Chapter Text
For an ever so brief moment on that battlefield, he forgot to be afraid.
The clone was a shiny among the shinies; he hadn't yet settled on a name before he was rushed through training to help fill out the front. He understood why the older troopers called them that, given their armor was comparatively worn, but the young clone very quickly didn't feel shiny and new within moments of stepping onto a real battlefield. After the sterile training facility on Kamino, the battleground here was overwhelmingly dirty. The clumps of debris interspersed with puddles made marching towards the enemy even more hazardous even if the sky wasn't so damn dark.
But their objective remained the same despite the danger: move forward.
He rolled back his shoulders and shook out the tension held in his feathered wings, silently replaying the simulations and training in his head as he took turns with his brothers to provide cover fire, weak flashes of light overwhelmed by the artillery explosions the troopers had to shield from. The shiny soon got into a rhythm following the beat of the blasts, his new commander’s orders harmonized with the shockwaves, as they all moved seemingly one step forward in the brief window of time they had until the Separatist’s droid army were finished reloading and shot again.
At some point in the chaos, the shiny realized his squad had come upon the most forward of the front line with Commander Cody himself.
Many CC’s differed from CT’s in their wings, and Commander Cody was no exception. The shiny had heard about the 212th Attack Battalion from his training days not so long ago, but he still felt shocked to see two pairs of translucent wings fluttering on the commander's back. They appeared more fragile and bald than his other brothers.
Then, for the first time on this battlefield, the shiny had a visual of the orders he had only previously heard through his helmet. Commander Cody's arm reached out in a clear hand sign for the next leap forward, the order echoing to all nearby troopers, and he felt time stop.
The shiny was here —actually here— on the battlefield, in a war that chewed up clones like him and left them in the mud. His brothers were there; wings tense and blasters held tight as they braced against whatever was tall enough. One was slumped to the ground under the smallest of cover, his gun dropped between the shiny and the next step closer to a still undetermined end.
In this frozen moment —chilled by the shadows on the battlefield— the shiny felt mesmerized by the light shining through Commander Cody's wings, revealing patterns he hadn't noticed in the rush. He felt disconnected from his body, the explosions far away, as he noticed the still hazardous puddles transform into a mess of colors: gold, orange, red, green, blue, purple. Alone he knew them as colors for regiments, but all together in that karking puddle, it was a world he had never seen before.
Later, if he survives this, he would like to know what words people use to call so many colors. But for now, feathered wings curled protectively over his shoulders, he followed his Commander into battle.