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CC-2224 watches his General fall from hundreds of feet above and hopes, for one desperate instant, that Obi-wan Kenobi does not survive the fall.
(There is nothing wrong with hoping. There is nothing wrong.)
It makes sense. If the traitor dies now, he won’t be a threat to the Empire. CC-2224 has made a logical and sound decision. It has nothing to do with how the thought of having to do it himself leaves CC-2224 shaking and ill. He is functional. Good soldiers follow orders, and CC-2224 has never been subpar.
The Jedi are traitors. Traitors must be eliminated. CC-2224 follows orders.
The problem, here, is that CC-2224 watches him fall, and CC-2224 knows a coordinated landing when he sees one. He watches his general dive rather than plummet into a pool of water below, and it’s all he can do not to curse.
CC-2224 calls the men off. It’s a tactical decision. The traitor is armed and likely to use force, but CC-2224 is a commander. He can beat the traitor in a fight. Standard infantry men cannot.
(CC-2224 has never been able to beat his General. He has no illusions that this will change. There are plans in motion here that even his orders cannot stop.)
The Jedi are traitors. Traitors must be eliminated. CC-2224 is following orders.
He takes a speeder down, alone, having sent the men off. They had gone quietly. Good soldiers follow orders, so no one had asked why.
Rex would have. CC-2224 startles himself with the thought before dismissing the notion. CT-7567 was dead, and that CC-2224 instinctively knows of his insubordination proves why. CT-7567 was not a good soldier.
He was too reckless, too willing to question. Had he not died, CC-2224 knows he would have fought. It’s better this way.
CC-2224 is not meant to be loved. CT-7567’s death had proved that. The deaths of the traitors would prove that neither is he meant to love in turn.
(The traitor had loved Ahsoka like a daughter, will be hoping she gets away. With any luck, she’ll be far enough away from the inner cores that avoiding detection will be possible.
CC-2224 is allowed to hope.)
It gets colder the closer he gets to the bottom. An unusual effect of Utapatu’s geographical winds, the traitor had told him. CC-2224 is trembling.
He is not wearing his armor. After the men had left he had tossed it off, thrown his comms and trackers to the wind. This is tactical. He refuses to elaborate.
(The plan is in motion. It can not be stopped.)
There is no going back, CC-2224 recognizes as he approaches the strewn body of the traitor’s beast. Its back had been mauled, torn open by the rocks at the pool’s bottom. Its eyes, open and unblinking, stare into CC-2224’s soul.
(Boga. It’s name had been Boga. It had a name.
CC-2224 isn’t sure he’s ever had a soul.)
The traitor had been on the animal’s back. CC-2224 does not want to think of the implications, can imagine too easily the traitor piked through on sharp rocks. The traitor had the Force, but the Force was not infallible. He could be dead.
CC-2224 thinks he is going to be sick. A moment later, his hypothesis is proved correct, and he falls to his knees on the rocky ground. He chokes, for a moment, on his own sick. It does not kill him.
He does not want the traitor to be dead. He does not want to do it himself and wishes, for a moment, that no one has to die.
CC-2224, also, does not care for his own wants. There is a plan. It is in motion. It can not be stopped.
The Jedi are traitors. Traitors must be eliminated. CC-2224 follows orders.
Cody had a plan.
Behind him, the nearby buzz of a lightsaber springs to life.
CC-2224 stills. He had forgotten, momentarily, that the traitor had been armed. It doesn’t matter. There is a plan in motion. There is a plan.
CC-2224 turns around. The traitor takes in a breath. No one moves.
“General,” CC-2224 acknowledges. The traitor’s face is pained, his breathing labored. His side is bleeding, long gouges deep and purpling. The lightsaber wavers in the air.
“Cody?” he asks, eyes wide and desperate. “Cody, what was that? Why are you — in the Force — there’s something wrong.” CC-2224 nods. Cody had noticed, after the orders, that his sense of self was being warped. CC-2224′s own head had not felt right.
CC-2224 remembers that his name had been Cody. CC-2224 is not authorized to refer to himself as anything other than his designation, but CC-2224 remembers thinking that Cody had died, not long after the orders. It is of little surprise that the traitor had felt it through the Force.
CC-2224 deliberately raises his arms and says, flatly, “I’m here to help, General.” It is perhaps too expressionless, as the traitor is not convinced. He raises his saber higher instead, agonized.
“Cody,” he pleads, though CC-2224 can’t imagine what he’s begging for. It would not change anything regardless. The Jedi are traitors. Traitors must be eliminated.
CC-2224 is following a plan.
“It’s alright,” CC-2224 says. “I’m unarmed.” The traitor regards him carefully, not lowering the saber, before something in his expression crumples. The saber drops.
CC-2224 allows himself to hug the traitor, arms wrapped tight around the other man. “Obi-wan,” he whispers into the man’s wet hair. CC-2224 breathes in the traitor’s scent of battle sweat and blood.
“Cody,” the traitor sobs back the name like it’s a prayer. “Force, I thought I’d lost you.” That had been what CC-2224 had thought, too. In a way, neither of them were wrong.
CC-2224 grips the man a little tighter. “I won’t let anyone hurt you, General. You’re safe with me.” The traitor, it seems, can’t tell CC-2224’s lies through the Force.
The secret that CC-2224 is keeping is a lethal one. He is not unarmed. In his arm, self-administered, there is a bomb.
The Jedi are traitors. Cody, CC-2224 knows, had also been a traitor. CC-2224’s orders were to destroy the traitors. CC-2224 will follow his orders, but before he had died Cody made a plan.
That plan had not included either of them surviving. The traitor has to die, and Cody has made sure they’re going down together.
“Cody,” the traitor says reverently, and CC-2224 smiles.
Good soldiers follow orders, he thinks, and the world lights up.