#anakin 5 minutes later to any man even slightly older than him who treats him with basic human decency: pápá

[silveryinkystar]

Two Houses (both alike in dignity)

Rating: Gen

Characters: CT-7567 | Rex, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin Skywalker

Summary:

 [“Did you not just hear what those sleemos said?” Commander Skywalker’s voice was high, loud, and grating in all the ways that Rex couldn’t care for at the moment with his splitting headache. “How can you just let them say those things, it’s – it’s –”

“I don’t disagree with you, Padawan,” General Kenobi said softly, shifting slightly so that Cody’s armour wasn’t digging into his back, “but your anger is not going to help you right now.”]

--

Or; a lesson in controlling emotion, from a certain point of view (or few).

Jedi June Appreciation Event | Saturday, June 5: There is no emotion, there is peace.

[Read on Ao3]

“Did you not just hear what those sleemos said?” Commander Skywalker’s voice was high, loud, and grating in all the ways that Rex couldn’t care for at the moment with his splitting headache. “How can you just let them say those things, it’s – it’s –”

“I don’t disagree with you, Padawan,” General Kenobi said softly, shifting slightly so that Cody’s armour wasn’t digging into his back, “but your anger is not going to help you right now.”

“You – it’s like you don’t even care –”

“Have I given any impression of that when we actually have the time to care? My priority at the moment is to get our men to a safe location and call for a medevac. As much as those comments incensed me, I cannot allow myself to be distracted by my own feelings right now. Not when it’ll do more harm than good.”

Rex supposed that it was some Jedi philosophy that the General was quoting, but he could see the reasoning behind it too. Although he found it a bit surprising that Skywalker didn’t seem to agree. After a few more minutes of this back-and-forth exchange, General Kenobi sighed and ushered the Commander away for scouting duty.

“Nice move, sir,” he said dryly, wincing when his hastily splinted leg caught on a particularly large stone. Kenobi smiled and extended his hand, which Rex eyed warily.

“You should get some weight off that foot, Captain,” he said mildly, shifting Cody to a single shoulder. “And I can bear your weight without issues, since I’m currently uninjured.”

“General, with due respect, you’re already carrying Cody. Injured or not, it’ll tire you out quicker than supporting just one of us.”

But Kenobi simply quirked an eyebrow. “I know my limits, Rex, you needn’t worry about me. It shouldn’t be so far off, anyhow, Anakin doesn’t seem to be too distanced from us over our bond.”

Sighing, Rex relented – his leg did hurt like hell, and if they needed to get into action quickly, he couldn’t afford to worsen the injury pre-emptively. Kenobi held him to his side with ease, and matched his unsteady hopping at a comfortable pace that wouldn’t strain his other leg too. It couldn’t have been comfortable with both Cody’s and his armour digging into his shoulder, but the man barely showed any signs of it, not even complaining once the way his insufferable brothers might have done.

“I sense you’re deep in thought, Captain,” Kenobi invited lightly, looking for the world like he was simply taking a walk along the corridors of the Negotiator, rather than holding up the weights of two fully armoured, grown men, without breaking step.

“It’s just… what you said to the Commander, earlier. Was it from the Jedi Code?”

He hummed. “It was and it wasn’t. It’s technically only a part of our philosophy, but given our nature of influence on the communities around us – and our use of the Force, Jedi are usually trained to manage their emotions effectively from a very young age.”

“I see.” Though he wondered what it would mean for nat-borns to learn those techniques, especially since they weren’t bred for psychological (well, and physical) hardiness the way the clones were.  He mentioned as much to the General, who momentarily had a strange look on his face before it smoothed into the usual geniality he’d begun to find comfort in.

“We provide any psychological help we can, of course,” he explained bluntly. “A lot of Jedi go through traumatic events in their lifetime, and while it’s not a flawless system – sometimes the situation at hand means that there’s simply not enough time to process things until much, much later – it helps. And aside from trauma, we still offer counselling to anyone who seeks it. Even if it’s for gentle reassurance about things people may consider to be trivial, or for specific issues that Initiates and Padawans approach them for, or for serious conditions that need long-term help and therapy, we don’t turn them away.”

It sounded like an incredible system, to Rex. “I’ve heard stories about the kind of missions Jedi usually go on,” he said carefully, “and I get what you mean about the trauma. But do you have the sort of infrastructure and support available at the scale that the war is producing?”

He snuck a sidelong glance at Kenobi, who appeared to be openly stunned at the question. Rex’s heart sank; had nobody asked the Jedi how they were doing since the beginning of the war?

Granted, only the Jedi had ever asked after the well-being of their troopers (other than their brothers themselves), but it was surprising to Rex that the group of people committed towards helping the galaxy around them got such little thanks for it. He knew that they never did it for the gratitude, but used their “gifts from the Force” for good as was their mandate (something they genuinely loved following, which delighted his brothers to listen to them about), but to see the way they were treated almost completely reflect the way that clones themselves were treated was unsettling.

That a simple check-in based on what new knowledge he’d gained had surprised a member of the Council, a leading representative of the Order who would have interacted with enough dignitaries to actually be privy to the thanks the Jedi may get, was even more upsetting.

Rex wondered if this was what the Jedi usually felt whenever they saw brothers being mistreated, and while he filed his indignation away for later, he thought he understood why Skywalker had reacted the way he had, before Kenobi had sent him off on his errand.

“I’m not sure that we do,” Kenobi confessed quietly. “We’ll continue to do our best, of course. We won’t turn people away when they need all the help they can get. But we may have to reorganise our structure, which is… disheartening.”

Rex personally thought that it was a lot more than disheartening, but he’d keep that to himself and make plans with his brothers later. He suspected a lot of nights of brothers coaxing their Jedi to talk to them, wheedling their burdens away from them as much as they could and sharing them together. Cody was going to be impossible when he was healed enough to know any of this, but Rex wouldn’t have it any other way.

“Master!” Skywalker winced at his own volume when multiple soldiers around him flinched, apologising quickly under his breath. “There’s an… alcove? Some form of shelter nearby, it looks naturally formed – and there are a few cave systems close by which look abandoned, they’re probably safe for us to stay in while we wait.”

“Very good, Anakin. Did you check the systems for unfriendly inhabitants?”

“They’re completely clear, Master. There’s no sign of life in them, but there are signs that people have camped there previously. Ashes in a fire pit, and so on. But they don’t look recent.”

“I suspect those caves may be a traveller’s lounge, now,” he said wryly, and Rex snorted. “Lead us on our way, then, my apprentice.”

Skywalker nodded eagerly, before giving a few troopers directions and setting up a new purposeful pace. Rex grimaced when he realised that this meant speeding up, but somehow Kenobi managed to find a new pace between them that didn’t jostle his ankle too much even as they moved faster than before.

Soon enough, they’d slipped past the alcove into the cave systems and set up a steady watch cycle while moving off to provide more medical attention to the injured troops. The campaign had been hard on them all, and where brothers weren’t injured, they looked exhausted. Kenobi and Skywalker were among the few who looked like they would last longer than a few hours without immediately passing out, which he took to heart as a sign that the army had been wise to have the Jedi lead them instead of other nat-borns. Wolffe had vented to him about one of his older nat-born leaders who had managed to kriff up an entire mission to save his own skin, and that it was thanks to the crazy plans of Generals Koon and Fisto that they’d emerged alive, if not entirely whole, from that battlefield.

He’d emphasised the word “whole” too, indicating the massive bandage around his head where Ventress had sliced his eye out during her escape.

Skywalker had taken it up to himself to restart the old argument they’d had on the road while Kenobi helped Rex sit against the wall of the cave before gently setting Cody down and looking him over for specific injuries.

“Anakin, it’s not that I wouldn’t defend them, but my assessment of the situation meant that leaving quickly and ignoring the heckling was the best way to proceed. If I’d stood around and verbalised my defence of our men, I would have lost more men to injuries due to the time I would have wasted – yes, wasted, in relation to how quickly we managed to get them here!”

“You always say that we’re meant to defend others, to stand up for those who need us. And I’m not saying that they can’t do it, but…”

“Commander, permission to speak freely?”

Skywalker blinked when Rex spoke up directly, but nodded mutely.

“Permission granted,” Kenobi translated frankly, guessing that he wanted the verbal confirmation before he went for it.

“Thank you, sirs. General Kenobi’s right on this one. We appreciate your willingness to stand up for us, Commander, but at the time, it wasn’t what we needed. We needed a quick exit, and the situation may have gotten out of hand if we’d stayed and argued with them for longer. Even if we’d sent out a batch of scouts to find this place, we would have been stuck between waiting for a promise to help – one that would be uncertain, anyway – and trying to get people to that distance. As it is, a lot of the troops are close to critical condition.” He nodded at Cody’s prone form, and Kenobi’s look of concentration as he presumably stabilised his brother’s condition as best as he could without overtaxing himself.

“I thought you might say that you value a leader who sticks up for you,” Skywalker admitted. “Not that we won’t, but wouldn’t it be easier to trust us if you know that we’ll be your first line of defence without you needing to ask?”

“Pardon me, sir, but that sounds like banthash-”

“You make a fair point, Anakin,” Kenobi cut in smoothly with a heatless glare at Rex for his language. He fought back a snicker. “Actively, verbally making your allyship known to someone would bolster their confidence in you – but that’s in a situation where they’re safe enough to acknowledge and process it. Your anger is well-directed, my apprentice, and that is not what I find an issue with.”

“Sir, you’re not wrong that we appreciate you defending us,” Rex added carefully. “A lot of the men find it reassuring that you have our backs even off the battlefield. Especially the shinies, since the Kaminoans…”

Kenobi’s expression darkened a little, but he nodded encouragingly even as he carefully unwrapped Rex’s ankle. Rex hissed when the man felt around the break, but aside from a quick apology, all he received was the request to keep talking.

“But… on the battlefield, if we stuck around defending each other without paying attention to the bigger picture – ow – we’d all be dead in seconds. We’re trained to push those impulses away. Not that we have those coping mechanisms you Jedi talk about,” he added wryly, wincing when Kenobi re-wrapped the ankle in a fresh bacta-soaked bandage. Where he even found the bacta, he didn’t know, considering the General hadn’t moved from where he was kneeling before Rex the entire time.

Must be some Force nonsense, he thought to himself.

“So… how do you manage it?” Skywalker squatted down next to Kenobi, frowning at him. “As Jedi, we’re also taught to put aside our emotions, but…”

“It’s not so much about putting them aside as… well, I suppose Captain Rex would be able to help you here, a lot more than I could, given the way we each process things.”

Rex supposed that it had to do with how calm General Kenobi always was. Of course, the man felt things – he’d seen him determined, elated, exasperated and even downright irritated sometimes, but the depth of emotion he expressed outwardly was remarkably controlled. And for all that he felt emotions, they never quite seemed to be so intense, in the way he himself experienced his feelings. He was just good at setting them aside or using them as a drive for his actions.

“Well… that anger you showed earlier – it can be performative if it isn’t followed through. The men need affirmation that you’ll stick with them on and off the battlefield, so I’m not saying that you should stop defending us if that’s what you’ll continue to do anyway, but… we spend our whole lives justifying our right to live. On Kamino…” Kriff, he’s never said this to anyone before – a brother would understand, and whyever would a Jedi want to hear this–

But they did want to hear. And Rex, upon really thinking about it, found that he wanted to tell them.

“On Kamino,” he repeated slowly, “it was always something with the trainers. Not to mention the Kaminoans themselves. If we weren’t the best, certain… actions were taken. Please don’t ask me to get into specifics,” he added hurriedly when Skywalker started glowering, “but we’ve always had to put our success over ourselves. Not in the way that you Jedi prioritise a mission, but…”

“In an almost self-destructive manner,” Kenobi surmised, looking about as close to angry as Rex had ever seen him.

“Yessir. It’s kind of… habit, now, for us to channel our emotions into the battlefield – you’ll find a lot of brothers who refuse to voice their thoughts but let out their aggression in the field, because it’s the only way they’ve learned how. And by doing that, they learned that they can keep more of their brothers safe. So… when General Kenobi says that your anger isn’t helpful, it’s because it’s… reactionary? It resolves your emotions, but doesn’t really do much after that.”

Skywalker nodded slowly. “I think I get it now.”

“With anger,” General Kenobi said softly, “it’s purely, ah, performative, as Captain Rex put it. You can yell at someone for a while, toss them around if you’re that type of person, and sometimes it’ll give you short-term relief, but it doesn’t achieve anything good in the long run. But if you channelled all that anger into something else, let it go and focused on the next action rather than the reaction…”

“‘There is no emotion, there is peace’?” Skywalker quoted, and Kenobi nodded.

“Precisely, Padawan. Act with intention, with rational thought, not with emotion.”

“So I should just cast my feelings aside? I don’t think I could hold them off. I’ve tried.”

“Holding them off isn’t the goal, Anakin, but shifting your focus is. Think of it this way – Rex, you dual-wield blasters, right?”

Rex nodded, wondering where this was going.

“Which means you’d need to be aware of both of those weapons in the field – how they weigh, the recoil on them, and managing your aim with both hands.”

“Yes, sir. If I got careless, I’d shoot a brother, or either of you.”

“Which brings me to my point – while you were still in training, you would have had to do it all consciously, right? Think about each of those elements, get used to the weight of your blasters if you replaced them, figure out how you can do every one of those small checks faster and faster until they became instinct.”

He nodded again, catching on. “Act with intention until it’s instinct.”

“Precisely! Now, if you were to act too hastily based on an emotion, how do you think that would work?”

The reply is instantaneous. “I might misfire. Forget to check my gear, or my aim, or my hands may be too shaky. And if the shot goes wide, even if I don’t hit a brother or either of you, that means there’s one more droid in the battlefield that could kill us all at any point of time. It’s about them, not me.”

“You think of yourself as a part of a whole, and as a whole. And it’s usually the former that gains precedence here,” Kenobi completed, pleased. “Anakin, it’s not so much that your feelings are invalid or too strong in that they must be held off, but you must be aware that their strength does not consume your judgement in decision-making.”

The Commander bit his lip, but nodded. “Okay, Master.”

It wasn’t the best confirmation that he’d actually understood, but evidently Kenobi was satisfied, so Rex dropped it.

“I wasn’t expecting a philosophical discussion today, though,” the General murmured to him when Skywalker moved off to mingle with the other troopers – and probably to help, if their talk had been any indication. “Has it occurred to you that the theory that you often share about yourselves often mirrors what we learn as Jedi, if with different reasoning behind it?”

“Sir, Cody’s always said that the Jedi are the closest it gets to a nat-born understanding us clones,” he said bluntly. “And you’ve said that the reverse is true.”

“I suppose it’s why we work together so well,” he said, smiling up at him.

Rex couldn’t help but agree.

#*mine: fic #sw fic #tcw fic #jedi june #captain rex #anakin skywalker #obi-wan kenobi #the clone wars #star wars #*prepares a 5k word analysis about how clones and jedi are similar* okay so-