"One Tin Soldier"
Get ready for feels, y'all. Morbid ones. I keep seeing all this stuff about "Landing at Point Rain" or whatever that episode was called, I can never remember... but I finally got there in my Clone Wars epic rewatch and hot dang, I needed to write something. So I present to you "One Tin Soldier". Yes. I stole that title from the song by Coven. Go listen to it. After reading. Also this kinda turned into a reference to "Hurricane" from Hamilton.... ---- "One Tin Soldier" Obi-Wan Kenobi has never considered himself to be a pessimist. A realist? Certainly. He's never possessed Anakin's eternal optimism, or Qui-Gon's steady confidence. But he has also never been one to prophecy impending doom. Now, however, as he lies tangled in a web of blinding pain as real as the twisted frame of the downed LAAT/i that hulks around him, he cannot possibly see any goodness that can come from this situation. Obi-Wan cannot even muster the strength to move himself off of the broken, lifeless forms of the clones he had chosen for - no, doomed to - this mission. He and Trapper are the only survivors, and if help does not come soon... He closes his mind against the morbid expectations. Yes, war can do things to the mind, Obi-Wan thinks bitterly. It rips into the body, gashes the heart, gnaws on hopes until they are grey and dead, crushes the soul to oblivion. Fight after fight. Death after death. Loved ones lost. Nothing left but the next fight, the next kill, the next breath. And then even that is gone. And you are a shell. A tin soldier. Metallic. Hollow. Soulless. One among many, tens of thousands, just marching into death and decay. Following orders into eradication. One tin soldier, fighting battle after battle. Hiding his emptiness behind a brightly painted façade. One tin soldier, replaceable. Generic. Stripped of everything that makes him a person. The Jedi Master closes his eyes and sinks into the Force, trying to shake the overwhelming feeling of despair. He must not give up. If only for the sake of the single living soldier, he must carry on. Just for a little longer... The pain grows ever greater, buzzing at the fringes of his shrinking awareness, whirling like a hurricane. A hurricane, and he is the center. In the eye of a hurricane, there is quiet. And so Obi-Wan reaches deep, deep within himself, past the hurt and the scars and the painted masks he puts on for the Republic, under the countless missions and the memories that still haunt his mind - Cerasi's death, saying goodbye to Satine, Qui-Gon's defeat - and he finds the quiet. The hollowness in his chest provides utter silence, even though he can still hear the scream of blaster fire and the clanking of machinery through the cracked shell of the ship. And there is quiet. For a moment. And then Waxer and Boil and there, the harsh Geonosian sunlight streaking in behind them, making Obi-Wan blink eyes full of grit. He grasps wildly at the retreating tendrils of the silence he has discovered as they limp across the battlefield, but it is gone, and the winds of the storm are beating his broken body again. They aren't going to make it, he knows. But he also knows that he cannot accept defeat, not now. It would kill his men. And Obi-Wan does not see them as only soldiers, metal toys to be played with and discarded at leisure. They are living beings, and they are more precious than every credit this side of the galaxy, more sacred than a heap of Kyber crystal. So he licks his cracked lips and forces himself to his unsteady feet, gritting teeth against the pain that wails in his bones, louder than an astromech's screams. He is one soldier among many. A scratched, empty, broken, discarded tin soldier. But he is a soldier nonetheless. And he will stand with his men, his brothers, til the bitter end. One tin soldier stands to weather the hurricane, and the others rally to his silent call, defying the raging face of death. Together. For that is the thing about toy fighters - and real ones - Obi-Wan muses. You never can find just one. There are always more to go along. *Finis* ---- Yay, you made it and you're not dead! I hope. This is a rough version, really, and I may put a more polished version up on my FFN. I wrote this on the notes doc on my iPod, so. I needed to get my Obi-torture out. Love my cinnamon roll space son, but I gotta write something horrible, ya know? Hope you enjoyed!
