Chapter Text
Few things have their place during wartime. Battles, negotiations, orders. Politics, hierarchy, strategy. Blood, despair, death.
There’s no space for much else; in fact, troopers are trained to take as little space as possible. As little resources. They learn to function on a couple hours of sleep, on ration bars and cramped quarters. They try to manifest their existences in the odd zone between one mission and the next, this too short period of time in which nothing feels quite real because they have survived and some of their brothers have not.
Commander Cody understands war better than he understands life; he was bred for it and knows its ins and outs the way his blood knows through which veins to travel. War, as horrifying and heartwrenching as it can be, is also familiar to him. It is the standard he measures himself to; it is a reflection of who he is and what he is worth. A successful attack plan proves his strategic prowess. A well-detailed mission report proves his meticulousness and his competency. A lower casualty rate proves his responsibility and care for his men. A meeting with his superiors proves his professionalism and capacity to carry orders through.
Commander Cody knows war, is intimate with it, even. The rest doesn’t matter much. Why would it? He has never known the galaxy at peace and probably never will. He wasn’t created with the purpose to survive until after. As tempting as it sounds to live in a world in which his vode do not have to fight to survive, a world in which he doesn’t have to see younger brothers die and older brothers crack under the pressure or the weight of an injury, the truth is that Cody would have no idea how to. He would have no point, no goal, no value. Nothing to contribute.
And CC-2224 would rather die on the battlefield a thousand times than become useless, adrift in an upturned galaxy with too much space and not enough sense.