Chapter Text
The Jedi were marvels Cody thought to himself as he watched JM-031 cut through battle droids with precision and expertise. The main battle was done. The Sith commander neutralised. It was all just cleanup at this point. The last few droids were cleanly dispatched by the Jedi’s blade.
“Was that acceptable, General Cody?”
A cocky grin.
“Good work,” Cody nodded, ignoring the sardonic tone of his subordinate. It was a good first outing all things considered.
His Jedi approached. Usually a JM class would be assigned to a High General, not a lowly General like him, but Cody got results. He needed the best. Earned the best.
And this one was the best. Or at least that’s what High General Alpha had told him.
It was their first battle together and 031 reinforced how essential a Jedi could be against the Sith during a battle.
Like an obedient strill with a ball his Jedi offered him two lightsabers. The first was his own. A blue blade which Cody hooked into the proper position on his belt. The Jedi’s eyes followed it before quickly looking back at Cody. Cody took the other one in his hand and inspected the red blade.
“Did you know them?” he asked casually.
031’s strange blue eyes blinked. “No, sir.”
“I suppose that’s an indelicate question,” Cody said.
The Jedi considered this. He opened his mouth to say something smart and then thought better of it.
“You can ask what you like, sir.” 031 said instead. His face had gone smug from victory in battle to peaceful and obedient.
This Jedi had a way of answering that sounded like a positive, but didn’t give his actual opinion on the matter.
Cody struck the saber with his palm in a pleased gesture. “Anyway, well done. Your reputation precedes you, Sith Slayer.”
The perfect mask cracked only for a second at the title before it went placid again.
“Dismissed.”
His Jedi bowed smoothly. Jedi weren’t technically part of the military structure and weren’t required to salute.
Cody had reports to make and receive, but his gaze lingered. He wanted to see what his new Jedi would do. Usually they skulked back onto the ship to their quarters until the next battle.
The sun glinted off the control collar. A band of metal painted white. Orange numbers printed on it denoting the Jedi’s designation.
His Jedi didn’t head to a LAAT that would take him to the Glory. He walked back towards the battlefield, then sat in the middle of it all. Cody slowly started to follow. The Jedi had sat down beside one of the wounded. A black flag was pinned to him. Too damaged to fix. A goner.
The Clones viewed each other as brothers. They protected and loved one another as family, but they had to learn not to get too attached. To be able to grieve, but also let go. Cody was a General. If he let his sadness and rage overwhelm him he would never be able to lead his men, and ultimately more lives would be lost.
But he wasn’t made of stone.
The Jedi took the soldier's hand. Only a Shiny. No marks of valour. No story on his armour. Just a blank canvas fated to die in his first battle. And he had been dying alone. No one had noticed or had the time to sit with him.
Cody quickened his pace, a protective surge inside him. Whatever the Jedi was doing–
“He’s not dead,” his Jedi told him. His attention never wavered from the Shiny, but he probably sensed Cody’s approach with his magic.
“He’s not going to live,” Cody said with heavy warning in his tone. He hadn’t meant to be so blunt, but the—the Jedi holding the Shiny’s hand felt wrong. There should be a brother with him.
The Jedi finally looked up. He frowned at Cody and then looked back down to the Shiny.
“It’s okay,” the Shiny said weakly, brown eyes catching Cody’s own. “I got a bunch. I got twelve!”
Cody knelt down on his other side. “What’s your name, soldier?”
The pain in the shiny’s eyes wasn’t from the wound.
“Your name’s Dozen,” Cody said. He could give the Shiny that much at least. Dozen’s eyes brightened.
“It doesn’t hurt as much anymore,” he told Cody. “It hurt a lot before…” Dozen’s eyes drifted hazily to the Jedi. The Jedi didn’t speak but Cody noticed his face had lost its colour, his eyes were slitted only showing a dash of the strange blue.
“What’s your name, sir?”
“Cody, you know that,” Cody said gently.
“No… I mean…the Jedi.”
Jedi were given numbers. The idea went back to trying to wean them off their natural selfish nature. A name made one an individual. A number, part of a whole.
“Ohbeeone,” the Jedi said, the numbers slurring together. Cody frowned, thinking he might have misheard. He had been calling him Zero-Thirty-One, not Oh-Three-One.
“No, no, your name,” Dozen insisted. “Do you not have one yet?” Dozen looked over to Cody. “I–I saw you fight. You deserve a name too. You got way more than twelve.”
Dozen was a shiny. He wouldn’t know the rules about Jedi yet. Or maybe he had been briefed but had forgotten in the excitement for his first battle.
“People call me Sith Slayer,” 031 grimaced. His blue eyes glanced briefly at Cody before looking down at the dying man again.
“Nice… to meet you… Slayer. My name is… my name’s Dozen.”
“Hello there,” 031 said sadly. After a moment he gave the limp hand a kiss and rested it on Dozen’s chest.
The Jedi looked more out of it now than he did taking on fifty droids and a Sith commander.
“What did you do?” Cody asked. His voice had lost all hostility now.
“I took some of his pain,” his Jedi answered tiredly. “He was in a lot of pain.”
“I didn’t know Sith could do that.”
His Jedi raised a sarcastic eyebrow at him. It was insubordinate. Alpha always told him to be quick with the shocker for Sith who thought they could get away with any sign of disobedience, but he didn’t.
The Jedi had a point after all. He wasn’t a Sith.
Not anymore.
The Clones of the Republic had been defending its borders since the Sith Civil Wars. Their progenitor Cassus Fett had been a Marshal Field Commander under Mand’alor the Ultimate. He had been heavily wounded in the final battle between Darth Revan and the Mand’alor. He was captured by the Republic, taking advantage of the Sith and Mandalorian conflict.
With the rise of the Sith Empire and the Mandalore sector’s gigantic expansion under Ultimate, the Republic was getting desperate to save themselves from absorption into either power. A deal was struck with the Cloners of Kamino to make an army from one of Mandalore’s greatest warriors. One insult among many that Mandalore had never forgiven the Republic for.
The first batch were taught Mandalorian tactics and strategy. They were trained how to work together to deal with Sith magic. They were the greatest army the galaxy had ever seen thus far. The Sith and the Mandalorians were too fractured within to gain much ground over the Republic after the rise of the Clones. An uneasy truce had lasted thousands of years. The GAR protected the Republic, guarded its people and its borders, and served the Senate.
It couldn’t last. Over the last two decades the galactic political landscape grew grim. The fringes of the Republic that dealt with both Mandalorian and Sith raids became discontented. Nearly ten years ago a Confederacy formed.
The Republic was splitting itself. Meanwhile, Mandalore was gaining more and more strength under Mand’alor the Reformer, Jaster Mereel, and the Sith had all been brought to heel under their new Emperor, Darth Sidious.
It only gave the GAR more to do. The Clone Army began its war with the CIS pulling planets back into the Republic’s fold. It looked inevitable the little Rebellion would end in failure. Mereel was more concerned with taking old Mandalorian territories and stabilising his economy. The Sith were always a threat, but with their loose alliances and reliance on slavery meant they usually ate themselves before the GAR had to do much to deal with them.
But the CIS, seeing they were losing, knowing even with its droid armies it couldn’t fight against the Clone Army, went to the Sith and struck a bargain.
Darth Tyranus brokered an alliance between the CIS and Sith. Battle droids led by Sith Commanders. Pincer attacks on two fronts with the third ready to pounce when enough blood was spilt in the water.
So something had to change.
That’s where the Jedi program came in.
“It’s about Redemption,” the Supreme Chancellor said. His expression didn’t match his words. The leader of the Republic didn’t like the idea of using Sith, but these were desperate times. “We take a Sith, we get it to fight for us… we make them into Jedi.”
“This will never work.” High General Alpha rolled his eyes.
“The Sith were once guardians of the Republic. Jedi. They broke their oaths,” the Supreme Chancellor insisted, firmer now. “We’re just making them keep what was once promised.”
“Do you know how much reconditioning and brainwashing it will take?” Alpha argued. “Do you know how Sith live? This will be a cakewalk compared to their apprenticeships.”
“We won’t brainwash sentient beings,” the Supreme Chancellor said, voice hard. “It hasn’t come to that.”
We’re just going to force our enemy to fight against their own people. Cody thought to himself at the time. He was fairly certain it was a war crime under Republic Law, but he wasn’t about to speak out of turn only freshly promoted as he was at the time.
It wasn’t a war crime anymore of course. The vote passed. The Jedi program was put into effect.
Jedi–real Jedi had died out thousands of years ago. They were figures of fantasy. Force users that fought to protect the Republic and its people. That used their dark magic for good.
Cody had had two Jedi before this new one. Both of them were their own brand of nightmare. Both he was forced to execute with the collar bomb.
Both of them had red lightsabers and yellow eyes. Like every Sith he had ever encountered.
No exception.
No exception until now.
The men had started calling the 212th’s Jedi ‘Slayer’ and it spread quickly as names often do. Cody should have dissuaded them. Sith–Jedi were not encouraged to be individuals.
But, it was their culture as Clones. They all shared the same face. Imagery and names were important. They all started as numbers too. Why wouldn’t they include their Jedi?
It hadn’t happened before. Not like this. There had been names for the last one, but they were said in private. They were insults that came from fear and bitterness at having to associate with him. Snake Tongue, Devil Eyes.
But Slayer… Slayer was a name. Something their new Jedi had earned. Like any Clone name, once it had been revealed it couldn’t be forgotten.
So Cody didn’t stop them, and had privately started referring to the Jedi as Slayer as well.
Besides, if the Senate didn’t want Jedi to be individuals they should have kitted them in proper armour and given them helmets. Slayer’s uniform had some light armour, but otherwise was in light tan fabrics, his shoulder guard emblazoned with the symbol of the old Jedi Order in gold. A flowing brown cloak that flew behind him dramatically in the wind. He was meant to stand out. Not only a weapon, but a shield. The blasters were aimed at him before any other target on the battlefield. A figure of legend. A Jedi Knight in robes and armour, lightsaber brandished outward.
Also, Cody noticed, there was a growing ease between Slayer and the rest of the 212th. A sense of belonging. If the ultimate goal was for the Sith to shed its selfishness and become a guardian of peace, or whatever it was a Jedi was supposed to be, then encouraging it to like the people they’re fighting with couldn’t go amiss.
He didn’t know too much about his new Jedi Knight. Jedi didn’t hold rank, but they were expected to give all expertise and service to their General and their company. Slayer, it turned out, was a brilliant strategist. One that took into consideration the cost of lives it would take to reach a goal. Sometimes his plans were a little too excessive, but he was quick to make up for it by throwing himself at the tricky parts.
Cody couldn’t argue with results or battle statistics. Slayer joining the 212th was saving lives. A lot of them.
Just the other day he had jumped directly in front of a group of soldiers that had been pinned up against a cliff. His blue lightsaber moved at a furious pace and deflected the blaster bolts.
Since when could lightsabers do that?
Cody tried to think of previous battles and intel dealing directly with Sith commanders, but he didn’t remember any using their blade to shield.
Slayer considered his question. “It’s a skill that not many Sith bother to learn. The lightsaber is meant to be a weapon of death and torture. It’s a powerful tool that strikes fear to anyone that sees it. It cuts through almost anything. It’s as unstoppable as the Force itself. It was made to make its victim’s death slow. It’s not a shield. In the Empire the strong rule, the weak die. A Sith Lord protecting those too weak to defend themselves is unheard of.” Slayer took a sip of caf. He took it black, Cody noticed.
And yet, Cody thought to himself. It’s what you did. And Cody had realised whenever he saw that flash of blue on the field it wasn’t fear he felt.
No, the buzzing bright blue blade was starting to feel a lot like victory whenever it was spotted. A lot like hope.