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Jedi weren’t meant to fight in war. That much became glaringly obvious to the vod’e within days of being assigned to them. Admittedly, initially that was just because Jedi weren’t used to being leaders, especially not leaders of full military battalions. They were peacekeepers who happened to be able to move things without touching them and had skills with laser swords, not generals. Even those who did have a grasp on leadership and strategy had had very little real-world experience, a fault that got too many vod’e killed in the first battles. There was only the tiniest handful of Jedi who were actually competent, the primary example of which was Jedi Councilmember and High General Obi-Wan Kenobi. But the overwhelming majority of the Jedi were completely and wholly unsuited to lead in war, laser swords or not.
But that changed. Out of pure necessity, that changed. If they weren’t shot down themselves, the Jedi either learned or watched their men get mowed down by droids over and over and over—and to the surprise of the vod’e, the Jedi refused to allow the second option to stand. So they learned and adapted, delegating tactical decisions and commands of units to trained troopers until they had done so enough to lead well. The Jedi became generals and commanders, became soldiers, warriors fighting battle after battle all across the galaxy. And they were almost scarily good at it.
But the fact remained that Jedi weren’t meant to fight in war.
The re-realization of that fact started with Marshall Commander Cody getting a long distance holocall at three in the karking morning. The irritation quickly morphed into alarm, though, when the Commander on the other end of the line explained with a wavering voice that they’d just gotten off of a brutal campaign that would have spelled total destruction for their entire battalion, if not for their Tholothian General pulling off some incredibly powerful Force-tricks in order to get them out of there—his eyes flickering a sickly yellow as he did so. Since returning to their Star Destroyer, their General had been acting off, snapping at troopers and grumbling things under his breath about the Jedi Council.
Cody’s heart had stuttered as soon as the Commander had said the word “yellow,” the memories of the eyes of the Sith he’d seen flashing in front of his own.
The Commander’s Jedi was Falling.
With that realization, each and every CC trooper in the GAR scrambled for information on what Falling actually was, and more importantly, on how to stop it. To their mild surprise, they managed to gather a lot—the Jedi were very, very trusting. Not that their trust was misplaced, but still.
After reading through what they’d gathered, the CCs had concluded over group chat three different things: the first, that the Jedi really shouldn’t be fighting on the front lines of a war, or even fighting at all.
The second, that there was no way that the vod’e were going to let their Jetiise Fall. Sure, the extra power was nice on the battlefield, but the Jedi lost themselves in exchange for that power, slowly losing all of the qualities that had inspired the fierce loyalty the vod’e had for them. It wasn’t worth it, even if the Generals would stay loyal to their troopers as Sith.
The third, that the entire Jedi Order seriously needed to learn that relationships were not something that they should be abstaining from. Because it hadn’t taken long for the vod’e to realize that a Jedi couldn’t Fall to the Dark Side if they actually had someone to catch them.
Thankfully, each and every Jedi had several hundred troopers who were more than willing to do so, the unspoken policy of keeping a professional distance from their commanding officers being thrown out the airlock in favor of making sure that their Jetiise didn’t lose themselves to the Dark.
It was trial and error, at first, though thankfully none of the errors were large enough that they couldn’t recover. What was eventually figured out was that as long as you could get the Jedi to actually relax, to concentrate on something other than the war, and to surround them with vod’e—their presences Light in the Force, apparently, and able to drive back the Dark—then the Dark would recede, the last dregs from using the Dark Side slept off that night. It wasn’t actually all that easy to distract them, especially not with how much more hostile Falling Jedi became so quickly, but recruiting the Medics usually took care of that problem.
As the months went on and more and more of the troopers learned about Falling and how to catch their Jedi (by a year and a half into the war, it was really only the Shinies who didn’t know), they gradually learned to recognize the early warning signs, as well. To notice all of the little things that meant that a Jedi was starting to stray towards the Dark. Things like the stiff shoulders that indicated nightmares that were far more terrifying than usual, the clenched fists and jaws when new orders came in from higher up, the way soft apologies elicited by bumping into someone was replaced by annoyed glances, how their expressions would sometimes slack before they winced and rubbed at their forehead. Slightly bigger things that came a bit later, reprimands coming out too sharp—sharp enough to make Shinies cry, sometimes—or muttering threats under their breath when discussing Separatist leaders, or accidentally using the Force to knock things around. Those slightly bigger things would initially be almost instantly followed up with a mildly self-loathing expression and then an apology, but less so as they Fell further. This was around the time that battles would start getting easier for the wrong reasons, Generals’ eyes flickering to that same, sickly yellow.
Thankfully, after that first span of six months wherein the Jedi started Falling for their first times, the vod’e had caught onto those little things, so the emergence of the yellow flickers were rare. That didn’t mean that the Jedi had stopped Falling, unfortunately—they still did, some with a higher frequency than others—but they never actually got very far before their troopers would (sometimes literally, when it came to getting them to be part of cuddle piles) drag them back into the Light. The vod’e had even developed a system of categorizing how far a Jedi had Fallen, and how best to pull them back from each progressive Level.
And that was a good thing, too, as it happened to every. Single. Jedi who fought on the front lines. All of them. But while it was freaky the first few times for each battalion, after a General hit five or six Falls and Catches, it became sort of morbidly commonplace, the troopers coping with the anxiety of having their Jedi start to turn Sith by placing bets on how long it’d take to pull their General back into the Light this time, or daring each other to do more and more ridiculous things to alternatively distract or amuse their Generals as they Caught them.
Cody had experienced nineteen Falls and Catches secondhand from General Skywalker alone via an initially anxious but later annoyed-amused Rex before he was put into the position of needing to Catch his own General. At that point, he honestly should have been used to the concept, but somehow he’d started subconsciously believing that General Kenobi—kind, strong, General Kenobi, who was as gentle and compassionate as he was self-disciplined and brilliant—wasn’t actually going to Fall. He’d lasted months longer than any other Jedi who was close to the vod’e, after all, General Koon being the runner-up. But really, it was only a matter of time.
However, it did take the disaster that was Umbara and the demagolka Krell to actually push him over the edge.
And then he started Falling fast.
They were back on the Negotiator, Cody sitting at the tiny, circular table that the General had somehow fit into his quarters (he still wasn’t convinced that the Force wasn’t involved) and staring at what would be the mission report, once he actually fought back the nausea enough to fill it out, while General Kenobi paced the eighteen feet of open space between the back wall and his door.
Cody was only broken out of the numb haze that he’d fallen into when his General swore, slamming a fist against the wall. He started, looking up to find that General Kenobi was breathing heavily, both hands curled into fists as he growled under his breath. His expression was one that Cody had only ever caught the barest flashes of—pure anger.
“. . . General?” Cody asked hesitantly, warning bells finally starting to ring in the back of his mind.
General Kenobi muttered something that Cody didn’t catch, then growled, “It’s all our fault.” Somehow, Cody knew that the 212th wasn’t the ‘our’ his General was talking about. “We’ve become so karking complacent, so secure in our moral superiority—ha—that we didn’t even notice a kriffing Sith in our own ranks, and when we do find out we let the man who finished him off be arrested—” The General cut himself off with an honest-to-goodness snarl, stalking a few steps to the side before angrily shoving his fingers through his hair.
His eyes flickered.
Cody froze, desperately hoping for a few seconds that he’d imagined it.
Then the General turned on his heel, still growling, and the holo he kept of him and General Skywalker in the center of the table flying into the wall along with Cody’s datapad.
Cody stared for a long moment before it actually clicked that his General was Falling. And really fast, too—
Cody muttered a curse under his breath. “General—” he started, standing.
General Kenobi rounded on him, making Cody pull back a little at the pure rage in his expression. “Don’t you dare recite some osik about troopers’ lives being expendable, I swear on the Force itself—”
“I wasn’t going to,” Cody cut in, internally wincing at how hard it was to keep his voice even. “I just—” Kark, he was panicking a little. What did he do? “—think it’d probably be for the best if you calmed yourself a little.”
That was the wrong thing to say. “I’ve been nothing but calm!” the General snarled. “And look where it’s gotten us: still stuck in this kriffing war, almost no progress made to end it despite the death of hundreds of thousands of troopers!”
The temperature in the room was dropping.
The General’s eyes flickered back to yellow, the shift starting to look like it would stay that way.
And at that, Cody tossed caution and rational thought out of the airlock and tackled his General.
The breath was knocked out of both of them as they hit the ground, but Cody recovered fast enough to get his hands locked around his General’s wrists before the General managed to stammer a startled, “Cody—what—”
“Sorry,” Cody said, maneuvering into a crouch. A glance at his General’s expression showed that instead of confusion replacing the anger, his General was just confused and angry.
Karking fantastic.
“What are you doing?” General Kenobi asked in outrage as Cody yanked him up to his feet, never loosening his grip on the General’s wrists. Thankfully, the General had yet to actually start fighting him.
“Helping, sir.” The temperature in the room had stopped falling, but it was still unnaturally cold. Cody considered his options for a grand second and a half before choosing one, promptly dragging his General to the door.
“‘Helping’?” General Kenobi demanded, starting to tug his arms back.
Cody chose not to respond, dragging him out into the hallway.
There were five vod’e passing by in the hall, and with a glance Cody identified one softshell, one Shiny and three veterans, all of their shoulders slumped in that way simultaneously read as exhaustion and grief. Of course, all five of them came to a sudden stop when they realized that Cody was quite literally dragging a furious General out of his quarters.
“Uh, Commander?” one of the veterans—Streetsmart, Cody thought his name was—asked. “What—”
“Yes, Commander,” General Kenobi interrupted with sickly-sweet venom in his voice, glaring. Cody winced. “Why have you decided to drag me out here?” His voice curled into a growl at the end.
The other vod’e in the hall were staring at the General in absolute shock.
Thankfully—considering that Cody was still mentally reeling from the General’s tone—Streetsmart caught on quickly, swearing under his breath. He turned, barking to the others, “Spread the word that we’re doing a Catching, now.”
The Shiny just looked confused, but the other three released strings of curses, darting down the hallway and then in different directions, one of the veterans dragging the Shiny with him.
“Doing a what?” General Kenobi growled. He yanked his arms back, making Cody swear as he stumbled forward, just barely holding on—
“Maybe don’t do that, sir,” Streetsmart said, grabbing the General’s arm in the hold typically used to escort prisoners. The General’s resulting glare was somehow a cross of rage, confusion and betrayal all at the same time, and Cody used the distraction to take the same hold on the General’s other arm.
The General’s head snapped around in surprise. “What in the Force’s name are you doing?” he barked.
Cody grit his teeth. “Helping, sir.”
With that, Cody and Streetsmart started dragging the General down the hallway, ignoring his increasingly furious questions. He struggled against their hold, at first—definitely not using his full strength, thankfully, because Cody had no doubt that the General could easily escape the grasp of two men who didn’t actually want to hurt him—but eventually seemed to decide to see how this played out, falling into step with a spat “Fine, treat me like a youngling,” before proceeding to seeth at the floor.
As they walked, Cody had to hold back the urge to throw up. Because the man he was escorting was definitely not the kind, determined Jedi that Cody had fought alongside for nearly two years. Cody didn’t recognize the man whose arm he was gripping, saw nothing of the Obi-Wan Kenobi he knew underneath the pure fury.
If Cody hadn’t been convinced of the evils of the Dark Side already, he definitely was now.
Cody’s mind eventually turned to scrutinizing his memories of the last few days, trying to remember if he’d missed the first warning signs that this was coming. But no, the General had been fine until the whole showdown with Krell had occurred, if carrying the usual exhaustion from battle.
Which meant that the General had just . . . snapped.
Even if the results made Cody sick to his stomach, he understood why.
Something shocked Cody’s arm and he jerked, nearly pulling General Kenobi over sideways. The General glared at him as he righted himself, eyes flickering yellow, and Cody fought the urge to shrink back. It was only when the General went back to glaring at the ground in front of them that Cody started wondering what the kriff that had been.
A few minutes later, Cody got his answer when he was shocked again: it was a small, blue bolt of Sith lightning arching off of the General’s shoulder.
Karking kriff.
The General hadn’t seemed to notice, too busy scowling, but Cody and Streetsmart exchanged panicked glances. They needed to Catch him, now.
Thankfully, they were only one corner away from their destination. They picked up the pace anyway, earning an annoyed sound from the General as he stumbled a little bit.
About two hundred vod’e turned to look at them as they entered one of the many barracks rooms, the one that had been reorganized for this exact circumstance. The vod’e were spread across couches and bean bags and rugs and the bunk beds that had been pushed to line the walls, all but about half a dozen in their blacks. That last half a dozen was fully armored sans helmet, a stun-gun holstered on each of their hips. All of them hated that the stun guns might be necessary, but it was better to knock the General out than allow him to hurt himself or others, if it got that bad.
The vod’e were all staring with large eyes, frozen in place, which was when Cody realized that the General’s irises were solid yellow, now.
The temperature was starting to drop, too.
“What is this?” the General asked, eyes darting around the room. Cody couldn’t fault him for being surprised; it was the one room in the entire Negotiator that actually looked like a proper room from a proper building and not military holdings.
“We’re Catching you, sir,” Wooley said blaisely from where he lounged on a bean bag. The stiffness of his posture gave away his true emotions, though.
“You’re what.”
Cody took that as his cue to shove the General into the room, pretending to ignore the yellow-eyed glare he got in return.
Of course, it was during that moment that the General was turned back to face Cody that he was promptly tackled by half a dozen vod’e. The General shouted in alarm, struggling against them—sparks of Sith lightning were dancing up and down his arms—but the vod’e managed to get ahold of his limbs, keeping him from escaping. They carried him into the center of the room, where the rest of the vod’e had started piling together.
The General yelped as he was dumped onto the pile, but before he could even start to right himself he was being maneuvered into place by the vod’e around him. He ended up sitting back-to-back with two vod’e, the legs of a vod stretched out on the ground under his knees and another vod’s calves slung over his ankles. There was a bit of an open space to his right, which Cody moved to fill on autopilot.
“What is this?!” the General exclaimed angrily, jerking against the various limbs that were holding him in place. “What’s going on?!” More Sith lightning jumped off of him, vod’e flinching when it hit them.
“It’s an intervention, General,” Cody answered as he settled beside him. His voice was flat—too flat, the General tended to say. It was the voice Cody only used when he was too shaken to mask his emotions properly.
Evidently, the General remembered that, as a flicker of concern crossed the befuddled anger on his face. “A what?”
“You’re Falling, General,” Streetsmart stated flatly from where he stood by the door.
The General froze. It was almost unnatural, as if he were a character in a holovid that had been paused on screen, and the vod’e exchanged uneasy glances.
“I’m . . . what?” For the first time since he’d punched the wall, the General didn’t have any anger in his voice, just pure, flabbergasted, shock. “But—I—” His expression shifted in the way it always did when he was reaching out to the Force.
Apparently, he didn’t like what he found, as a sharp cry burst out of him. A dozen expressions crossed his face in a matter of seconds before settling on pure panic. “No, no, no no no kark no, I can’t—I won’t—” He broke off with a cry, doubling forwards as a shockwave exploded out from him, knocking vod’e onto their backs and making the bunk beds crash against the walls.
Cody swore, straightening to find that Sith lightning was arcing up and down the General’s body—and this time the General had noticed it, his hands held fisted against his chest as he hyperventilated, staring at it with big, Sith-yellow eyes.
Cody swore again.
Sith deal in absolutes. Darksiders only ever feel one emotion at a time—and that emotion is magnified until it overwhelms everything else. Usually Sith focus on hatred or anger in order to harness that emotion for their own power, but that doesn’t mean that they can’t feel other emotions.
That was what some of the data the CCs had collected had said, and now Cody was watching it play out in front of his very eyes. What had been overwhelming anger had turned into overwhelming panic, and Cody honestly didn’t know if that was better or worse.
“You’ve gotta breathe, General,” Cody coaxed, wrapping an arm around his shoulder after only a moment’s hesitation. The lightning stung when it hit his arm, but it wasn’t too bad.
General Kenobi shook his head, his breathing getting faster. “I’m not—I can’t—”
“You can,” Cody assured. The vod’e around him echoed the sentiment. “You just need to breathe. Calm down, and use our Force-signatures to guide you back to the Light.”
But the General shook his head again, tears in his eyes. “I can’t—it doesn’t—once you’re touched by Darkness, you—you’re always Dark—” he choked out.
“That’s osik,” Cody replied, probably a bit more fiercely than was warranted, but honestly he should be congratulated for not having completely lost his head. “Which I know for certain.”
The General started at Cody’s tone, then shook his head, still hyperventilating.
“All due respect, he’s right, General,” Wooley added.
The General’s brow crinkled in confusion. “But—you can’t—there’s no records—” He was trembling like a leaf, so Cody reached out to grab his hands.
Then, looking directly into his General’s Sith-yellow eyes, Cody said firmly but dryly, “I don’t need any karking records. The reports from the other battalions are more than enough.”
The Sith lightning had dissipated, and the General’s eyes were starting to flicker back to their normal green-blue. Cody relaxed just marginally—they were successfully distracting the General enough that he wasn’t actively using the Dark Side.
“Re—reports?”
“You’re hardly the first of our Jettise to start Falling, sir,” the vod who had his legs over General Kenobi’s—Buzzer—said solemnly.
“About the opposite, actually,” Streetsmart chimed in.
The General choked. “I—what?”
Cody tightened his hold on his General’s hands. “None of them have ever Fallen completely. We haven’t let them.”
At the General’s look of absolute bafflement, a soft laugh ran through the room.
“We’ve Caught them, sir,” a vod somewhere behind them explained. “Pulled them back into the Light. Just like we’re Catching you right now.”
The General looked utterly dumbfounded, but his eyes had settled on their normal color, so Cody counted it as a win. They’d pulled him back from—kark, actually, the Sith lightning was new, which probably made it—5 Levels down into the Dark up to Level 2, edging towards Level 1.
“Who?” the General finally asked, the word cracking.
The vod’e all exchanged glances, and Cody internally winced. It was probably best if he answered this one. “Um. All of them, sir. At least the ones us vod’e are close to.”
For a long moment, the General just stared.
Then he started to laugh. It was a broken, hysterical laugh that lasted for only a few seconds before it turned into sharp sobs.
Cody pulled his General against him, the General’s hair brushing against the side of his neck as the General dropped his head onto Cody’s shoulder. The vod’e around them maneuvered closer to their General, limbs and shoulders making contact with him in a show of silent support.
The General’s broken sobbing turned into silent weeping after only a few minutes, his body shaking so hard that it was visible. He was fully back on Level 1, now, still surrounded by the Dark but no longer Falling. Level 1 was always the hardest Level to pull out of, according to the hundreds of reports Cody had read—while it was more dangerous the farther a Jetii Fell, it only took a sufficient enough distraction to stop them from Falling farther and to pull them back up to the higher levels. To pull out of Level 1, though, was a lot harder—the Dark Side always devastated the Jedi both emotionally and physically, and the shift back to Light from the Dark took both effort and discipline, even if they actually initiated the shift subconsciously. Until then, the Jedi was left to suffer in the Dark, cut off from the comfort from the Light that they had relied on their entire lives. Which meant that they needed the vod’e to support them both physically and emotionally, needed their presence to bring Light to the Force around them, even if they couldn’t sense it. Needed them to keep them from slipping back into a Fall.
So Cody rested his chin on his General’s head, and that was what he and the 212th did.