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Alpha-17 had never wanted a Jedi, the mere idea of it made him angry and filled him with disgust. He had been told since decanting that he and his brothers had been made for the Jedi, and for all of a minute A-17 had been excited to meet the legendary warriors - then training had begun. Alpha’s brothers died and Spar left, and that excitement had faded, to be replaced by fury when the CCs and CTs started being decanted as tiny cadets with breakable limbs and too-thin shoulders.
Alpha and his batch had been brought into the world fully grown, able to - mostly - cope with the harsh training the Kaminiise and Cuy’val Dar put them through with minimal losses, but the Littles? They expired in droves, entire batches wasted away and their too-small bodies recycled, and Alpha hated the Jetiise. Hated that they’d have him and his vod’e made, only to let them die. The Jedi were supposed to preserve life. They were supposed to be the Jedi’s soldiers, and yet they weren’t good enough to be preserved - they’d always be less-then.
Alpha had done what he could for his vod’ike. He had been hard and unyielding, because he’d rather the cadets learn from him than risk them being given to someone like Priest. He had bitten his tongue, kept his thoughts to himself whenever the subject of the Jetiise came up, and kept working. He continued to train the cadets, to put them through the ringer so that the Kaminiise would get the results they wanted, and kept his anger under control whenever he’d come to the morning meal to see more and more of his vod’ike missing. He had made sure that his vod’ike could handle anything thrown at them, and he proudly watched them grow and flourish. They’d be enough, Alpha would be sure of it, because if they weren’t they’d be dead.
Meeting the Jetiise, he had been unimpressed. These were the beings they were made to serve? These unprepared, arrogant aruetiise were who they were expected to die for? Alpha-17’s anger had only grown as more and more of his vod’ike fell, as the Jetiise led themselves and their troops to their deaths. His advice is ignored, so Alpha had stopped offering it and simply worked to keep what troopers he could out of danger as more and more of the Jedi he was assigned to died because of their incompetence.
Then he’s introduced to Obi-Wan Kenobi and his shiny - his padawan - Anakin Skywalker.
Before that moment, Alpha hadn’t met a single shiny Jedi, and while Skywalker may be an arrogant little shit with a superiority complex a mile wide that hid a crippling inferiority complex, the ARC couldn’t help but see the Littles in his place. So when he sees a mistake in Kenobi’s other-wise - and very surprisingly - iron-clad tactics that could possibly put someone in needless danger, Alpha speaks up.
And Kenobi actually listens.
Alpha keeps speaking up after that, keeps pushing the boundaries to see what he can get away with before the Jetii snaps and shows his true colours. Kenobi never does though - he stays patient and witty, and always takes Alpha’s opinions into account, and even adds to them in ways that Alpha had never expected of a Jedi. The times when he doesn’t agree with him, Kenobi always explains the reasons behind it, and Alpha doesn’t know why he’d been stuck with such useless shabuire when he could have had Kenobi the entire time. Kenobi is intelligent, and competent, and while he never lets Alpha have as much fun as he would have liked - and this usually includes just removing the beings annoying him through deadly force - he can be so vicious when he wants to be. He enjoys a fight, Alpha can see it by the grin on his face and the glint in his eyes whenever he throws himself into battle - he flourishes when he can pull out his jetii’kad and is stunning when there’s blood on his teeth. He speaks fluent Mando’a, has raised an adiik, and Alpha is Mando enough to admit that the copper haired Jetii had been the star of many of Alpha’s most pleasurable dreams. He’s Mandokar , and Alpha isn’t shy about the way he admires how his Jetii looks in armour.
Alpha-17 may hate the Jetiise, but Kenobi is different. He’s Alpha’s, and he’d follow the man to haran itself - not that he’d say as much out loud.
So of course that ends up being the case.
He follows Kenobi to Jabiim, to death and destruction and never-ending rain. When they start the campaign, they achieve victory after victory to report back to the Senate, but the Republic assault vehicles falter in the storms and get stuck in the mud, and those victories grow fewer and farther between until they’re nothing more than a pipe dream. None of them have had a proper sleep in days and rations are running short. Alpha himself is running on spite and stims alone as he helps Kenobi lead the assault to protect the Senate’s fucking mining intrests as the alliance with the Jabiimise rebels fracture. It’s not the Seps that take advantage of this, but Alpha actually wishes it was. It’s Dooku’s pet assassin that takes them, using the confusion and panic caused by an explosion to snatch both of them off the field and spirit them away to her own person dungeon.
Alpha finds himself strung up in a torture machine, muscles extended far past what they shoulder be and bulging under his torn, bruised skin. He doesn’t know how long he’s been here for or if the troopers survived the bombings, and he doesn’t know where his Jetii is. He knows that Ventress has him, because she mocks him with the fact while she tries to pry information out of him on the GAR and their garrisons - and while Alpha would be perfectly willing to hand over intel on the Senate and the bastards on it, that’s not what she’s after. She wants information that could lead to the deaths of his vod’ike, so Alpha holds his tongue and weathers the torture.
They continue this little song and dance for what seems like days, maybe even weeks - Alpha’s lost count - before something changes. Ventress decides to play their game differently. She has Alpha released from his restraints, and his over-abused muscles cramp immediately upon changing their position for the first time in how many days, sending him toppling to the blood-caked floor of his cell.
“Carry him if you must.” Ventress says in disgust, and Alpha snarls at her, limbs spasming. As much as he’d love to throw himself at her and beat that smug look off of her face, he can’t make his arms listen to him.
A droid catches each arm before he can even try to make his protesting limbs respond, twisting them behind his back and cuffing him before they haul him forward, carrying him out of the cell he had been occupying since he had first woken up after the explosion. He tries to get his feet under him, to walk on his own, but after being strung up like he had been and with his arms cuffed behind his back and shocking him at random intervals, he can’t get enough balance. He doesn’t make it easy for them, of course, spitting and snarling threats and digging his heels in, but it only makes Ventress laugh.
He finds himself being thrown into a completely different cell - literally - and without his arms available to catch himself with, he’s left to fall flat on his face in an ungraceful sprawl that, had he seen any of the brats land in during training, would have led to someone getting kicked across the sparring mats until they learned how to roll. The explosion of pain across the bridge of his nose warns of another break, and Alpha bites out another furious curse as he forces himself to his knees to look around his new environment.
Alpha stills, “General?”
For a moment, he thinks his Jetii is dead and that’s why Ventress had finally let him see the man, planning on leaving him with the body until he either talks or dies, but then Kenobi’s head lifts, and he mumbles something that sounds like Alpha’s name.
He’d been thrown into a cell with his Jedi, and - Ka’ra, Kenobi looks worse than Alpha feels. He’s not in a torture machine like Alpha had been, and is instead actually strung up, shackled to the broken pipe above his head. The pipe is far enough above him that the General is forced to balance on his toes or risk dislocating his shoulders. The rags that had once been distinctive Jedi robes hang off his ravaged body in bloodied strips, soaked by the water steadily dripping onto the skin of his back, turning it ashen and nearly blue from the chill. Worse of all is the skin-tight leather hood that had been pulled over the Jedi’s head, leaving only the blood-shot blue of his eyes visible.
Something about the thing makes Alpha’s skin crawl with unease and disgust, and makes his fury pound like a drumbeat in his ears. Kenobi looks small and breakable and defeated, and it ignites a blaze of choking hatred in his chest. He shouldn’t look like that, and Alpha will tear Ventress apart for daring to hurt one of his people.
But there’s still fire in his Jetii, Alpha can tell the moment their eyes meet. He can see thousands of plans of escape running through Kenobi’s head, and it makes him grin, sharp-toothed and bloodied.