Chapter Text
Cody lands on Alderaan with all the skill and finesse of a Bantha slipping down a dune– which is to say, none at all.
The first thing he realizes as he sits up, leaning on one arm for support as he squints towards the horizon, is that he is in pain. This is not a particularly shocking revelation. He's been in pain since he was named Marshal Commander.
The great hulking mechanical beast of his stolen ship sits bent and broken behind him at only a fifteen foot distance. It groans in the wind. The emergency ejection wasn't very effective– it's an old ship. He was in a rush!
Cody groans, too, as he heaves himself to his feet. In a desperate bid to retain whatever shreds of dignity survived the crash, he rights himself and starts walking towards what looks to be the only object on the horizon– a plume of smoke rising just over the hill.
He doesn't go back and check the ship, or recover his armor from the wreckage. There's nothing left for him there. The only way forward is straight ahead. He has seen the ravages of war and little else in his brief, exceptional, terrible life; Commander Cody is little more than a vessel which has witnessed terrible horrors and has partaken in the committing of them. For this, he must atone. For this, he's got to keep walking.
He trudges over the lush, green hill. The rocks stand at odd ends; craggy hillsides overlook uneven valleys, bottomless and black. Steep drops warn on every side of a cold death below. Butterflies flit between the spring flowers. He remembers trying to drive a battle tank over terrain like this. He remembers watching as it slid into a trench and crushed a crowd of screaming battle droids. It happened many times.
Who programmed them to scream?
Once, it wasn't droids in the trenches. It was Separatist men.
Overhead, seagulls shriek as they circle back from the ocean. He keeps going. His knees burn and there's a stitch in his side. None of these things matter, because very little matters to him anymore, these days. He's got only one goal, and that is to reach the black plume in the air. He's seen fires like that. On Kamino, there is always a black plume rising from the incinerator building. A daisy flutters in the wind as he stomps past. A bird flits past, easy in the air.
Finally, he reaches the top of the hill. Below him stretches a vast valley of green hills, rolling for miles. White specks freckle the landscape– rotund sheep, swollen with wool, toddle after one another. The black plume rises from the chimney of a small house. It's brown and unassuming, fashioned, most likely, from a mixture of mud and reeds. Plastoid windows reflect the sunlight. A windchime dangles from the upper left corner. He scans more closely, looking past the butterflies and the chipped yellow flower boxes. Seven alert droids are nestled in the dirt around the house's perimeter– most likely the eighth has been obscured or lies further up the path.
The path leads to the distant shape of Alderaan's capitol city, just over the hills. It glimmers in the light, white and glorious, gleaming like mother of pearl. A beacon in a dark time.
He unholsters his blaster and shuffles down the hill, careful not to lose his footing. He is vulnerable like this, armorless and bare, out in the open without any cover to speak of. It's very pretty here, he thinks, approaching the house. He's shot places like this to pieces. Like a beetle on its belly, he's frightened.
Cody approaches the wall first, running his free hand along it as he wields his blaster and turns the corner.
There he sees it. A man; a person. Someone alive on the horizon, shrouded in a brown cloak. He knows him… his angular shoulders, his sad, stooping figure. The way one hand rests on his hip and the other is elsewhere, presumably brushing over his beard, deep in thought.
That is, until the hand flies to his hip for more alarming reasons. He spins. He's close, suddenly, too close. Cody stumbles back against the wall.
A blaster is aimed at his chest.
He's been here before. He's felt this. He inhales, savoring every breath he's got left. His heart is a tenuously tended flame that has been protected only by his brothers, and by the armor they share. He stares.
"General."
Obi-Wan Kenobi jerks the blaster at him, insistent. There is a wild, disheveled look to him, especially in his eyes. Those eyes have seen the very same terrors which Cody's have. He sees the same visions. The blood, sluicing from every crevice, the world covered in it.
Obi-Wan hisses between his gritted teeth. "You must be mistaken."
"I'm not," says Cody. He is stubborn even now. He reaches up, hands still in surrender, and very slowly brushes through his hair to present the shaved, bandaged spot where he had the chip cut from him. Much like an amputation, he still feels a phantom pain. "General, I've come because–"
"Ben," he says. The Jedi swallows thickly. He blinks. "I go by Ben now."
Cody blinks. "Obi-Wan."
It seems that name twists his heart. Obi-Wan clenches his eyes shut for a split second like a man stabbed and then forces them open once more, slightly bloodshot, intense. "Why are you here, Commander?"
"Cody," he retorts. "Just Cody."
"Okay." He notices now that Obi-Wan's hands are shaking– especially that which holds the blaster. "And?"
He flexes his hands at his sides, anxious. "I did terrible things. I sought to atone, or maybe just to escape. I knew.. I knew you lived."
He's seen droids, stumbling, armless or legless, crawling towards their programmed destination; clinging desperately to the last threads of their intentions, a last light on the horizon; a preprogrammed purpose. That is how he has lived in these past months. Stumbling towards Rex, towards Waxer and Boil, towards his General. He doesn't know how to explain it. Cody has no words, only the tears streaming down his face and the tremble of his hands.
"How?" snaps Obi-Wan, suddenly alert and sharp. "Who else knows?"
"Only me," he says, quick to assuage him. "We did not find a body, and so I made an assumption…"
Obi-Wan, alive, says; "An astute one."
Cody snorts. This man– this apparition from a past life has lost all his glamors but one– that snide bite. He's a little grateful for it. He wouldn't know what to do with a weeping ghost. There's no room for two. He wipes the tears from his eyes and scowls at him. "My assumptions are always astute."
"Was it also through astute assumption that you deduced my location?"
Cody looks over his shoulder at the house to his back. It is encircled by sheep. Flowers burst from the earth. It is a sad little hovel, emerging from a landscape so beautiful that it cannot help but be a little beautiful, too, simply by association.
"You could say that."
He bristles. "I must know if my location has been compromised. There is.. I did not come here only to hide, but to protect. Cody –"
The name dashes his heart to pieces. Cody does not know how much more he can stomach. "No!" he snaps, suddenly incensed, the hot tears in his eyes burning. "No! I told no one. No one else will know. Don't.. belittle me that way, I am a pawn but I'm not an idiot–"
"I never said –!"
"You thought!" Cody exclaims, stepping into his personal space. He hasn't been this close to another person in years. "You thought it."
"You are no such thing." Obi-Wan averts his eyes, looking shamefully down at his hands. His eyes are flush with unshed tears. "I cannot apologize. I fear for lives besides my own… you wouldn't understand."
Cody squints at him. Of course– of course he understands. He has not lived a minute of his life free of the burden of lives besides his own. He was decanted only to worry, to suffer, to endure, to oversee. He is the big brother of millions. He has buried many of them. Of course he understands.
He wants so very badly to push him, if only to exert some physical expression of his insurmountable frustration. It's infuriating. He squares his shoulders and his jaw and sets his mind to his words.
"Most of my brothers are dead."
Obi-Wan's gaze snaps up to meet his.
"They are as dead as your people and as gone as them too. I've failed them, like I failed your people. Every clone is decanted knowing their life is limited– just a quick thing, gone like lightning– and we've got to preserve what we can. Can't let anyone miss a precious second. You think I don't understand?"
Obi-Wan shakes his head, clearly ashamed. He seems suddenly limp, deflated. All the fight's fled him. "Cody… Cody, I'm sorry."
Cody nods. "I accept your apology."
It's the most dignified thing he's said in years.
They stare at one another. The sheep bleat. Birds circle overhead in a grandiose wave, changing and shifting in odd formations as they curl over the lush green landscape. It is so quiet here, so very high up and far from the world.
"Why did you come here for..me?"
Cody wavers.
He could offer a complicated explanation; that their proximity throughout the war was a forced dynamic endured in battle and gore through which a warrior's bond was formed, so strong it could be mistaken for affection, and not only Cody under the influence of the chip but also Obi-Wan under the persuasion of the Chancellor and all other dark forces encouraged them to meet in the middle. This could be the answer. A matter of convenience. An accident.
The answer, too, could be much simpler, much smaller, so humble and unassuming that it could not compete. He loves him.
"Because I saw my life without you.. and it was empty."
Tenderly, with the wavering hand of a man uncertain of his own reality, much less the validity of his perception of it, Obi-Wan reaches out to touch him. His hand cups the side of his face. His thumb brushes Cody's cheek. It slides up, up, to brush the scar by his eye. He has not been touched with such tenderness. There is no amount of time to quantify it by, because it has never happened. All he has is this instance of gentle kindness; of awestruck disbelief.
"I'm sorry I hurt you and your people," Obi-Wan whispers. "And for all the things I didn't do."
Cody reaches up to cup his hand against his own face. "I'm sorry for killing you."
Obi-Wan laughs. It is a broken, surprised sound. "Didn't do a very good job, did you?"
Cody shakes his head and gently reaches up to cup Obi-Wan's hand, and kiss the pink part of his palm. "I'm glad I didn't."
Overwhelmed, Obi-Wan draws his hand away, back against his own chest as if he's been burnt by the warmth of that contact. Then he looks up and, petulantly, like a child, falls forwards to creep under Cody's arm, his head against his breast as he sucks in quick breaths. His shoulders heave. Cody accepts the proximity and brushes his back with both hands.
He stands there and holds him as the wind whistles past. It is just as much for him as it is for himself. No one has touched Cody with tenderness like this. No one.
He breathes in the scent of Obi-Wan's black, curly hair, like fire smoke and honey. His dark skin is marred by a few new scars. Cody strokes his back as well as the back of his neck, encompassing him. They separate, locking eyes.
Cody smiles. It is a small, hopeful thing. "Invite me in?"