"You say you're not going to fight / Because no one will fight for you / And you think there's not enough love / And no one to give it to."

Linkin Park
"Robot Boy"

The next few weeks were the worst in Cody's memory. Worse than his formative years in the impersonal, emotionless training facilities of Tipoca City. Worse than the very worst of his experiences on the front lines of the Clone Wars. Worse, even, than his subsequent descent into the slums and bars of Anobis' mining capitol.

His cravings ate at him, consuming what felt like the very last of his sanity. As his cravings increased, so did his irritability, which he tried valiantly to suppress. For the first week and a half of his stay in Tay's home, Cody and his Jedi benefactress had little verbal interaction, since the majority of Tay's attention went to pulling Saa safely through the most critical moments of his recovery.

Cody ran odd jobs around the house for Tay, while she sat meditating at Saa's side. He even learned his way around the bewilderingly enormous kitchen and managed to burn a few meals, before Tay gave up and started taking time away from Saa to cook. He had been particularly frustrated by his apparent inability to make a decent meal, irregardless of the fact that fighting wars didn't lend itself to the proper development of culinary skills.

He prowled about the house and learned his way around the small abode. It only took a day or two, though, for his curiosity to be settled; there were two rooms, two freshers, a living room, a kitchen with an attached dining room nook, a small library, and a good-sized conservatory full of plants he couldn't even begin to name. After exhausting his knowledge of the house, he started eying the snowy fields outside the windows. But, after the incident with Jecks, Cody was reluctant to leave Tay and Saa alone in the house.

As he struggled to complete domestic chores and stay out of Tay's way, Cody grew restless. The longer he stayed clean, the more his old habits and personality began to resurface - he was bred to fight and the inability to fight was beginning to drive him just as crazy as his cravings.

Little things began to irk him - like the lack of firepower on his person. He became irritated with his civilian clothes and began wearing Del's old fatigues every day, out of sheer, Kaminoan-bred habit. He longed for his armor, if only to clean it. He longed for his weapons, if only to calibrate them. He longed for challenge, for conflict, for some sort of outlet for the rising aggression that was making him restless and moody.

As Saa finally began to heal from the worst of his wounds, Tay began to take notice of Cody's change in behavior. She confronted him in the living room one afternoon, as he stalked through the house for the hundredth time that day and invited him to join her in one of the hothouses nearest to the house.

Cody quickly learned that he wasn't cut out to be a farmer.

Or, even worse, a gardener.

But, physical activity was physical activity, and Tay put him to work cleaning out xoorzi and alazhi culture tanks for the new batch Tay was planning to cultivate in the spring. He felt strength and muscle starting to return into his arms and back, as he shoveled, pulled, lifted, carried, and scrubbed. It was menial work, though, and it didn't help his attitude - he was a fighting man and cleaning hothouses for spring planting was a far cry from battle.

The rise in his aggression was a two-edged sword. It sapped him of his energy, which left him craving stims. And it reinforced his fear that he was nothing better than a technologically advanced droid, which left him craving alcohol. The only advantage to working in the hothouses, was that it kept him away from Tay for most of the day and helped shake some of the weight and softness from his abused body.

Otherwise, it only reinforced a fierce cycle of self-loathing and craving.

As the weeks progressed, stims and whiskey became the least of his cravings. He craved caf. He craved crappy army food. He craved the adrenaline rush of battle. He craved the solidarity of brotherhood. He craved sweets. He craved the adventure of new horizons. He craved the boring lull of training sessions. He craved the safe anonymity of his helmet. He craved the feel of a blaster rifle in his hands. He craved sex.

The last craving motivated him to keep as far from Tay as possible - which was a pretty impossible achievement.

Everything about her confused him. Her kindness made him feel shame. Her calmness made him feel guilty. Her gentleness made him feel monstrous. Her smile made him feel hope. Her voice made him feel human. Her body made him feel lust.

And the longer he spent in her house, in her dead husband's borrowed clothes, the more Cody was unable to escape the reality of who she was. She was a Jedi - the very embodiment of those things that Cody had tried so hard to forget. Things like valor, honor, bravery, and honesty. She also represented every vivid memory of the blood he had shed in the name of the Empire.

She reminded him daily - even when she wasn't around him - of General Kenobi. Of General Skywalker. Of Commander Tano. Of Commander Offee. Of General Secura. Of General Undali.

Of all the countless Jedi Cody had met and fought alongside. Of all the countless Jedi Cody had hunted down and killed.

She had helped him earn a hard-won freedom from the clutches of stims and whiskey. But, in the absence of his addictions, Cody's body began to remember what it was -

A body built for battle, war, death, and bloodshed.

And, every day, a constant mantra echoed in the back of his mind -

"Just a worthless machine...!"

Things finally came to a boil when Saa got involved.

It started off as a quiet morning, the same as every other that had come before for three solid weeks. Cody sat on a stool, pulled up to the island counter that dominated the middle of the kitchen, dressed in nothing more than the black drawstring pants he wore to sleep in. He was eating a bowl of hot mashed grain, embellished with dried ersatz grapes, a touch of Yyegar sugar, and some Traladon milk, while watching Tay chop an assortment of root vegetables destined for a large slow-cooker to her left. Cody was absently marveling over Tay's ability to chop so finely without cutting off her fingers, when she lifted her head and turned her face toward the rounded alcove that lead to the living room.

Cody glanced over his shoulder just as Saa limped slowly into the kitchen, accompanied by a sharp query of disapproval from Tay.

"What are you doing out of bed?

"Woman, if I spend one more second laying in bed, staring at the ceiling, I'll go stark ravin' mad," the older man grumbled as he hauled himself painfully onto the stool next to Cody.

Saa's tone was almost good-natured, however, and something like a smile twitched at the corners of his mouth. Tay seemed to realize that convincing Saa of much of anything was a wasted cause, made a noise of dissent deep in her throat and resumed the cutting of her vegetables. Cody noted, however, that her even strokes with the kitchen blade seemed suddenly aggressive in nature.

He quirked an eyebrow in mild curiosity at the rare show of annoyance, and continued eating his breakfast in silence.

"Smells good in here," Saa commented blithely, as if nothing unusual had just occurred.

He turned his head and eyed Cody's bowl with interest.

"I'll have what Dar'manda's havin'," he jerked his thumb toward Cody's bowl, even though Tay couldn't see.

"His name is 'Cody'," Tay's tone was almost acidic, as her blade descended viciously on a particularly innocent tuber. "And if you're feeling well enough to climb out of bed, then you're feeling well enough to serve yourself."

"Hmph," Saa seemed rather unimpressed with the unexpected attitude he was receiving. "I'll call him by his name once he's earned the right. Until then, he's just 'Dar'manda.'"

Something ugly unfurled inside of Cody's chest; a rush of anger - raw and unexplainable - flushed the well-defined angles of his face.

"What does 'dar'manda' mean, exactly?" he finally joined the conversation, his voice unintentionally rough.

Saa's blatant refusal to use his name cut far too close to home. Since their creation in the cloning centers of Kamino, every clone trooper had fought a very personal war against the calculated depersonalization of their given sequence of letters and numbers. The right to a name was a hard-earned privilege - a privilege no clone ever felt the need to fight for a second time. The only thing that currently kept Saa from earning a fist to the face, was the fact that at least he chose to belittle Cody with a name of his own choosing. Though, Cody was almost certain that if the mercenary knew his clone number, he'd be back to being "CC-2224" instead of "just Dar'manda."

"'Dar'manda' is the state of not being Mandalorian," Saa answered matter-of-factly, either ignoring the dangerous pitch in Cody's voice or not recognizing it to begin with. "It's not a name for a foreigner - that's aruetti - but a name for someone who should be Mando, but isn't," the older man looked Cody right in the eye, his own tone cutting. "It means you've lost your heritage and therefore, your identity. It means you're a man without a soul."

"It means you're a man without a soul."

"You're nothing but a machine!"

Something snapped inside of Cody. A primal rage - fed by his pent up aggression and unfulfilled cravings - burst into his blood stream and eradicated his better sense. He didn't even hear his spoon fall against the side of his glazed bowl and he didn't even register his abrupt slide off of his stool and onto his feet. All Cody knew was anger and he directed that anger bluntly at Saa.

Even Saa's poker face registered surprise, when Cody grabbed a fistful of the man's tunic and lifted him up off of his stool. The mercenary was a few inches shorter than Cody, but the former commander brought Saa's nose level with his own. Rage fueled his movements to the point where Cody didn't even feel the effort of lifting the heavier, more well-built man up to face-level.

"If you've already made up your mind about me, old man, then why even bother wasting your time?" some part of Cody's mind had expected himself to shout, but his tone was more of a harsh growl, barely audible beyond just him and Saa.

Tay was completely forgotten in the awful focus of the moment.

"I've killed machines that are stronger than you," Cody snarled, his words tangled with self-loathing. "So, maybe you're right. I don't have a soul. I wouldn't think twice about killing you. So, maybe that's all I'm good for."

He gave Saa good shake and he heard the other man's teeth click sharply against each other with the force of his movement.

"Do you have a blaster?"

The question seemed to startle Saa for a moment, but he managed to nod his head and answer in a steady voice -

"Yes. Always."

"Good," Cody abruptly let go of Saa's tunic and the mercenary just barely managed to catch his feet underneath him; he had to grab the counter to steady himself. "Then if I'm just a machine without a soul, do me a favor."

Saa seemed rattled and wary. He gripped the counter and struggled to get his wounded leg steady underneath him; Cody was struck by the poignancy of Saa's sudden show of humanity. It seemed to underscore his own lack of it.

"What's that, ad'ika?" Saa's tone was quiet; in his anger, Cody didn't even register his use of the Mando'a word for "son".

The clone clenched his fists and jutted out his jaw. He was suddenly torn between anger and despair.

"Just put me out of my misery."

There was a startled second of shock, before the silence of the kitchen was broken by a resounding "slap!". Cody's head was forced to take an abrupt turn to the left, before another resounding "crack!" whipped his head back to the right. Both of his cheeks stung sharply from two well-placed, open-handed hits.

Wide-eyed, Cody's anger abated in the face of sheer surprise. He gawked at Tay, speechless. Her face was flushed a bright, fierce red and her own anger seemed to radiant hotly off of her very being.

"That was for pushing around a wounded man and for being a coward!" her soft voice shook with emotion; she lifted her arm abruptly and shook her flattened hand in his face.

Cody was reminded of his instructor's infamous "knife-hand", back on Kamino. He cringed out of sheer, ingrained reflex.

"There has been entirely too much death in this galaxy already. Don't you dare invite yours as well!"

Tay's words were like cold water. Cody reared his head back and just stared at her hard for a long moment. Then, he turned abruptly on his heel and walked, stiff-legged, out of the kitchen.

"Where are you going?" Saa's voice followed him through the living room.

Cody didn't reply. He simply made a beeline for the front door and stepped out into the snowy winter morning without a word. It didn't matter that he was half-dressed and barefoot.

He just wanted out.

He sought refuge in the only other place he knew - the hothouse where he'd been working for last few weeks. But, Cody's emotions were so frazzled and so scattered, that he merely fidgeted. For a few aimless minutes, he picked up his cleaning rag and tried to attack the scum caked into the bottom of the newest tank he'd started cleaning. But, that only made his frustration that much worse. Finally, he stood up, balled the filthy rag in his hand and threw it against the impassive glass panes of the hothouse wall.

Throwing something felt good, even if it was just a scrap of throw-away cloth. So, he kicked the bucket at his feet, sending it hurling down the long length of the hothouse aisle, between its two rows of raised plant beds and bacteria tanks. That felt good, too, even if it felt like he'd suddenly stubbed his toes in a door jam.

For a second, Cody stood still, his fists clenched at his side, as he stared at the bucket he'd kicked almost clear to the other end of the hothouse. He could see the shallow dent the side of his foot had left in its unoffensive side; anger began to well up inside of him again at the expression of his frustration. His chest heaved heavily and he felt burning hot, despite the biting chill against his bare skin.

Suddenly, he turned and drove his fist into the wooden post standing next to him. It was attached to a cross-section of the glass roof above and a corner of a plant bed below. Cody pounded his fist into it with a snarled cry and something inside of him broke.

All of his anger, all of his aggression, all of his hate and depression, poured out onto that wooden post. He beat it relentlessly with his fist and some unconscious part of his brain imagined it was his own face he was trying to destroy. Splinters tore the skin from his knuckles, but he didn't stop his brutal assault. It felt good to let the hatred burst out of him; it felt good to let the poison inside of him rage against something that couldn't fight back.

With each hit, words rang in his ear -

"You're a man without a soul."

He hit the beam harder.

"Just a worthless machine."

His assault become almost methodical in its execution.

"CC-2224."

He couldn't register physical pain - only the pain that he'd bottled up for so long inside of him.

"Dar'manda."

Cody beat against the pole until his fist cracked and popped, until a sharp, teeth-clenching pain finally registered past the fog of negative emotions that had blocked his brain against anything else. His arm burned from muscles that hadn't been used in ages; his knuckles were bloody and starting to swell from several broken joints.

His knees buckled underneath him and he fell to the ground. He steadied himself against the pole with his uninjured hand and rested his forehead against the rough wood. His raw, bloody, broken hand rested gingerly against his thigh.

And flash after flash of memory swept through his mind.

Bellassa. Sarrish. Geonosis. Waxer. General Kenobi. Jaria.

Cody screamed. He no longer had anger or aggression. All that was left was what had built up underneath - despair, depression, loathing.

He screamed until his voice broke. And then he cried.

And when he didn't have any more tears, he just knelt there, half-naked in the cold, with his head against the pole.

And wished that he was dead.