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All Jedi are trained to fight, from Knight to Service Corps. The Galaxy is too dangerous a place for Force users not to be.
War is different.
That is never more obvious than when Obi-Wan walks through the med tents after a battle.
In the beginning, many of his fellow Jedi had looked to Obi-Wan and the handful of other Masters with notable experience in military settings to guide them. It didn’t compare.
The Young had never numbered more than five hundred, not even half of them properly into their teens—not that they’d ever been organized enough to get a decent count anyways—sticking to tunnels and sewers whenever possible. Obi-Wan had become a skilled tactician, on the scale of guerilla squads, consisting of five to ten children, some of them barely old enough for the weight of their blasters, scrambling to end the war as much as warding off the tight ache of hunger for another day.
Cody is different.
The Marshal Commander of the 7th Sky Corps thinks in thousandths, tens of thousandths of troopers, in supply lines spanning half the galaxy and knows by heart the matrix of casualty rates, between the various droid models and levels of clone trooper training, as dependent on environmental factors as it is.
Obi-Wan tried to keep everyone under his command alive, because every death is unacceptable, when five hundred hungry children are all you have. Cody minimizes casualties with shrewd calculation, not because he doesn’t care for his men, but because loss is inevitable on the frontlines, in the trenches, whether you accept it or not.
Cody is brilliantly cunning, always finds some way to push their advantage, and their strategy sessions last until Obi-Wan, Cody and the other clone commanders are turning in circles around themselves. Walking through the med tent complex after battles—even after a decisive victory such as today—it still doesn’t feel like enough.
The sickly-sweet smell of the lilac slime that covers the native rocks mixes nauseatingly with the copper scent of blood and the bite of bacta. Gurneys and hover stretchers line the corridors and smaller bays leading into the main medical tents.
It's only when Obi-Wan’s almost past the gurney that he recognizes the trooper’s Force presence. He’d grabbed Obi-Wan and hauled him back on his feet just in time, after Obi-Wan had slipped in the mud wall of a ditch on the battlefield, distracted by redirecting a whole wave of concentrated blaster fire to provide cover for an advance.
The trooper’s laying on his back, eyes lost in the middle distance as tears roll down his face, slow and quiet. Nearly all of his right leg is missing, blown off with what looks like a blaster cannon. There’s a tourniquet placed at the crease of his thigh, skin blistered all the way up his torso where his blacks have been cut away, triage puck on his pauldron set to orange.
“Hello there,” Obi-Wan tells the trooper, voice pitched low to not disturb the other men.
“Oh,” the trooper twitches and turns his head to face Obi-Wan, “General!” He makes an aborted motion to salute, but Obi-Wan waves him off at once, no need for that.
There’s a medic a couple meters down the hall, hands busy on the side of another trooper’s chest, who eyes Obi-Wan sharply under the lurid lights until he sees the puck set to yellow stuck to Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan’s been better about going to the med bay, ever since CMO Cut spent two precious hours hunting him down after their first battle, explaining the GAR regulations clear position on ‘Jedi first’. They’ve compromised: Obi-Wan lets himself get assessed immediately after any action and in turn the medics don’t hunt him down, until it’s his turn.
“What’s your name, trooper?” Obi-Wan asks him.
“Flek, sir.” There’s no paint on his armor, probably one of their new shinies shipped in just a few hours ago, but based on his position in the field he must be in the battalion under Cody’s personal command, his armor by rights to be painted in 212th orange.
“Thank you, Flek, for saving my life out there,” Obi-Wan tells him and squeezes a hand that’s hopefully not too injured. There’s a quiet groaning from the next cot over, but the trooper on it doesn’t seem to take note of them, curled up on his side.
“It’s nothing,” Flek says; plainly surprised that Obi-Wan recognizes him and smiling despite tears still rolling down his face, “any clone would’ve done it.”
“But you were the only one that could have, right there next to me on the field. Excellent reflexes,” Obi-Wan pats his hand.
“I guess so,” Flek trails off, wilting under the compliment as the wet squelch of boots on slime announces Cody’s arrival. He’s been stuck with a green puck, because after ‘Jedi first’ comes ‘Commanders second’ and Cody has no more patience for that than Obi-Wan himself. They’re probably due for the immediate post-action debrief.
“I thought I’d get more time,” bursts out of Flek suddenly, low and full of grief, and then he catches himself, eyes flickering to Cody and says, more controlled, “I mean, I thought I’d get to kick the clanker’s shebs. Guard your six.”
“I’d say you did plenty of that today,” Obi-Wan squeezes his hand, “More action than some battalions see in months.” Of course, that is also why Flek is lying on a stretcher in the med bay, leg blown off.
Flek beams at him. “And,” Obi-Wan adds, because Flek seems to be looking for a purpose more than anything, “There are many ways to contribute to the war, not all of them on the frontlines. You’ll see with time.”
The tears haven’t stopped silently rolling down Flek’s face, but his next breath warbles into a sob as his chest trembles, “With time? You really mean that, sir?”
Cody shifts where he’s standing.
“My Padawan—General Skywalker—has an artificial arm. Count Dooku got to him on Geonosis, but he was back in action in no time. Much faster than anyone would have liked, really!” Obi-Wan smiles. “Archivist Swift’shill requires a hoverchair, and Master Berk uses a walking stick, because his right leg isn’t weightbearing.”
Cody radiates enough disapproval to develop his own planetary gravity. He has an excellent sabacc face though and even now, one could never tell by the way he’s only minutely thumbing along the rim of his helmet. The commander is never not sensible where his men are concerned though, so Obi-Wan will have to figure out what that is about.
Flek is fully sobbing now, terribly young, chest shaking and he’s twisted his arm so they're clasping hands. “Thank you, general,” Flek manages between heaving breaths, body curled in towards him. Obi-Wan pats Flek’s arm a little awkwardly, looks up to Cody for some help, but his commander only tilts his head down the corridor in silent gesture.
Obi-Wan takes his cue, squeezes Flek’s hand twice more and before he disentangles them and makes his goodbyes to follow Cody down the hall. They’ve gone barely two dozen steps when Cody pulls back a curtain and lets Obi-Wan step through first into what appears to be a makeshift office, set-up with several field tables and data pads strewn about on them.
“General,” Cody says with the same quietly braced defiance he steels himself with whenever he speaks up for his troopers, when he has Obi-Wan’s attention, “I’d rather you didn’t give him false hope.”
“I think we can all use a little hope, Cody,” Obi-Wan tries for levity, but it falls flat. “He’s in bad shape and losing a limb is not an easy thing, but I have full faith in the medics. Wouldn’t be their first miracle.”
“Sure, but Flek’s just a shiny,” Cody says, like it’s supposed to mean something. “Unless you mean to keep him on the Negotiator? If you’re open to that… We’ve lost a few techs. Kid’s a frontliner, but he’s smart, he’ll learn quick enough.”
“Aren’t injured troopers flown back to Kamino for recovery?” Obi-Wan asks, confused.
“Yes,” Cody says, face flat and emotions roiling like thunder clouds in the Force. It’s not a good sign, considering Cody is usually as unshakeable as bedrock.
“Commander,” Obi-Wan asks, ”What happens on Kamino?”
Cody’s eyes drift to where Flek is lying behind the tent wall. “Flek’s got no advanced training or experience to serve as a trainer or in intelligence. So a defect-based decommission is basically guaranteed,” Cody says and turns back to Obi-Wan, “Maybe with recovery of parts if his bio indicators are up to spec.”
‘Decomission’, ‘recovery of parts’, ‘bio indicators’ cannot actually be what it sounds like. “Decommission, like kill?” Obi-Wan still asks, because he needs to be sure. He almost expects Cody to laugh him off.
“That’s not exactly the same,” Cody says though, which means that actually it is. Kriff.
“Okay,” Obi-Wan says and nods, because he’s a Jedi Master on the High Council in control of himself, “Okay.” And then he’s lurching sideways for the wastebin beside the nearest table as his stomach betrays him, because it’s really, really not okay, and he doesn’t even know how many ships they’ve sent off to Kamino since the fighting’s really gotten started—because it never mattered as much as the number of casualties on the field—only that it’s way too many.
When Obi-Wan pulls his head back out of the wastebin, Cody’s crouched down on his heels beside Obi-Wan, which can’t be easy in his armor, face worried. Obi-Wan collapses against the table leg and winces, because the sudden movement hasn’t done his bruised ribs any favors. “Your head okay, general? Need me to get a medic in here?”
“No need for that, I’m perfectly fine, Cody. Just. Blast!” Obi-Wan has to close his eyes, take a deep breath. “I didn’t know about that. Is that— normal?”
Cody shrugs. “For functional defects mostly, cosmetical only very rarely; it’s not like anyone’s supposed to see those under the armor anyway.”
Obi-Wan’s eyes flicker unbidden to the scar around Cody’s eye at that, though he would hardly call it a defect. He has the chance to regret his lack of self-control a second later when Cody rubs along the thin kheloid with a finger and a self-conscious air. He shrugs, “I was already quite far in my training, and I had excellent training scores, even if the eye was touch and go for a while.” No need to say that the best test scores in the Galaxy wouldn’t have saved him then, apparently. That there would be another commander in his place right now, with the same face (except for the scar), and probably just as tactically brilliant and Obi-Wan would never know to grieve what he had lost. He would very much like to be sick in the bin again.
“Why didn’t you say anything Cody?” he manages instead, rough.
“About decommissions?” Cody asks, confused “It’s in the regs, sir, there are forms for it.”
Obi-Wan doesn’t double-check any of the flimsiwork that Cody sends him to sign: he trusts his commander, diligent and caring as he is, despite the short time they have worked together; he is drowning in forms and reports himself as it is; they discuss anything important in their debriefs anyways. Except, apparently not. He’ll have to go back through the file history of his comlink, carve out some time to read those thrice-karked regulations from start to finish.
They sit there in silence for a minute while Obi-Wan tries not to spiral out of control.
“Anakin—“ Obi-Wan starts, because it’s the first thing that comes to mind that’s even halfway to coherent.
“I imagine the price of General Skywalker’s prosthetic is more than twice the requisition cost of a shiny,” Cody interrupts him mildly. And it’s probably true. He’d insisted on the best for Anakin. He’d also seen the Kaminoan price list, of course, together with the rest of the high council. He had just thought of that as the price of cloning technology, training, rations, habitats—not lives.
Cody keeps staring at him, head tilted like a shriek hawk, like he can see straight into Obi-Wan’s skull if he only tries hard enough. When Obi-Wan looks away because he can’t bear it anymore and can’t find a single right word about any part of this mess, Cody abruptly gets up and moves to the curtained doorway to flag one of the medics into the office.
Obi-Wan can just see them past the table he’s hidden behind. It’s Hands, one of Cut’s lieutenants, stark lines tattooed all over the hands he named himself after. He’s a good man, head medic of the 212th, sewed Obi-Wan’s stomach shut old school with steady hands in some swampy ditch a couple of planets ago after an unfortunate encounter with a vibroblade. They’d been cut off from their ships a few hours earlier, portable tissue menders disabled by an EMP. Even Cut had looked a little green around the edges after some stupid joke Obi-Wan made about them all seeing his guts without buying him dinner first.
He would have thought that Cody flagged Hands down to have Obi-Wan assessed for brain damage, like there’s something wrong with him and not everything else. But instead Cody asks, “What’s the prognosis for Flek?”
“Flek?” Hands asks and the exhausted tension is plain in his voice.
“Shiny, couple beds towards central, right leg blown off, tagged orange,” Cody explains.
“The leg shouldn’t kill him,” Hands sighs, as he tears off the bloody gloves he’s wearing with a snap, “But it’s a level four functional defect. We’re still waiting for that second confirmation from Kamino, but the clock’s ticking.”
“On what?” Cody asks, sharp.
“Sithspit commander,” Hands groans, “I thought you’d know by now.”
“Cut should really be the one to tell you this,” Hands says, but he grabs Cody by the elbow and pulls him further into the office until the two clones are standing right beside the desk, Obi-Wan is still sitting below. When Hands speaks again, it’s pitched just loud enough for Obi-Wan to hear under his table less than a meter away, “Kamino’s at capacity, after the action Nova Corps saw a tenday ago. New directive says, we’re to ship back biomatter only, save the credits on life-support systems. Cut’s sticking his head out to have the com-techs ask for confirmation that nothing’s opened up and until we’ve got that we’re operating as usual. But we’ll have to start making calls soon and,” his voice cracks, “we’ll have to figure out how.” His tone becomes even more urgent then, “Listen, we’ve discussed it amongst the medics, if we shuffle some numbers with the casualties in support staff, we might—”
“No,” Obi-Wan says, and when he’s managed to pull himself up by the edge of the table, Hands is staring at him wide-eyed. “We will not be sending anyone back to Kamino, dead or alive. There will be no more decommissions.”
And apparently that’s all it takes, because Hands is pulling out of the grip Cody’s got on his elbow, ideas spilling out of him like a waterfall, like he's thought about nothing else all night, hands busy saving already-condemned lives.
“Peace,” Obi-Wan tells him. “There will be time to figure it all out. You should make sure your brothers live long enough to get there first.”
“Yes, sir,” Hands salutes him, excitement bright on his face. He’s already talking on his comlink as he practically sprints out of the office, “Orders from the General!”
“He’ll brain himself on the stones, if he slips,” Cody observes. “Cut will be furious.”
“I’ll have to do an emergency broadcast to the active-duty Jedi, for now,” Obi-Wan says. “We’ll need an official council decision on the matter, since it’s GAR business, but you have my word that there will be no more decommissions, if there is anything I can do about it. And the other Councilors will feel the same way. We’ll claim religious prerogative, if necessary.”
Obi-Wan can already see Yoda ominously announcing the ill-will of the Force, even more mystical than he usually likes to be and waving about his gimer stick, with Mace standing beside him and nodding gravely at Republic officials in all the right places.
“I will let the other commanders know as well,” Cody says, face stark in the fluorescent overhead lights and Obi-Wan is suddenly and desperately grateful that Cody doesn’t thank him for it, can't help thinking back to Flek, wrecked with sobs on his stretcher.
“Do let me know if anyone has any trouble with the moratorium. I’ll handle it personally,” he tells Cody before fleeing the office. The karked council seat they’ve stuck him with has be good for something besides more flimsiwork.