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Series:
Part 1 of Melida|Daan AUs
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Published:
2023-08-27
Completed:
2023-08-29
Words:
2,513
Chapters:
2/2
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64
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879
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Children of War

Summary:

The 212th receives aid from a strange group during a battle. Their first name abandoned, they call themselves the 200. They call Obi-Wan Ben, or General. And they leave Cody with questions.

TL;DR Cody finding out about Melida|Daan.

Edit:Chapter Two is now up!

Notes:

This could be read as standalone, but will make more sense if you read my fic the Song of the Young of Melida|Daan (https://archiveofourown.to/works/49510735) either before or after.

For and heavily inspired by back then, i was dauntless (https://archiveofourown.to/works/39548322) by Night_Fury

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Chapter 1: The 200

Chapter Text

Cody knew his general was different from the other Jedi. He knew his general had proven adept at warfare. He knew his general had many friends, many in… unique situations. From the Senator from Alderaan to a former arms dealer on Coruscant, Kenobi always knew somebody.

His knowing somebody had saved their skins earlier that day, but had also left Cody with far more questions than answers.

They had been pinned down and out numbered, desperately trying to get a message through, when their comms had suddenly come to life, and a staticky voice had announced,

“212th Battalion, this is General Cerasi of the 200. We mean you no harm and are here to help. Please do not shoot us, as that would anger our medics, and we’d rather stay on their good sides.”

As the message ended, Cody had seen packs of soldiers, appearing from no where, backing up the clones, taking down the strategy droids, blowing things, and wreaking havoc. They were few, but had fought as though possessed, as though their only options were to fight or die.

Cody had glanced at his general, whose blue-grey eyes had taken on a strange, far-away look upon the message’s transmission, but who nevertheless had continued to block blaster bolts, defending his men from the clankers.

“You know these people?” he’d asked, speaking over the din of the battlefield.

“I guess you could say that.” Obi-Wan had replied, that look still on his face.

“Aw, and here I thought we had something.” A teasing voice had said. Wheeling quickly to the left, Cody had come face with a dark-haired, dark-skinned woman in her mid-twenties with a rifle on her back, who was using a pair of ancient Westars to shoot the Seppies, and very effectively at that.

She’d smiled at Obi-Wan mischievously as he’d looked astounded.

“Aema?” he demanded.

“In the flesh, General, and might I just say what a pleasure it is to see you not bleeding out?” she’d replied.

“Give him five minutes and he’ll be doing it again.” An arriving brunette around the General’s age with several grenades in hand had chimed in.

“Nield?! Who else is here? Is Wrint hiding behind that tree?!”

“Wrint is currently helping your CMO in the medbay, as a matter of fact.” ‘Nield’ corrected. “As for who’s here, well… I guess basically everyone.”

Obi-Wan had stared wordlessly for a few seconds.

“Sir?” Cody had asked, beyond confused.

Obi-Wan had opened his mouth, only for a large explosion to interrupt him.

“I’ll explain later, but they can be trusted.” he’d said.

The battle had been won, with the help of their… allies? Cody was unsure of who they were or where they were from. They weren’t Jedi, but had fought to protect his brothers, had asked them for names, had interacted with them as equals, and had appeared to know his General, hugging him, rambling at him and asking questions, poking him and demanding to know if he was injured.

Despite that, some of the things they’d mentioned offhand were… unsettling. Aema, who had started a marksmanship competition with Longshot, had casually remarked that she’d been sniping since she was five, and Cerasi, a blonde in her mid-thirties, had been dragged into medbay by a thirty something year old man, ‘Wrint’ while she protested she was fine and had taken worse as a teenager, only for the medic to retort she’d broken three limbs and fractured her skull as a teenager and still tried to keep going.

And then… the song. The 200, as they called themselves, had had to leave late that night, but before their departure they had all gathered together near the 200’s ships. Cody had watched from a distance, along with the rest of the 212th. Obi-Wan had gathered with the 200, fussing over and thanking them, one group in particular. And then the 200 had sung. A song that might have been a war cry or an anthem, irregular, uneven, messy, as though written by a grieving child, with little meter or planning, but with a strange rawness to it. A ragged pain, desperate and stubborn, fighting and enduring, and being broken in the process. A song that unsettled Cody, if only because there should not be anything for it to describe.

His general had sung with them. Had known that song. Cody didn’t like it. And so here he was, standing outside his general’s quarters, a cup of tea in one hand, ready to ask for his explanation.

Chapter 2

Summary:

Cody gets his explanation.

Notes:

Please don’t hate me.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Cody hesitated briefly, before knocking softly on the door. There was no answer. Cody frowned. The general always, always answered. Half the time he opened the door before the person could knock.

The door was unlocked, and his general had always encouraged them to come straight in. And it wasn’t as if he was unexpected. Maybe it would be fine for him to just… drop in and make sure General Kenobi was alright? Maybe he was sleeping, in which case Cody could turn off the lights and head back to the barracks, or injured or unconscious, in which case he could call Helix. It would probably be fine.

Cody remained where he was for another few minutes. It was the realization that the tea in his hand was cooling that drove him to act, and he quietly opened the door and stepped in.

His general was neither asleep nor injured, nor did he appear to have heard Cody come in. He was sitting, staring at the wall but not seeming to see it, completely still save for his breathing, which was just a little too shaky for comfort.

“General?” Cody asked, slowly drawing near. Kenobi made no response, and there was a strange look in his usually bright eyes, a look that Cody hated, a shuttered, hiding, tired look. Haunted. Cody gently, slowly, put the tea next to his hands, and, careful not to move fast enough to spook him, laid a hand on his shoulder.

Obi-Wan seemed to come back to himself a bit

“Cody? Oh, I’m so sorry, I didn’t notice you come in, I, was a, a bit lost in thought.” Kenobi said, clearly fighting to regain control of himself. “Quite inexcusable of me, sorry.”

Cody frowned, before pushing the tea into his general’s hands.

“Oh. Thank you my dear, you didn’t have to do that, but still.”

Cody, rather reluctantly, took his hand off the Jedi’s shoulder and sat next to him.

“Sir,” he asked, “are you alright?”

“I’m fine, thank you.”

Cody personally believed Kenobi just said that automatically now.

“Sir… does it have to do with the 200?” Cody would’ve thought they were friends with his general, but maybe not. If it turned out they’d hurt him, there was nowhere in the galaxy they’d be safe from the 212th’s commander.

“Yes.” Kenobi answered after a few seconds. “I knew them a long time ago, under… unusual circumstances.”

Another silence elapsed.

“General?” Cody asked.

There was no denying the full-body flinch at that word.

“Please… please don’t call me that, Cody. Just, at least for this conversation, please just call me Obi-Wan.”

The general had been trying to get Cody to call him that since the war had started. Cody hadn’t done so before, but there was no way in the galaxy he was going to make his Jedi withdraw into himself even more.

“Obi-Wan?” he said carefully, as though testing the word on his tongue.

The Jedi smiled, or tried to.

“Obi-Wan?” he repeated gently, prompting.

The gen-, Obi-Wan carefully fixed his gaze on the table and began to speak.

“There was a mission, when I was thirteen, one of my first… There was a planet… its population divided in two, the Melida and the Daan… they were had fighting for centuries, always at war… no one even knew why anymore.

“A Jedi had been sent to try to negotiate a peace, Master Tahl… but they didn’t want peace. They captured and tortured her. My master and I were sent to rescue her. Get in, find her, get out. But when we arrived…”

It was another few seconds before Obi-Wan continued.

“There was a third faction. They called themselves the Young. And that’s what they were. Children. They’d asked questions, started arguments, demanded to know why they couldn’t have peace… and for that they’d been beaten and thrown out, left to die…”

There was ice in Cody’s chest.

“They helped us rescue Master Tahl, but begged us to stay, to help… I thought we should, but Qui-Gon… he loved Tahl. He…”

Obi-Wan’s breath hitched. Cody reached out, unsure whether to touch him.

“He told me… to choose. That if I stayed, I’d wouldn’t be a member of the Order anymore. I-, I couldn’t leave. I couldn’t abandon them. So he… he repudiated me. Cut my padawan braid, took my saber… and left.”

Cody placed a hand on Obi-Wan’s forearm, his rage momentarily numbed by disbelief, that someone could do that to a child, to a child who wanted to help, to his general, to his general who would risk his life time and time again, offer it willingly rather abandon someone.

Obi-Wan took a shuddering breath.

“I chose to stay. The Elders had decreed that everyone under sixteen was to executed, not long before Tahl had arrived. They were… hunting us. They’d declared us traitors, enemies, to be killed on site… No quarter, no surrender. Not even the babies.”

Cody slipped his hand into Obi-Wan’s, not daring to speak, scared of hurting him or scaring him away.

“It was war. We hid in sewers, cave systems. There were more than two thousand of us, and the oldest was only fifteen.”

Obi-Wan had been thirteen. Nat-born thirteen. Not even a shiny, a cadet, a cadet and in a war, abandoned, alone, and still trying to help.

“That was the first time I was a general.”

A thousand flinches, winces, and looks suddenly made sense.

“We fought. For a year, we fought. So many died, it… We didn’t have bacta, or armor. There was never enough food, and the littlest ones… they went months without going above ground… We had no way to keep warm, our medic was twelve and had no supplies, and the Elders…”

Cody slipped his other hand to cover Obi-Wan’s other.

“We fought. And we won. We were… we were so close… so close. We had gotten the Elders to agree to peace talks, to a ceasefire… And then… Mawat. His little brother had been killed, and… he blamed us. He-, he sold us out. Told both the Melida and the Daan where we were. The first time they’d ever worked together, and it was to kill us.”

A tear was slowly running down Obi-Wan face.

“They smoked us out. Collapsed some entrances. Put everyone they had at the others, set everything on fire. Trapped us in a kill box.”

Cody slipped one of his hands up to Obi-Wan’s shoulder. He wanted to scream, to punch someone, to get some time alone with Jinn, the Elders, and anyone else involved, he wanted to take his Jedi and hold him close, shelter him, protect him, his Jedi who had been through so much, lost so much, and still gave all he had, who was so unfailingly kind in a world, in a galaxy that was seemed determined to make him suffer.

“It was fight or die. All of them. All of us. An inferno behind us and them in front. When…”

Another tear fell as Obi-Wan tried to steady his breathing. Cody moved the hand on his shoulder to cradle his head, gently brushing the tear away with his thumb. Obi-Wan lifted one hand to hold on to Cody’s wrist, as though it were a lifeline.

“When the fighting stopped… it only stopped because there was no one left to fight. The Elders that had been there were all dead. And the Young… so, so many… None of us ever forgot the smell, of ashes and blood… You couldn’t see the grass for the bodies… The littlest ones had never even made out… They’d died in the flames…”

Another tear, then another. Cody moved the hand that had been holding Obi-Wan’s to the Jedi’s arm, and Obi-Wan clasped his elbow.

“There had been so many of us… A little over two hundred survived, but we’d lost too many, we couldn’t stay, it… We could’ve, there weren’t any Elders left, but… we’d lost too many. We buried our dead. Every last Young. We went to their capitals, found food, water, medicine, ships. We took everything that could be useful, burnt what remained… and left. The largest ship… we wrote the names of the dead in it, on the walls. Every last name. Some of them were… They… The youngest was barely a year old.”

Cody felt like he’d been stabbed in the chest. He could feel tears gathering in his own eyes, helpless as he was to fix this, unable to shelter Obi-Wan from it. All he could do was draw Obi-Wan nearer, hold him closer, and make a vow to himself, that he would never let Obi-Wan be in position like that again, that he would never let him be abandoned again, never let him be betrayed, shot in the back by the ones he trusted the most, so lost, confused and mourning.

“We left the name ‘the Young’ behind there… the Young were dead, we were the survivors… We took the name ‘the 200’ then.”

Cody was holding Obi-Wan now, although he knew that the plasteel of his armor was probably uncomfortable. Obi-Wan’s head was pressed against his neck and his hands were tucked against Cody’s chest plate. He could feel tears against his neck as he carded a hand through Obi-Wan’s hair, his other arm wrapped around Obi-Wan’s shoulders.

“We eventually parted ways. Master Jinn’s mission report… the Jedi didn’t have all the information. I returned to the Order. The others refused any help from any government or organization, save some from the ExplorCorps. They became nomads, wanderers… I hadn’t seen them in a while, and I was glad they were there, it just… there used to be so many more. And we’re not Young anymore, but we’re all still… still fighting… There’s so much and yet so little difference that… We used to dream of a time with no war, no fighting. It was only ever a dream, I suppose.”

Obi-Wan’s voice had sunk to a whisper as he finished. All Cody could do was put his emotions in a box to unpack later, and gently shift Obi-Wan, who was nearly asleep, exhausted by the night’s catharsis, into a more comfortable position.

After a while, Obi-Wan dozed off. Cody transferred him to his bunk, careful not to wake him up. He remained there a few moments, watching, before he spoke to the sleeping Jedi.

“I’ll always protect you, always have your back. Always, Obi-Wan. I swear it.”

And with that, Cody turned off the lights and closed the door behind him.

Notes:

I am going to mark this as complete, but I might end up adding a third chapter focusing on Cody’s unpacking that box of emotions. (aka a full chapter of undiluted Qui-Gon bashing.)
Comments and kudos are always very appreciated. One more, please don’t hate me.
—Elizabeth

Notes:

I am very new here, so please be lenient and if you could please comment that would be wonderful

Thank you
—Elizabeth

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