Chapter Text
On a backwater moon, nine years before the Battle of Yavin, a rebel agent about to be captured instead turned his weapon into a bomb, reducing himself and the six stormtroopers surrounding him to ash.
CC-2224 died without a gasp.
And Cody woke up with a scream.
He jerked upright, hands grasping for a blaster, for his armor, none of which were to be found. An unfamiliar view of rough stone walls criss-crossed with thick roots met his gaze, unblocked by the limited vision of a stormtrooper helmet. Bewildered, Cody forced himself upright, to lean heavily against one side of the damp tunnel. Muscles twitching, heart pounding, the man desperately looked about, searching for a clue as to what had happened and where he’d landed.
Muffled voices from further down the tunnel reached his ears.
Sucking in a shaky breath, Cody clenched his hands until they stopped trembling. And then he cautiously stalked forward. The indistinct voices grew louder, turning into weak sobs, and reassurances being repeated over and over. It took a moment for Cody to realize why they sounded familiar.
It’d been years since he last listened to a vod, let alone a vod he knew.
Caution dropped like an unneeded cloak, Cody staggered around the turn, and nearly fell to his knees at the sight before him.
Waxer, silent tears sliding out of bewildered eyes, wrapped in the tight embrace of Boil, who kept apologizing over and over. “It’s okay, vod,” Waxer murmured, one hand curled around his brother’s back while the other sank into Boil’s hair. “I’m here, I’m alive, we’re both alive.”
And they weren’t the only ones. Further up the tunnel, in groups of two or three, were more young men in black bodysuits. Gears, who’d died on Christophsis. Reddi and Fanner, lost in the second assault on Geonosis. Wooley, Trapper, Jig, Never, and at least a dozen others - men Cody remembered losing, remembered grieving. They were all supposed to be dead.
He was supposed to be dead.
“Tion haar haran,” he whispered. Quiet though the words were, they attracted attention nonetheless.
“Commander!” Gears looked relieved, pushing himself upright. Others glanced up at his call, and soon enough Cody found himself at the front of a small crowd, all looking for orders and, hopefully, an explanation.
If only he had any to share...
The Force works in mysterious ways, an amused voice murmured in his memory. Cody shut his eyes and breathed in sharply. It had been too many years since he remembered that voice, since he’d murdered its owner. When he finally felt strong enough to blink his eyelids back open, most of the men looked concerned - but Boil. Boil knew.
“How long did you last?”
“Another decade,” Cody answered, voice devoid of emotion. Not because he didn’t have any, but it was easier to pretend they didn’t exist for the moment. “But I may as well have died with Order Sixty-Six.” Two other men besides Boil flinched. The rest had all died before. They didn’t know.
They needed to know.
Cody sighed, steeling himself. “At ease, men. We’ve got some storytelling to do.”
-Vod’e-
Several hours later, after grief and anger and numbness had passed, Cody waited just at the bottom of a shallow slope, beneath an exit out of the tunnels. Boil and Waxer were scouting beyond, the duo once again inseparable. Behind him in the tunnel, the remaining nineteen men held themselves still, silent, bearing rocks or mostly straight lengths of tree roots as weapons. Nothing near as good as even a pistol blaster, but- something. Something was better than nothing.
Two soft clicks from above. Cody gave the signal for returning friendlies. Three seconds, four, five, and then his best pair of scouts slid back down the earthy incline.
“Old ruins, but no inhabited settlements in the surrounding area,” Waxer reported.
“Might be a city on the other side of the mountain, though,” Boil added. “We saw light reflected on the cloud cover.”
Nodding, Cody glanced back up at the exit, and the limited light trickling down from it. They could see better by the faintly glowing moss scattered around the tunnel. “We’ll make camp for the night. See if daylight doesn’t bring us better options. Trapper, Jig, first watch with me.”
The men murmured agreements and started to settle into place. So of course, that was when they heard the light pitter-patter of running footsteps, and a child careened around a turn to crash headlong into Reddi.
“Whoa!” The man yelped, automatically grasping at small shoulders. “Watch it, kid!”
Wide eyes blinked up at him, and then at the rest of the troopers. Realizing just how many of them there were seemed to cause the child to panic, and they started struggling to get out of Reddi’s grip.
“Hey hey hey, easy there, don’t hurt him,” Waxer admonished, immediately moving closer to crouch at the kid’s side. “It’s alright, we’re friendlies, I promise. Can you speak Basic?”
The struggling went abruptly still, but those wide eyes continued to look more terrified than anything else. Cody took in the damp and grimy clothes, sloppy mending and fresh tears along the sleeves and pants legs, along with a blaster stuck through a braided rope belt.
After another minute of Waxer working his magic, the child gathered enough courage to speak. “Are you with the Melida? Or the Daan?” They asked in a wavery voice.
To a man, every trooper frowned. “The who?” Waxer inquired.
“The- the Melida and the Daan,” the kid said again, eyes darting around. “The adults. The ones fighting.”
Several troopers shifted uneasily. “Are you fighting too, little one?” Waxer asked as kindly as he could.
Tears welled up. “We want it to stop,” the child whispered. “We’re the Young, we won’t- we won’t fight in their war for them, we just want it to stop.”
Cody took another look past the grime and too-big clothes over too-little muscle. Four, maybe five, if he were a vod - which meant between eight and ten for a human without accelerated aging. Too young. Too young for a vod, let alone a civilian. Even too young for a-
Forcing that thought out of his mind, Cody carefully stepped closer, bringing the kid’s attentioned squarely onto himself. “We aren’t allied with either of these Melida or Daan, little one. We serve the Republic.” And that was true. The Empire turned him and his brothers into unthinking meat droids - it would never hold Cody’s loyalty, so long as his mind remained his own.
The child bit his lip, before tentatively asking, “Like the Jedi?”
Sound roared in his ears. Execute Order Sixty-Six. Good soldiers follow orders. “Blast him!” Good soldiers-
“Yeah, kid,” Waxer thankfully answered. “We have a Jedi we’re supposed to be working under, but- we aren’t sure where he is right now.” As if any of them knew where they were, or when for that matter. Their deaths spanned the length of twelve years, and the tunnels held no clue of when along that timeline, or before, or after, they might have landed.
“We have a Jedi too!” The kid exclaimed, face lighting up with joy and awe. “A really real one from the Core, and he stayed to help even when the older ones left!”
Cody’s breath caught in his throat. In the corner of his eye, he could see Boil’s hands faintly shaking.
“Could you take us to this Jedi?” Reddi asked, looking hopeful. The child still standing before him nodded.
“Mm-hm! He’s the one who told us to check the outer tunnels, ‘cause he felt something - that’s how we all know he’s a real Jedi, even if he hasn’t got a laser sword anymore.”
Cody frowned. He hoped that wasn’t a bad sign.
“What else can he do?” Waxer asked, standing up and taking one of the kid’s hands with his own in order to start heading down the tunnel. Everyone else took up their squad positions and followed.
“He always knows when someone’s ‘bout to find us, or if there’s bombs and things. And! And he can duck blaster shots coming right for him, even when they come from behind! He caught Firi by waving his hands before she could fall off a cliff, and sometimes he knows what I’m gonna say before I say it!”
Waxer chuckled. “Definitely a Jedi. What’s his name, then?”
“Obi-wan Kenobi!”
And just like that, the ground fell out from beneath Cody’s feet.
-Vod’e-
“Let me see if I’ve got this straight,” the youth with ginger hair and a Coruscanti accent said slowly. “You all think you’ve come back in time thirty years.”
“Only twenty, for most of us,” Waxer answered.
He’d taken the lead as spokesperson for their group, continuing to chat with little Ashyr as they led the troopers into an underground camp full of younglings, and then introducing everyone to the adolescent guards who stopped them. When “Obi-wan” appeared, he fit right in with the others, perhaps seven or eight in vod years, which probably meant right around fifteen or so.
Cody couldn’t get over how young he looked. But at the same time, the air of weariness, of wariness, reminded him more of a battle-strained vod than anything else. No lightsaber, no confident attitude, no fond smile curling at the corner of his mouth-
“And you all want to help us, because I’m supposedly a General in the war you’ve been fighting in the future, and you’re all assigned to my command?” Obi-wan stared at them, a familiar eyebrow going up.
Waxer hesitated. And Cody spoke up.
“No.” Intense eyes flicked over to him - All right there, Cody? - and he forced himself to keep breathing. “We want to help, because civilian children shouldn’t be fighting their own families to try and stop a war. Because even if you weren’t someone we knew and trusted, this isn’t right. Anyone with an ounce of morality can understand that.”
Obi-wan stared at him, before the youth’s shoulders slumped oh so slightly. “I wish my master had seen it that way,” he muttered sadly.
“What happened to him, sir?” Never cautiously piped up. “If you don’t mind us asking - why are you here by yourself?”
“Master Qui-gon and I were tasked with finding Master Tahl, not with aiding negotiations or helping the Young.” A bitter smile twisted the youth’s face. “He stayed true to that mission. I decided I couldn’t leave before helping to resolve this, one way or another. And by staying, I’m no longer a member of the Jedi Order.”
“That’s osik, sir,” Cody said flatly. “You’re the one acting like a true Jedi, aiding those who need you. If your teacher couldn’t see that, then he’s an idiot.”
Obi-wan blinked at him, repeatedly. His throat bobbed, and it looked like it took every ounce of his willpower not to start crying. “Thank you.”
Cody gave him a nod. “We obviously don’t have anything of our own, sir, but perhaps in the morning we can do an inventory of resources, see where our skills will be best put to use.”
“That- yes. That seems appropriate.” Regaining his composure, the youth straightened his shoulders. “We don’t have much, but I wouldn’t mind transferring some weaponry to you and your men from the younger children - use that as an excuse to keep them out of the fighting.”
Another nod. “Good idea. We’ll review the ranks as well, and perhaps set up some training routines.”
Obi-wan agreed. “I’ve got a datapad with some notes of what I’ve been trying to pass on-”
“In the morning, sir,” Cody said, squinting at the dark bags under the boy’s eyes. It took a long moment of hesitation, but eventually, the small Jedi accepted his insistence.
Soon enough, the men dispersed through the low-ceiling cave, introducing themselves to various younglings, and picking spots to lay down where they could see and easily reach the handful of tunnels leading in and out. Cody alone remained close to Obi-wan, fully ready to force the youth to lay down for the night cycle if needed.
Wonder of wonders, though, fifteen year old Obi-wan appeared to more readily accept orders than his thirty-five year old self, and curled up on a woven mat to drift off.
For a good while afterward, Cody simply laid beside him and stared. Only when absolutely certain Obi-wan had fallen asleep, he reached out to gently brush a strand of limp hair away from too-pale skin. “Ke’nuhoy jahaala, vod. Vod’ika,” he amended.
This wasn’t his General. But it was his Jetii, and Cody vowed to keep him alive in this lifetime, no matter what.