Now.
It's almost like a painting, he thinks, an image captured in a popular holodrama. Red-gold flames soar from from the senate dome, bodies falling, bodies lying around him, bodies of senators and of regular citizens and of his brothers. Broken durasteel poles slash through the air at crooked angles. Shattered glass is everywhere, found more often than not in people's hands and arms as they try to flee. He tries very hard not to see some details, but he knows they will be forever imprinted in his mind, like all other battles. A brother, lying too still, his body on one side of the street and his legs on the other. A family of three, faces frozen forever in agony, crushed underneath the fallen concrete.
His voice is hoarse, raw from the hours and hours of screaming both through his comm and at the people of Coruscant. There are still too many innocents, too many people, too many non-combatants caught in the warzone.
Something large and heavy slams into the concrete at his side, throwing him off his feet and knocking his twin blasters out of his hands. He lands hard on his back, his breath knocked out of his lungs, his head ringing, and it takes a second too long for him to recover.
The sky above looks so beautiful, he thinks, from this position. So still. No war, no death, only the yawning darkness of space above. Someone shouts his name and he turns his head, too slowly, too groggily. His head is still ringing. The noise in his ears is high-pitched, loud, but not loud enough to overcome the cackling laughter, slimy and rotten, crawling above the screams from the Senate Dome.
It's almost like a painting, he thinks, and he watches as blue lightning snakes through the air towards him. Almost, if not for the screams of his brothers he can hear through his comm, if not for the cry of his Commander as she tries to reach him, if not for the sound of his General roaring his name in despair.
Then.
Something is different about the Generals and the Commander.
When they rendez-vous with Rex and the 501st on the flagship after Mortis, he does a double-take that's so subtle and fast he's not sure if any of the Generals or the Commander noticed. None of them mention it and most of the trip passes without event, save for the part where Rex stares with incredulity as the three Jedi report to the Council about being stranded on an unnatural planet for days in the span of about ten seconds in real time.
"No offense, Generals, Commander," he says later, "If I didn't know better, I would have told you off for giving such a banthashit report."
Anakin laughs, an easygoing smile showing-
(-that's not natural, what are those, that's not human teeth, that's not-)
-teeth, and he shrugs. "None taken, Rex. We're not sure if we understand what happened either."
Rex laughs, then heads to his quarters to rest during the hyperspace trip back to Coruscant, pretending that there isn't something weird about how they are moving that makes his stomach turn.
He listens carefully, though, as he turns and leaves the room.
"C'mon, Snips, let's take a look at some of your katas," Anakin says, and Rex lets out a small sigh of relief when he hears her whine in the same way she always whines when she wants to laze around instead of practicing.
He finds Fives and Jesse waiting for him at the doors to his room. Need to talk, Jesse signs in the secret sign language of the ARC troopers of the 501st, and Rex gives a sharp nod before opening the door and gesturing them into his quarters
The seriousness of the situation hangs heavy in the air. Their sign language is rarely used, only in times when they need to discuss sensitive information in a place that can be overheard or during stealth missions. They sit in silence, none of them daring to voice what they're all sure the others want to say, before Fives breaks it with a sharp gesture.
Did you see it too? He signs, his gestures frantic. There was something… wrong about them. Something off.
I did, Rex signs back, but he makes sure he still projects calm. None of the clones may be Force-Sensitive, but they can still pick up body language. It's still them, I checked.
It might still be them, but you can't deny that something hasn't changed. Jesse's hands are fluid and quick, fingers flicking out and changing and moving again. And- we saw it. Through the corners of our eyes. There's something about them that's not human or togruta.
Yes, there was.
Still, they're our generals, our Commander, Rex signs viciously. I trust them with my life. I don't think we should fear them.
He realizes as he signs the words that he has misinterpreted his brothers' fears.
We're not scared of them, brother, Fives signs, worry clear in every line of his face. We're scared for them.
In one of the hangars, the only place large enough for them to spar, green and yellow flashes against blue as Ahsoka spars with her master. Sometimes, Echo likes to stop by to watch them, blades whirling gracefully in beautiful arcs that move just a little too quickly to be natural. Occasionally, he'll catch another one or two of his brothers watching the Jedi (not that they seem to mind at all), but today, it's just him.
Today, something seems a bit off.
He's fought with them. He's watched them spar enough to notice that this time, Commander Tano seems to be jumping a little too high, that General Skywalker's swings are a little too strong, and it's noticeable enough that they're both thrown off and frustrated by the time General Kenobi tries to call a halt.
There's something else, too, but he can't quite put a finger on it.
They're both so immersed in the spar that neither of them pay attention to General Kenobi's calls for a halt to correct their stances. Sighing, Echo turns to head to his quarters to work on a few of his reports. It's not like they're moving slowly enough for him to even begin to understand what is going on today. As he heads out of the hangar, the sound of sabers clashing behind him, he hears-
(-the beat of leathery wings-)
(-a scream, animalistic and primal, the scream of a griffin and a convor and something more-)
-General Kenobi raise his voice slightly, and the sound of lightsabers stop as two chastised Jedi lower their weapons.
Alone in the Council chambers, the Korun master sits, perplexed at Master Yoda's distracted state.
"You wanted to speak to me, Master Yoda?"
"See it too, you did, hm?"
"See… what? We only debriefed Obi-Wan and his lineage. There was nothing unusual to see in front of us, despite how unusual their report was."
(He knows what he saw. He doesn't want to admit it.)
"Not with your eyes. Betray you, they do. But in the Force, see the change, did you?"
Silence.
Then…
"I've only seen such things in the writings of the Nightsisters of Dathomir." After all, to develop a fighting form such as Vaapad, one must study all aspects of the Force, especially the Dark, in order to control it.
A hum. "Primordial beings, the Ones are. An unseen influence, they may have left, on Obi-Wan and his students." A shift, then Yoda stands, making for the door. "Great care, we must take."
Mace huffs, a strained chuckle that doesn't fool either of them. "With all due respect, Master, I do not think we can proceed with anything else when dealing with something the Nightsisters fear."
Now.
The air reeks of ozone and blood. Even through the filters in his helmet, the smell makes Cody want to retch. He wants to fall to his knees, to run away, to curl up, to shout, to freeze, but none of those are options. The scene around him is familiar but also strange, like seeing a holodrama set in a place that doesn't fit the story. He's seen flames before. He's seen bodies, he's heard the sound of blasterfire, he's used to war. But here, on Coruscant...
The screaming around him hasn't stopped for the past two hours.
Cody's breath feels hot against the interior of his helmet. His head is pounding from the noise and his muscles feel like they're on fire from the exertion. The Senate district has never been home to him, not really, but he's been here enough times to feel a sort of attachment to it. There's flames dancing through the broken windows and on the ground and from rooftops, but every inch of him feels cold. This is all wrong. This is all so very, very wrong.
Something small tugs at his arm and he whirls, bringing his blaster up to bear on a frightened pantoran boy. In a jerky motion, Cody lowers his blaster. "Sorry, kid," he says, guilt rising up inside him at the fear he sees in the boy's eyes. "What's the matter?"
His gut churns. The kid can't be any more than five years old, but there's blood staining his shirt and Cody's sure the young pantoran is hearing the screams around them as clearly as he is. "Can you help my brother?" The kid asks, and Cody's heart sinks. He's been in this situation multiple times - too many times - and he's only able to help maybe half the time.
"Sure. Sure, kid. Lead the way," he says, and he knows - he knows the vocoder is the only thing that's stopping his voice from sounding too shaky to be decipherable.
He's bred for war. He's only ever known how to fight, how to be a soldier, but some things cannot be prepared. Some things cannot ever get easier. He watches the kid in front of him, five years at most, covered in blood, wandering through a battlefield of shattered transparisteel and chunks of duracrete and blood and parts of bodies, and he has to force his stomach to calm. He can't break down. Not… not yet. Not until he's helped this kid to get to safety.
Not until he's helped this kid get to someplace that doesn't have so much screaming.
Cody can't help but breathe a sigh of relief when he sees the kid's brother. He's battered, his leg pinned under rubble, but he's conscious and clear-headed, indicating that he's not too severely injured. "I need backup for civilian rescue!" Cody snaps into his comm. Crouching down, he examines the wreckage of what likely used to be the pantoran family's house. Hints of the living space poke out here and there - dust-covered pieces of painted plaster, the broken wooden carvings of a tiny ship model, along with torn half of a poster of a holodrama. The young pantoran reaches out, pleading for help, and Cody grasps his hand. "Help is on the way, kid. We got you. What's your name?"
He can't be any older than ten. "Losyn, sir," the pantoran says.
"Alright, Losyn, hang in there." Cody looks up eyeing the surrounding area. There's no immediate danger that he can see - the two pantorans he's with should be safe for now, but he needs to get them somewhere that isn't spattered with blood and dust and filled with screams. He spots several of his men, running towards him and signalling their approach, and he waves back. He looks back down. Keep an eye out, but distract the kids. Don't let them focus on the screams. Don't let them look at the blood. "We're not in immediate danger. How's the leg?"
Losyn's voice shakes. "It doesn't hurt, sir. I just can't get it out." His other hand reaches out, grasping his little brother's hand, and Cody is struck by the memory of him doing the same with his brothers. Only this time, at least, neither Losyn nor his brother are glassy-eyed, riddled with blaster or shrapnel wounds, or already going cold.
Even if he can't do anything else today, Cody is going to save these two pantorans, dammit, because they're kids, because they're brothers, because they're alive and they don't deserve to be on a battlefield with red staining their tunics and grime on their faces. It doesn't miss his notice that neither of the kids mention their parents, and his heart aches.
Several of Cody's own brothers arrive, their white-and-yellow armor stained red-grey with dust and cinders and blood, and one eye on the situation shows them that they're fortunate enough that the rubble Losyn is pinned under can be lifted with enough men. While one of the troopers checks over Losyn's kid brother, Cody's brothers heave and lift the rubble as Cody carefully pulls the kid out. "We got you. We got you."
The kid isn't screaming. That's good. That's good.
Losyn makes to stand, trying to put weight on his feet, but the medical trooper that had just finished checking the pantoran's brother stops him. "Careful, kid. Mind if we take a look at that leg?"
"I'm fine," Losyn says stubbornly, then jumps on his legs a few times, eliciting a small cry of distress from Cody and his brothers and a laugh from Losyn's brother.
Damn kids, Cody thinks with a tired fondness.
"We got it from here, Commander," one of Cody's brothers says, and he nods as they move the kids to safety.
"Thank you, sir!" Losyn calls, and a tiny part of Cody's uneasy stomach stills, calmed by the fact that, at least, he could save the pantoran and his brother. Cody waves back, a small smile on his lips as he watches them go, before he turns around and nearly gets a kriffing heart attack when he sees his General standing right there.
"Karking shavit!" Cody shouts, his blaster trembling in his hands. "Stop doing that!"
There's no humor in General Kenobi's face, though, something which speaks to the seriousness of their situation. "I need you," he says simply, and he grabs Cody's arm and the commander suddenly finds himself in a completely different section of the Senate district, three blocks closer to the senate dome than he was before, with a stomach that's fighting to keep down his lunch.
There's still screams here. Different ones, but they're still there.
Cody stumbles, cursing under his breath, promising to himself that when this was all over, he would give his General the cussing out of his life. He whirls, taking stock of his surroundings, and he can't bring himself to be surprised when he realizes his General is no longer there, vanished in a blue-green mist to kark knows where. Cody turns again, taking a second look, his breath catching as he sees Rex, moving feebly, moving too slowly.
There's a hideous laughter coming from near the senate dome. Blue lightning slices through the air, bearing down towards Rex, and Cody knows - he knows - he's too far away. Part of his mind curses General Kenobi for leaving him three steps too far to reach his brother in time.
He's heard about Force lightning and seen its effects. He remembers stopping by the medbay to check on his brothers and seeing General Skywalker with burns that spiderwebbed across his back and arms and tremors that wouldn't stop. He remembers checking on his own General after that trip to- to Mortis, was it? - and shouting himself hoarse when Obi-Wan refused to go to the medbay despite the fact that his vision was blurry and his arms wouldn't stop shaking.
Distantly, part of him sees that the lightning crawling through the air is melting the duracrete into slag. Long, spidery fingers of electricity lurch with unstoppable Force towards his brother, and Cody knows that Rex won't survive this. His heart is pounding in his ears and his legs are burning, his throat burning as he bellows at Rex to get up, GET UP, his ears filled with the twin howls of General Skywalker and Commander Tano as they call for their Captain, and he lunges toward his brother, intending to take the hit, but knowing he can't in time, but please, please, brother, no, no, no no no nonononono-!
This time it's Cody screaming, but he's not really aware of it as he watches Rex's body convulse in agony, the lightning tearing through his armor and searing into his flesh.
He can hear Rex's screams mingling with his own.
He's vaguely aware that one of his own hands is reaching desperately towards his brother and that the other is pulling the trigger, firing again and again and again and again and again in the direction of the lightning, because it needs to stop, he can't stand this, it needs to stop, stop, stop, stop it, stop screaming, STOP-
The lightning stops. Cody is so caught up in his own momentum that his instincts take over, vaulting over Rex, grabbing his brother, and rolling them both away to safety before his mind fully registers what is going on. He jerks his head up, his breath catching as he freezes.
His General is standing between them and the Force lightning, catching the deadly blue with an open hand as he struggles to hold his ground against the assault. The duracrete around his feet is splitting apart, melting and cracking at the power General Kenobi is holding back. His head turns, eyes alight with a blue-green flame, and he shouts. "Go, Cody!"
Cody's body is already moving before his mind realizes what he's doing. He's been trained to be a soldier since birth. Following orders is hammered into his instincts. His feet pound against the ground, one hand holding Rex over his shoulder and the other clutching his blaster, his eyes darting here and back to search for threats as he gets his brother to safety.
He trusts his General. He'll get out of this. If he doesn't, Cody vows that he will drag Obi-Wan Kenobi away from death to kill him again for being so reckless.
Sith hells. Cody can still hear screams around him, but he also knows that Rex is silent.
He clutches tighter, unable to feel the rising and falling of his brother's chest through their armor, and he runs.
Then.
At the Altar of Mortis, Daughter had stopped just beyond the reaches of the blue-green flames. "I can go no further," she had said, warning in her voice.
Obi-Wan had not fully considered the implications of her words.
He had walked through the flames, through their gentle caresses which whispered with the power of the Force, had held the Dagger as it formed under his fingertips. He had watched as the mist had gathered around his hand, as it had formed a blade that would kill two-thirds of the Ones, as the mist of the blade formed by the Force had sunken through his gloves and into his skin.
He had thought it had been to test him, to see if he was strong enough to hold it. The Force had not whispered any warning, had not called to him with the cold promises of the Dark. The Force had not warned him of any consequences.
I was a fool, he thinks, staring into the mirror at the present. His tabards are carefully folded on a chair in his room as he stares into his eyes, the same flickering blue-green colour as the flames of the Altar. He looks down, gazing at a scar-ridden torso, at his arms, at his hands, and he stares at his fingertips as they dissolve into a blue-green mist and reform again.
In the cave on Mortis, Ahsoka had spoken with a vision of her future. "There is a wildness to you, young one," her older self and said, and Ahsoka had sensed the truth in her words.
She stares into the mirror now in her quarters at the Temple, seeing not her own reflection but the same tall figure that had spoken to her on Mortis.
"You did not heed my warning," the not-reflection tells her.
Ahsoka stares back unflinchingly. "Your prediction was flawed."
"Was it?" Her not-reflection tilts its head, blue eyes blinking and turning briefly into a startling gold as a black poison seeps into its veins and montrals. "You were Turned. You became one with the Force. You were not meant to come back."
The revelation of her avoided destiny does not startle her as much as it should. After the mission, Obi-Wan had taken her and Anakin aside, quietly explaining the events that neither of them could remember. Anakin had added on to the story with his recollections of Ahsoka's possession, but had grown quiet when he was told of his Fall.
There is no death, there is the Force, she tells herself quietly.
"But I did," Ahsoka says, staring at the corrupted figure of her older self.
The not-reflection's face softens, the expression foreign on a face corrupted by the Dark Side. "You did," it whispers, and when it blinks again, its eyes shine a blinding white before the glow encompasses its whole figure.
Ahsoka does not look away. In the space of one blink, the not-reflection disappears, leaving her own perfectly normal reflection-
(-yes, perfectly normal, without the unfurling golden wings of a convor coming from her back, without the blue stripes on her montrals shining a bright green, without the shape of her eyes sharpening and turning into something animalistic-)
-staring back at her with perfectly normal blue eyes.
In the Well of the Dark Side on Mortis, Son had done something to Anakin. "I don't know what exactly he did to you, Anakin," Obi-Wan had said as they spoke on the trip back to Coruscant, "but you Fell."
Obi-Wan had made it clear that he did not blame Anakin at all - after all, they all knew the strength of the Son, and even together, none of them were a match for his power. Obi-Wan had made it clear that he had complete faith in Anakin, that he knew he would never Fall.
Anakin had kept quiet, had allowed Obi-Wan and Ahsoka to take his silence for him slowly learning to digest the new information.
He looks at himself in the mirror in the fresher of Padmé's apartment, fully aware that the Son had not corrupted him in the same way he had possessed Ahsoka. He thinks back to the last time he had seen his mother, truly seen his mother, and how the dragon inside him had unfurled and roared with pleasure as he had massacred the Tusken camp.
He carefully shields himself, closing even his bond with Obi-Wan and Ahsoka, then calls upon the dragon again, and looks into the mirror to see-
(-gargoyle's wings, dark and terrifying, unfurling from his back-)
(-his teeth, sharp and fanged, dripping with venom-)
-his eyes, turning from blue into a beautiful molten gold as the cold of the Dark caresses him.
It is addicting, it is powerful, it is terrifying. He's well aware that if he stays like this for any moment longer, he will never come back, and so he calls on the memory of the Daughter's Light, flooding through him as he became a conduit to save Ahsoka. The warmth surges through him, making his eyes flash white before they return to their normal blue colour.
"Kriff," he mutters under his breath, and he pretends that his breath doesn't hitch when he hears the other voices that accompanied his own.
