights or wreaths from windows and doors, feasting on things like Bantha Surprise or River Witch Gumbo, and dressing in festive robes wasn’t part of their intended purpose.
Which was to do one thing and one thing alone: seed the stars.
Clones, after all, were little more than hard merchandise.
An expendable commodity.
Trainable, dependable, expendable, and more than anything else, replaceable.
Their training focused solely on field maneuvers, forming, and executing battle plans, collecting intel, deciphering messages, and anything else related to soldiering.
Cody’s first Life Day came after the Battle of Umbara when he entered the barracks, heart heavy, soul weary, and discovered his brothers' stringing lights, hanging glowing orbs on some sorta tree, and wearing the ugliest tunics he had ever seen.
“What’re you doing?” he asked as he gazed around the bright and festive barracks. “What’s all this?”
“Decorations,” came from Wooley, perched high on a ladder and stringing lights from the ceiling. “For Life Day.”
“Which we decided to celebrate,” added Boil from where he perched on another ladder.
“You decided to celebrate Life Day?” One brow arched. “Why?”
“Because we’re a family is why.”
Cody suspected a particular verd’ika planted that thought inside the minds of his brothers.
Looking back, he was glad she did as that day had quickly become one of his most treasured memories.
Especially now that the war was over and the Jetii exterminated.
Everything inside Cody had wanted to rebel when he received the order to execute General Kenobi on Utapau.
To reject it.
Pretend he never received it.
General Kenobi was no traitor.
No man was more loyal to the Republic in his opinion.
He couldn’t think of anyone who had done more to defend it, in fact.
A better man did not exist in Cody’s mind.
General Kenobi, much like the verd’ika didn’t see him or his brothers as expendable.
They treated them as individuals, as people.
As one of their own.
Cody was a clone, however.
Obedience and loyalty were drilled in him since before he was batched from his pod.
He was taught to follow orders from the moment he took his first breaths.
He would carry out that insidious request.
As good soldiers did.
Would he relay this order without hesitation?
Regret?
Absolutely not.
Killing General Kenobi was no different than shooting one of his brothers.
Something he would do because it was expected of him but not without it taking a piece of his soul.
That was the part of Cody that revolted most at the order.
He swore an allegiance to General Kenobi.
Proudly served under him.
He knew he was innocent of the charges against him.
Cody had had no choice, however.
Heart heavy, soul conflicted, he responded as was expected of him: “It will be done, my lord.”
Cody had no idea if Generals Kenobi survived Order 66 as his body had never been recovered.
Part of him hoped the general had made it through and was somewhere the Empire had no reach.
Unlike Cody who was now required to answer directly to the right hand of the newly named Emperor.
Part of him secretly suspected Darth Vader was in reality General Skywalker.
Rumors amongst the 212th and the remaining members of the 501st were that Skywalker fought and lost to General Kenobi on the planet of Mustafar.
Cody didn’t put much stock in idle gossip.
Even if part of him hoped the story bore truth and General Kenobi was living somewhere quietly with the verd’ika.
He rose from the bunk he had been seated upon while reminiscing, and after one final look about the barren barracks, turned to leave.
“Cody,” a familiar voice said behind him. “Thought I’d find you here.”
Cody whipped around, eyes wide, and stared at the hooded figure standing in the shadows.
“Rex?” Disbelief made him hoarse. “That you?”
“Yeah.” Gloved hands pushed the hood back to reveal a face like Cody’s. Minus the scar over one eye and the short-cropped hair almost white crowning his head. “It’s me.”
“What’re you doing here?” How was more like it. “Reports said you died with the rest of the 332nd.”
“What I wanted ‘em to say.” Sadness haunted those caf colored eyes. “How else could I disappear?”
Cody’s breath hitched on his shock. “You’re a deserter?”
“Yes.”
“Why?” It was the question Cody needed Rex — the best soldier of them all in his opinion — to answer. “Why would you desert?”
“Because I discovered what really happened to Fives.”
“He was shot by Fox.” The official report confirmed that. “He tried to assassinate the Chancellor.”
“He was murdered.”
Cody reared back as if Rex struck him. “Murdered? But—”
“He was going to reveal the plot against the Jedi to General Skywalker.”
A plot which, had the Jetii known about it, they could’ve done something to stop.
Preventing the fall of their Order, the Chancellor naming himself Emperor, ordering their execution, and Cody and the rest of his brothers from carrying out the heinous act.
Fury churned in Cody’s gut at how he and his brothers had been manipulated and used so one man could obtain unlimited power and eliminate his enemies.
He shouldn’t be surprised, however.
Clones had been created for the sole purpose of fighting a war they had no stakes and would receive nothing for having won.
“Why tell me this now?” he asked as Rex took a seat on a bunk. “Why didn’t you tell me before the end of the war?”
“No time before the end of the war,” Rex said quietly. “Things happened to fast and afterwards...”
“You pretended to be dead.” Cody heard the accusation in his voice but didn’t apologize for it. “You deserted.”
An act which would see him executed should he be discovered.
“I chose to desert because I no longer believed in the cause we were fighting.” Rex glanced around the empty barracks. Remembering as Cody did when it had been full of their brothers. “I decided I wanted to help save as many of our brothers as I could.”
“From what?” Or more importantly, “Who?”
“Tarkin.” Rex’s mouth thinned into a cold, hard line. “He not only ordered the assault on Kamino but the execution of all clones either not ready to serve or who tried to stop the assault.”
“Why, though?”
That never made any sense to Cody. He had no love for the kaminii, but they had done nothing to warrant their being wiped out.
“Emperor didn’t want them creatin’ more of us.”
“They could’ve simply stopped production.”
“We’re a threat to the Empire.”
“A threat?” Cody frowned. “How?”
“We’re loyal to the Republic is the biggest reason,” another voice said right before a figure materialized from the shadows behind Rex. “And potentially to any Jedi who managed to escape Order 66.”
No, it can’t be, rolled through Cody’s mind as his breath congealed in his chest.
Fives was dead.
Killed by Fox.
Rex confirmed it.
Only, the man standing behind Rex clearly wasn’t as dead as they believed.
“Fives?” he managed once his shock wore off. “Is it really you?”
“It is,” Fives confirmed with a nod. “Only I call myself Vos Kata now. I took my wife’s name after we married.”
Clones weren’t given first names much less a surname.
Most only received a designation numb— wait, Cody blinked as what Fives said registered.
“You have a wife?”
Something else clones were not supposed to have.
Wives, families, lives of their own wasn’t what they had been designed for.
No, they had been created for one purpose: to seed the stars.
They were soldiers, after all.
Bred for one thing: war.
Only, there was no war now.
There was merely existing until such time as age caught up with them.
“I do, yes.” A familiar smirk screwed up one corner of Five’s lips. “Dala is her name. She is a member of General Kazzarin’s clan, in fact.” Relief crashed over Cody at hearing the verd’ika survived the extermination. “She sent us to invite you to our Life Day celebration, in fact.”
General Kazzarin was listed as a traitor to the Empire.
Had a bounty on her head same as General Kenobi did.
A good soldier would turn her in.
He would also turn in Rex and Fives as deserters.
Cody was sick of being a good soldier.
Especially after everything he had seen during his time in service.
To the Republic, he realized as he stared at Rex and Fives. I never agreed to serve the Empire.
Or the man in power.
“Will there be River Witch Gumbo?” Something he developed a liking for on that first Life Day. “And Engine roasted Tip-Yup and Brub berry sauce?”
‘Cause it wouldn’t be Life Day without his brothers and food.