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Cody grins behind his helmet as he watches his general scale up the cliff path.
They’ve done it.
Skywalker had killed Dooku. Now Kenobi has done the same to Grievous, whatever remains of the Separatist forces will be thrown into disarray. The Republic will sweep in, and Separatist worlds will be brought back under their control.
He’s made it to the end of the war.
He almost can't believe it. He'd never expected to see this day - the Republic had been crumbling, and everyone knew it. They’d been fighting battle after battle after battle, and there had always been another one, always another one in which his brothers fell beside him, no matter how carefully he and Kenobi tried to plan. He'd never expected to live this long either.
Cody has always known that he would fight for the Republic, for the Jedi, that he would be expected to die for them. There’s no retirement plan for the clones, if they can’t keep up, when their reactions slow they will simply be picked off by the enemy. In fact, each year the war dragged on, he’s been more and more surprised by the fact that he was still there.
Sometimes, Cody wonders if there’s something looking out for him, maybe the force is on his side (the General said it flowed through all things, after all). Why else would he still be here after he’s literally thrown himself on top of Grievous, if not for some reason, some purpose?
The emergency chime of his comlink beeps, and he stares down at it in momentary confusion, before quickly allowing the connection through. He almost lets out a bitter laugh - they’ll never really be able to relax, will they?
There’s someone in a strange robe, who addresses him by name. And if not for the latter fact (and that this is a channel people shouldn’t be able to slice), Cody might have turned the connection off - this didn’t seem like the sort of person who should have access to emergency comm channels.
“Execute Order 66,” the figure tells him, and suddenly, everything makes sense to CC-2224. The Jedi are traitors, therefore they need to be executed.
He relays his orders to the trooper in the turret, and watches with a certain amount of satisfaction as High General Obi-Wan Kenobi falls to his death. A part of him wonders if the general could survive the fall, but he orders that part to be silent. The jedi was a traitor, now he was dead, that is all there was to it.
–
CC-2224 is a good soldier. He tracks down Jedi traitors and eliminates them. He helps to eradicate any remaining Separatist threat.
His new natborn general orders him to repaint his armour. He feels a momentary feeling of regret, but as he stares down at the orange-gold paint, he gets a flash of copper-coloured hair, and decides that it’s probably for the best, going over the old markings with gusto. The general frowns at his new paint when he sees it - CC-2224 wonders if he should have used completely different markings - but as the general doesn’t comment, he doesn’t let it worry him.
Sometimes, he dreams about the Jedi, fighting with them, planning with them, laughing with them, drinking tea in quiet moments with General Kenobi. He wakes wondering why the Jedi were traitors, they hadn’t seemed like it.
When Admiral Rampart visits, CC-2224 voices his concerns. In return, the admiral has his fingers broken. He understands. The Jedi let him question things, but they were traitors, and that is not how things should be. He thanks Admiral Rampart for reminding him, and leaves with the resolve to do better.
The dreams don’t stop.
Some of the other clones start questioning the order. He reports them to their superiors so that they might be similarly corrected.
“Cody,” a jedi youngling calls him, before he sends a blaster bolt through her temple.
It stays in his mind though. Cody. Cody. Cody. It’s his name. He wonders how he ever forgot it.
More clones start questioning orders. Cody doesn’t report them. He listens instead, telling himself that maybe this way he can gain important information.
The next mission to eliminate a jedi should have been an easy one. Cody botches it, gives a bad order. He doesn’t understand why he made such a rookie error. Neither do his superiors, who have him beaten and locked in solitary for a week. Cody probably deserves much worse.
While he’s there he dreams of the jedi. When he awakes, shivering in his freezing cell, he imagines the jedi hugging him, offering him some warm tea. He slams his head into the wall to get rid of the image.
When they come to let him out, they see his injuries and decide he needs to learn to do better. They keep him in there a week longer.
Cody doesn’t understand why he killed Obi-Wan Kenobi. Kenobi hadn’t been a traitor, he’d been a good leader, he’d protected his brothers, protected the Republic, he’d introduced Cody to a range of natborn music while they’d done datawork. He understands it would have been against protocol, but he doesn't understand why he didn’t ask Lord Sidious for more information, or tried to explain that Kenobi couldn’t have been a traitor like the others.
He goes to the gym to rebuild his muscle mass, then he’s sent on more missions, this time with closer supervision. Every day, he imagines that Kenobi is beside him, making overly-polite scathing comments to the Separatists he subdues, offering tactical advice before and during missions. When Cody can get away with it, he takes the advice, ensuring their missions run smoothly, with minimal casualties.
The natborn officers look at him with suspicion, but as their missions are a success, and they can’t prove that Cody is disobeying them (well, reading their orders creatively), they don’t do anything.
Cody hears that there’s a group of clones who can help you escape the GAR. He doesn’t report it. In fact, when clones disappear, he waits until the last conceivable moment to report that they haven’t checked in to their duties.
It’s the right thing to do, he thinks. Deserting is wrong, but you shouldn’t have soldiers in the army whose heart isn’t in it.
He gets sent on a mission with Crosshair. Despite the casualties at the beginning (Cody commits their names to memory), the mission goes smoothly with him by his side. He has to admit, he enjoys working with someone so competent.
He manages to convince the Governor to resolve the situation peacefully and hopes that Kenobi would have been proud of his negotiation skills. Then, Grotton orders him to execute her and Cody feels ice settle into his stomach. Execute Order 66. He won’t do it. He made a promise. He tells Grotton this.
Cody can’t deny that Crosshair saved him by shooting the Governor himself, but as he carries her cooling body down to the square, to be displayed as per Grotton’s orders, he can’t help but feel that he’d far rather have faced the consequences of disobedience than had to stare, shaking, into her wide, gaping eyes.
Cody wonders how Kenobi looked when he died. He doesn’t really want to think about it.
It’s on the shuttle on the way home that he realises - he can’t follow orders anymore. He doesn’t understand why he did what he did at the end of the war, but he doesn’t intend to make the same mistakes again.
He’s made his choices. He has to live with them too.
And Cody intends to live.