Work Text:
It’s only after Obi-Wan comes back from the dead that he discovers quite how thorough the Order was in killing him.
It’s not just the doctored medical records and artfully-shot security footage that shows him collapsing in an ungainly heap on a Coruscanti rooftop. It’s the fact that he opens the door to his rooms in the Temple and finds them stripped bare, his belongings boxed up and packed away and forgotten. It’s the forms he has to complete and get half a dozen counter-signatories on in order to, among other things, reactivate his personal comm code, regain his piloting authorisation for civilian airspace, reclaim Arfour from the Temple’s droid pool, and rejoin Dex’s customer loyalty scheme. It’s the six hours he spends stuck on one of Coruscant’s lower levels because he’d forgotten to unfreeze his credit chit and none of the cabbies would extend credit to a wild-eyed bald man claiming to be a Jedi Master.
Obi-Wan doesn’t blame them for that, to be honest, but it’s the principle of the thing.
Right now, the most frustrating of all is the fact that his starfighter—along with its hyperdrive booster—has been reassigned to Master Koon and is currently on the other side of the galaxy. All the other small craft are either in use or undergoing war-related repairs so the only way for Obi-Wan to get back to the Negotiator and the 212th is aboard a cargo shuttle full of blaster parts, compressed field rations, tent poles, bacta, engine coolant, regulation blacks, and three boxes of tattoo supplies that the captain—a clone by the name of Glick—does his best to hide behind a stack of storage crates. Fortunately there are a handful of cabins spare, so Obi-Wan plans to hole up in one for the four days it takes them to rendezvous with the Negotiator. It’s partly so that he can make his way through the mountain of reports he’s missed in the month and a half he’s been impersonating a bounty hunter. It’s mostly so that he doesn’t have to put up with the staring that the men think is subtle but really isn’t.
Honestly, it’s just hair. It’ll grow back!
Once he’s settled down in his temporary quarters with a cup of mediocre tea, he accesses the hefty datapacket he was sent from GAR administrative headquarters. There’s a sinking feeling in his stomach when he realises quite how much of a mountain is in here but before he can lose hope entirely, a soft ping sounds in his borrowed quarters and a secondary document attached to the datapacket pops up on his screen. The author tag reads CC-2224.
Cody.
Obi-Wan opens the secondary document. It’s a summary of the essential contents of the datapacket, complete with contents page and thorough index, along with hyperlinks to specific reports and requisition records that need reading beyond the commander’s precis. It’s still forty-seven pages long but it’s a good deal more manageable than the terabytes of data in the admin package. It’s written in Cody’s blessedly clear, concise style, no unnecessary jargon, no overlong acronyms, just crisply-presented information along with a brief introductory note, very brief, only two sentences, barely anything at all, that reads:
I thought this might be useful. It’s good to have you back.
Obi-Wan sets down his teacup with a sharp click. There’s a lump in his throat. He swallows around it.
He understands Anakin’s anger, he really does. His former padawan has endured so much loss in his life, so much suffering, so much deceit. Obi-Wan raised this with the Council before the Hardeen mission, he did, he told them that he feared the effect the deception would have on Anakin, so when Anakin raged at him, hurt blazing in his eyes, Obi-Wan wasn’t surprised. Ahsoka, too. She loves her master so of course she would resent the secrecy, the lies, the wedge this mission forced Obi-Wan to drive between them. Of course she would look at Obi-Wan like she’s seeing him for the first time. Of course she would look at Obi-Wan like she never knew him at all.
And then there’s the men, the 212th, his battalion, the soldiers who have fought and died for him in so many battles Obi-Wan has lost count. They were sent to the other side of the galaxy, Obi-Wan discovered when he rose from his grave. They were plunged into a campaign with Aayla’s 327th without so much as a moment to grieve. They weren’t even notified of Obi-Wan’s funeral – and Obi-Wan understands the logistical challenge it might present if a full GAR battalion showed up at the Jedi Temple, but they could have at least notified his officers, at least notified Cody—
He wishes he could have told them. He knows he couldn’t.
It’s good to have you back, Cody wrote.
Obi-Wan takes a levelling breath, then considers the whirl of emotion in his gut and gently releases it to the Force. He picks up his teacup, sips the cooling tea, and settles in to read Cody’s report.
§§§
The cargo shuttle makes its rendezvous with the Negotiator four and a half standard days later. There’s no fanfare to their arrival over the airwaves which Obi-Wan very much appreciates, just the usual comm chatter that accompanies any one of the dozens of essential resupplies that a venator receives every month. He packs up the few personal items he has with him away and slings his bag over his shoulder, then makes his way to the disembarkation hatch as the shuttle comes in for a textbook-perfect landing on the Negotiator’s flight deck.
Captain Glick is waiting for him at the hatch. He salutes, his back ramrod straight. “It’s been an honour to have you with us, General Kenobi, sir!”
“The honour is all mine,” Obi-Wan answers, inclines his head. “Make sure you visit the Negotiator’s mess before you leave. GAR ration packs are all well and good, but Flambé makes an excellent vegetable tagine on Taungsdays. It has to be tasted to be believed.”
Glick blinks. “I’ll be sure to do that, sir.”
One thing Obi-Wan didn’t mind about being Hardeen: there was no one calling him ‘sir’. There were plenty of other unpleasant aspects, of course, including but not limited to the violence, the danger, the appalling bodily hygiene of his fellow bounty hunters, and the relentless chafing of that damn armour, but Obi-Wan has never got used to being called ‘sir’.
The shuttle touches down with a gentle shudder and Obi-Wan feels the weight of General Kenobi settle over his shoulders once more.
He’s already going over next steps in his mind as the disembarkation hatch starts to hiss open. The moment the Negotiator is restocked and refuelled, the 212th and its general is being sent on campaign in the Ganydian system – something about a Separatist weapons factory, Obi-Wan recalls, but it wasn’t in the datapacket. He’s been informed that he’ll be fully briefed when he’s back on ship, so he supposes that will be the first port of call. Afterwards he’ll need to do a full walk-through of the Negotiator and make sure that he’s up to date with any and all changes in staffing. He’ll also need a more personal briefing about the events of the last month and a half because he knows that there’s always more to a campaign than what’s contained in official reports. How has morale been? Which losses were taken particularly hard? How are the medics coping? – because Obi-Wan knows that the 212th’s medics are even more prone to working themselves to the bone than most of the battalion.
The hatch settles against the floor of the flight deck and Obi-Wan steps out, caught up in his thoughts.
“General on deck!”
It’s only by the grace of a lifetime of training that Obi-Wan doesn’t trip over his own feet.
The flight deck of a venator is an enormous space, usually occupied by a mix of shuttles, fighters, and ground assault craft in various stages of readiness for takeoff. Obi-Wan was expecting there to be a dusting of engineers and a handful of maintenance techs going about their day when he arrived, perhaps a few squadrons of pilots on their way to do practice manoeuvres in this fragment of downtime. He thought that he would be met by Cody and a couple of the officers, Gregor, Waxer, Rattleback, and that that would be that.
What he wasn’t expecting was what looks like the entirety of the 212th lined up in perfect parade-ground display, every inch of orange-painted armour polished until it shines.
And he certainly wasn’t expecting every single soldier to salute in perfect unison the moment they see him. The rattle of plastoid armour plates is like leaves rustling in a strong breeze.
For once in his life, Obi-Wan doesn’t know what to say.
Cody is waiting for him at the bottom of the ramp, standing straight, shoulders back, but his officers aren’t with him. They’re with their companies, set out like a diagram in a manual. Cody’s waiting for him alone. “Sir,” his commander says as Obi-Wan steps onto the deck, his voice anonymised and distorted by his helmet’s vocoder. For a moment, Obi-Wan can almost feel the presence of Hardeen’s voice in his own throat once more. “Welcome back,” Cody says, and, like that was some kind of prearranged signal, the 212th drop their salute. “If you’d come with me, sir, I’ll brief you on the upcoming Ganydian campaign. Looks like it could be a long one. Or would you prefer to get settled first? You’ve had a long flight.”
“Ah, no, I’m quite alright,” Obi-Wan manages, the words feeling sticky in his mouth. “I have some questions about the Ganydian mission that I hope you can answer.”
“I’ll do my best,” Cody answers, and he gestures across the flight deck towards the exit. “Sir.”
All of a sudden, Obi-Wan desperately wants to see his commander’s face. “Lead on,” he says like this is all normal, like there’s nothing different, like he hasn’t been dead for a month and a half and his men haven’t gone on without him. He follows Cody across the floor of the flight deck, acutely aware that the entire battalion is watching him, their attention greedy and delighted, their excitement and relief and bubbling disbelief bright in the Force. The air is thick with it, heady with it, and when he finally steps off the flight deck and into the relative anonymity of the Negotiator’s corridors, he finds himself swaying. He almost feels drunk.
Cody steadies him with a hand on his elbow. Cody always steadies him. “Sir?”
“I’m alright,” Obi-Wan reassures. “Thank you.”
Cody drops his hand. Obi-Wan wishes he hadn’t but that is a selfish, egocentric desire that he has no right to feel. Cody is a remarkable man, loyal, trustworthy, meticulous, ruthless on the battlefield but never reckless, generous when he can be, firm when he can’t, a steady warmth in the Force like a fire on a winter’s night. He has been a source of strength for Obi-Wan during the darkest days of this awful war.
He is just doing the job that he has never had any choice but to do.
Obi-Wan lets the knot of longing in his heart go.
“This way, sir,” Cody says. “I’ve reserved Briefing Room 12 for us.”
Obi-Wan nods, not trusting himself to speak.
§§§
Briefing Room 12 is on one of the upper decks, tucked away at the end of a long, winding corridor between a poorly-used communications suite and the main entrance to the Negotiator’s refuse systems. It’s the least popular briefing room on the ship which is exactly why it’s the briefing room Obi-Wan and Cody use when they need to discuss matters that require more presentation space than either of their private quarters. No one is likely to stumble in on them in search of a stylus they forgot during their last meeting or a flimsi that got dropped under a table.
Once the door to Briefing Room 12 is closed behind them, Obi-Wan watches Cody unlatch the fastenings of his helmet, take it off, and set it down on the table. His commander looks up at him, the scarring around his eye glinting in the artificial lighting. “Sorry about the welcome,” is the first thing he says, a little bit wry, a little bit amused. “I know it was over the top, but a lot of the men wouldn’t believe the news was true unless they saw you for yourself. I thought that it would be better to get the show over and done with quickly instead of you dealing with troopers spying on you around corners for the next month.”
Cody’s voice is warm and light. He isn’t angry, isn’t shouting, isn’t bitter or distrustful or disappointed.
“I appreciate the consideration,” Obi-Wan answers, not quite sure how he should respond to that. “The men, they were…” He trails off. He doesn’t know how to complete that sentence, either.
Cody understands what he means anyway. “Morale’s been low. Very low, especially after the clusterfuck that was the mission with the 327th. I’ve got to say, the news that you weren’t dead came at a good time. You wouldn’t believe the party they threw when the report came in. Let’s just say that we won’t have to worry about the still in engineering for a while – it’s bone dry. And careful if you’re in cargo hold three at any point: Ghost threw off a bunch of firecrackers in there but they didn’t all go off. Troopers keep finding live ones in the storage webbing.”
“I,” Obi-Wan says, then stops, then decides that this level of ineloquence is really rather unbecoming of his reputation as the Negotiator. He gathers his thoughts. “I’d like to apologise, Commander. To you and to the men for not telling you what was happening with my, ah, apparent demise. It was a mission for the Council and secrecy was paramount. It had to be believable and, for that, no one could know.”
Cody’s shaking his head. “No need to apologise, sir,” he says. “Orders are orders, especially when it’s need to know. We didn’t need to know.”
Obi-Wan frowns. “Cody—”
“We get it,” Cody interrupts, and for the first time Obi-Wan feels a strange flicker in his warm, steady Force presence. It’s gone too fast for him to identify. “We’re just glad you’re alright.” He grins widely. “And that we won’t have to break in a new general. It took us long enough to whip you into shape. Don’t want to have to start that process over again.”
Obi-Wan can’t help but laugh at that. “Very well,” he says, relief breaking over him like a wave. For a moment he thinks about saying something else, I’m glad I’m back or thank you for the welcome, but Cody’s eyes are amber-bright and what he finds himself saying is, “This Ganydian campaign. You said you thought it could take some time?”
Cody crosses to the holoscreen taking up one wall and keys it on. “Intel is still scanty but we’re working on it,” he explains, calling up a star map of the Ganydian system and a side panel of geological data. “There’s been reports of some new Separatist super weapon being constructed on the third planet but no evidence of anything more than droid factories. We need to find the factories and any intel we can on this super weapon before we can blow anything up, but the Ganydians are a twitchy lot so it’s going to be tricky. The plan is…”
Obi-Wan sits and listens as Cody outlines the plan they’ve come up with, asks a few questions, probes the plan’s edges and weaknesses, suggests some improvements and then lets Cody question and probe the weaknesses of those improvements in turn. It’s a good few days of hyperspace travel to the Ganydian system so they’ll repeat this process with the officers before they arrive but this is how it always starts, the two of them working it out between them, laying the groundwork for everything that’s to come.
It’s good. It’s as good as this kriffing war can get.
When they’re done and Cody’s sent the various schematics and outlines to Obi-Wan’s datapad for further perusal, Cody pauses, his helmet cradled under his arm. “Sir,” he says, oddly reticent. “Sorry if this isn’t appropriate, but can I ask you a personal question?”
Obi-Wan suppresses the thump of his heart against his ribs. “Ask away.”
“What happened to your, ah, hair?” Cody asks, forehead creased. “And your beard?”
Obi-Wan passes a self-conscious hand over his scalp. His hair is growing back but it’s still little more than stubble at this point. “Part of my disguise,” he explains ruefully. “Hardeen was bald, so I had to be bald. It will grow back but it will take a while.”
“Oh, good,” Cody says, visibly relieved. “That’s good.”
Obi-Wan cocks an eyebrow, surprised. “Is that right?”
Cody’s face smoothes out into the perfect neutral mask. “Yes, sir,” he agrees. “The third world in the Ganydian system is a desert planet. Lots of sun. It’d shine off your head and give away our position to the enemy. Security risk.”
Obi-Wan laughs, startled. “Cody!”
Cody puts his helmet on. “Yes, sir?” he asks, the picture of professional innocence.
Obi-Wan shakes his head, still smiling. “Nothing, Commander,” he says, playing along, slipping back into the easy ribbing that they’ve always shared. “Only that I always appreciate the thoroughness of your risk assessments.”
Cody snaps off a salute. “Any time, General.”
§§§
The hyperspace jump to the Ganydian system passes without real incident, but Obi-Wan is distractingly busy anyway.
He spends the days reacquainting himself with the Negotiator’s quirks and imperfections, finalising the campaign strategy with Cody and the senior officers, and being gawked at every time he shows his face outside his quarters. In their defence, the men do always look rather guilty whenever he catches them but that doesn’t stop the stares. He doesn’t have it in him to reprimand them, though, not when Anakin still isn’t answering his messages.
They’re a day out from the Ganydian system when Gauge finally tracks him down, autoinjector in hand, and drags him back to medical for, as his CMO puts it, “the physical that was already overdue before you died, sir”. “And now there’s all this face-altering banthashit to deal with,” Gauge mutters once he’s got Obi-Wan in a private room in the medical bay. “Have you read the literature on this procedure, sir? Did you know that there’s been no long-term studies on the aftereffects? They literally don’t know what this kind of meddling will do and they just did it anyway.”
“I feel fine,” Obi-Wan tries to explain. “And I was fully cleared by the Temple Healers.”
“No offence, General,” Gauge says, jabbing a needle into his arm to take a fourth blood sample, “but I know what it means when you say you’re fine. You’ll forgive me if I prefer to trust the evidence of my own eyes instead of the assurance of a man who once promised me that he didn’t need my help and then limped around on a broken leg for two days.”
Obi-Wan supposes he does have a point.
Gauge flits around him, taking samples, measuring vital functions, peering into Obi-Wan’s eyes and measuring the growth rate of his stubbly hair. Obi-Wan lets him do his worst and, instead of protesting, unobtrusively watches the other troopers who pass by the window of the private room. It’s mostly Gauge’s medics, Sclep, Handa, and Keller, but there’s a handful of others, too, in for regular check ups or minor scrapes and strains. They all do their best to look in on him while doing their best not to look like they’re looking in on him. None of them particularly succeed.
It’s rather endearing, really.
It’s while Obi-Wan watches his men trying not to look like they’re watching him that he notices there’s something different about their armour – or, to be more precise, something different about the decoration on their armour. Decorating their armour is one of the very few ways the clones have to express their individuality, he knows that, and Cody has told him in the past how important it is and how much thought goes into it. There are often similarities between the decorations the troopers choose, particularly among close-knit companies or individuals who trained together on Kamino, but the patterns are rarely identical.
Now, sitting in the Negotiator’s medical bay while Gauge mutters darkly to his scanner, all the men he sees have the same mark on their armour.
It’s nothing complex, just a horizontal bar of orange paint on the chestplate that’s perhaps as long as Obi-Wan’s palm, marked above the heart. It doesn’t look like it’s been done with a brush or a sponge or any of the other implements the clones use to personalise their armour. It looks like each clone has dipped his fingers in orange paint and streaked it on.
Now that Obi-Wan’s thinking about it, he’s seen that on all the troopers’ armour. And it wasn’t there before he left them for the Hardeen mission.
“Gauge,” Obi-Wan says, frowning, and looks back to his CMO. Gauge is wearing medical scrubs rather than armour, his tattooed arms bare, so maybe he won’t know about the mark – and perhaps Obi-Wan shouldn’t ask anyway because armour is sacred to the clones, he knows that, sacred and more importantly private. But it’s all of them, not just one or two. Whatever it signifies, it was important enough to the entire 212th to mark on their armour. That makes it something he needs to know about.
He’s missed enough already.
“General?” Gauge prompts.
“What’s the significance of the mark the men have on their armour?” Obi-Wan asks before he can think better of it. He indicates as best he can, drawing three fingers across his heart in a solid line. “Like this. Almost everyone has it. I don’t remember seeing it before I left.”
Gauge doesn’t answer for a moment. He finishes inputting a couple of fields on a datapad, then puts it down. For a moment, Obi-Wan thinks he’s going to ignore his question, but eventually he says, “It’s for you, sir.”
Obi-Wan doesn’t understand. “What do you mean?”
“It’s a mark of mourning, sir,” Gauge answers, neatly lining the tools of his trade up on the small table next to the bed. “For you.”
“I,” Obi-Wan says, then stops. “Oh.”
Gauge fidgets with a scalpel, then drops his hand to his side and sighs. “It wasn’t an organised thing,” he says quietly. “It started a few days after you were reported KIA, spread pretty quickly. Especially after the memorial we held for you.” A muscle twitches in his jaw. “The commander was the first, though. The men took their lead from him.”
Obi-Wan’s mouth is dry. “Cody?”
“There’s no other commander in the 212th,” Gauge agrees, picking up one of his many autoinjectors and jabbing it into the side of Obi-Wan’s neck. “Your cortisol levels are a bit high for my liking so I want you back here in two days time for another check up. Hide and I’ll find you, that clear?”
Obi-Wan nods.
“Good to have you back, sir,” Gauge says. “Now get out of my medical bay so I can be angry at the Council some more in private.”
Obi-Wan leaves him to it.
Every trooper he passes in the halls of the Negotiator has that horizontal bar above his heart.
§§§
Obi-Wan has a meeting that afternoon with his senior staff to finalise mission allocations for the first phase of the Ganydian campaign.
Frontal assault of the droid factories isn’t planned until phase two – most of the initial work will be gathering intel in order to confirm or refute these rumours of a super weapon. It’s decided that Ghost—led by Cody—and Contour—led by Rattleback—will take those initial forays while Obi-Wan distracts the Ganydians with diplomatic niceties. The Negotiator will hang back, hidden from sensor range within the corona of the system’s sun, and there’s a brief discussion of the alterations that will need to be made to the shields. Blunder, the Negotiator’s chief engineer, is already muttering about the yield calculations before the meeting is halfway over.
It’s productive, it’s efficient, it’s a testament to the tactical ability of the men under his command.
Obi-Wan spends the entire meeting trying not to look at the orange bars scored over the hearts of every single clone in the room.
They break up when the first phase has been solidified and the companies have their orders. Obi-Wan lingers a little longer, studying the map of the fifth world laid out on the briefing room’s holotable, memorising the route that Contour will take to the sentry outpost even though, all being well, he’ll never set foot on the planet.
He’s so absorbed that he doesn’t register Cody’s fireside Force presence until his commander says, “General?” from right beside him.
Obi-Wan doesn’t jump because he’s a Jedi Master and Jedi Masters don’t jump. It’s close, though. “Ah, Commander!” he replies, carefully uncurling his fingers from where they clenched spasmodically around the edge of the holotable. “Apologies. I was lightyears away.”
Cody doesn’t smile at that. In fact, his whole demeanour is oddly tense. “Is everything alright, sir? You seemed distracted during the meeting.”
“Quite alright,” Obi-Wan blusters, inwardly cursing himself for being so obvious. “I was just, ah, familiarising myself with the campaign parameters. You know how it is. There are rather a lot of variables to consider in this operation.”
Cody’s tension doesn’t ease. “Yes, sir.”
Oh, Obi-Wan has lied to his men enough lately. “Actually, that isn’t true,” he sighs, and doesn’t miss the way Cody’s eyebrows jump. “Yes, I am familiarising myself with the campaign, but that isn’t all. I, ah, well.” He contemplates the shimmering holomap instead of looking at his commander’s face. “It has been brought to my attention what exactly the significance is of the new marking on the men’s armour. The, ah, bar. Above the heart.”
Cody is very still.
Now that he’s looking, Obi-Wan realises that the bar over Cody’s heart is rough and uneven. If he were being fanciful, he’d say that it looked like his commander’s hand was shaking when he did it.
“Gauge told me that it was a mark of mourning,” Obi-Wan says, the words jagged in his mouth.
“Apologies, sir,” Cody raps out, rigid and stiff. “I’ll have the men remove it.”
“You will not!” Obi-Wan blurts, and Cody blinks at him, startled. “I would never ask any soldier to change his armour. I am not asking the men to change their armour, Commander – that is their choice, and it is a choice I will never take away.”
“Then,” Cody starts, and stops, and starts again. “You don’t seem pleased about it, sir. I assumed you considered it… inappropriate.”
“Grief is not inappropriate,” Obi-Wan counters, outraged.
“But you’re, uh— I mean, there’s no need for anyone to grieve any more,” Cody says, and there it is again, that swirl in his Force presence, a thread of cold air around the fire.
“But there was,” Obi-Wan answers. “Perhaps, for some, there still is. It isn’t for me to say. I was merely… surprised, that’s all. I didn’t expect it.”
“You didn’t expect the men to mourn you?” Cody asks very quietly, barely more than a whisper. It’s the only sound in the briefing room. There’s nothing else, no comms, no conversations, no emergencies to draw them away. There’s only them.
“I didn’t know what I expected,” Obi-Wan admits. “It has been—” He stops, full of the taste of Anakin’s rage. “Reactions have differed,” he finally manages. “I didn’t expect my return to be, ah, a cause for celebration.”
Cody studies him for a long moment. “You were dead, sir. The fact that you’re not dead is a good thing.”
Obi-Wan feels his lips twist. “I’m not sure it’s quite that simple.”
“It is,” Cody answers without even pausing to breathe. His cheeks flush and he adds, “The men think so.”
Warmth floods through Obi-Wan’s chest, seeping into his skin, his nerves, winding between the vertebrae of his spine. “Thank you,” he says, even though it’s not what he wants to say. He doesn’t know what he wants to say.
Cody nods, steps back, and says, “General,” in a tone that clearly suggests that he’s said everything he wants to say.
“Commander,” Obi-Wan dismisses in return.
His heart is strangely heavy as Cody leaves.
§§§
Their arrival in the Ganydian system is unheralded and, hopefully, unremarked.
The Negotiator is a hive of activity as two companies—Ghost and Contour—prepare for mission go, but that’s not the front that Obi-Wan will fight on for this first phase so he feels oddly disconnected from his men’s activity. He’ll be departing for Ganyda Prime soon enough, accompanied by an honour guard under Waxer’s command, but they need to give Ghost and Contour time to get into position first.
Obi-Wan meets briefly with Waxer to confirm strategy and signals, which is when he discovers that his so-called honour guard comprises fifteen troopers. Fifteen! He’s a Jedi Master, he doesn’t need fifteen troopers to hold his hand and check the refresher for assassins and, oh, he doesn’t know, lift the hem of his robes. He tells Waxer as much, although perhaps not quite so bluntly.
Waxer just shrugs and says, “Commander’s orders, sir. Take it up with him.”
Obi-Wan grits his teeth and sets out to find his commander.
Cody isn’t in the shuttle bay or the hangar deck or the bridge or any of the briefing rooms Obi-Wan checks. He also isn’t in the gym or the armoury or the mess, and it takes Obi-Wan an embarrassingly long time to think about looking for him in his quarters. It’s not that he’s never been to Cody’s quarters before. Far from it, in fact—he’s hidden from admirals and politicians and, on one occasion, Master Yoda in Cody’s quarters before—but that’s always been at Cody’s instigation. Cody has always offered. Obi-Wan has never asked. He will never ask, not because he doesn’t want to but because he knows that his commander would never say no to him. He knows that he wouldn’t have a choice.
The clones have had enough choices taken from them.
Obi-Wan stands outside Cody’s quarters and presses the call chime.
It only takes Cody a moment to answer the door. He’s only wearing the lower half of his armour, just in his blacks on the top, form fitting and perhaps a little bit too small. The scar curled around his eye glints in the artificial lighting. “General!” he says, clearly surprised to see Obi-Wan. “Is everything alright?”
“I’d like to speak to you about Lieutenant Waxer’s guard detail,” Obi-Wan answers, stiffer than he really means to.
Cody’s expression stills. “Of course, sir.” He steps back. “Come in.”
Obi-Wan follows his commander inside and waits for the door to shut behind him. “I appreciate that I cannot go to the meeting on Ganyda Prime alone, but it is ridiculous to assign fifteen troopers to accompany me. Their time could be much better spent elsewhere!”
Cody picks up his chestplate from the foot of the bed, at which point Obi-Wan belatedly realises that he’s interrupted his commander in the middle of preparing for battle. “The number of troopers was in the plan, sir,” he says, carefully neutral. “It’s a bit late to object now.”
“I am not a padawan,” Obi-Wan answers, watching Cody snap and click and fit his armour into place. Every moment is precise, economical, calculated. It’s like watching an artist at work. “I don’t need to be protected.”
Cody’s hands pause, just for a moment. He doesn’t meet Obi-Wan’s eyes when he says, “No offence, sir, but you needed protecting on Coruscant and we weren’t there to protect you. That cuts us deep.”
“Cody, that was—”
“You needed protecting on Zygerria, too,” Cody interrupts, pulling on his gauntlets, flexing his fingers in their gloves. “And on Kadavo. We weren’t there to protect you then, either.”
“You don’t need to make up for what has already happened,” Obi-Wan says softly.
“No, sir,” Cody agrees, straightening, meeting Obi-Wan’s gaze head on. “But it won’t do you any harm and it’ll make us feel better.” He hesitates. “The men, I mean. It’ll make the men feel better to know that you’re safe.”
Just above Cody’s right shoulder, halfway between the narrow bed and the narrower desk, there’s a shallow dent in the durasteel bulkhead. Obi-Wan’s fairly sure it wasn’t there before the Hardeen mission. There’s no scorching which means it hasn’t been made by blaster fire, and now that Obi-Wan’s looking he can see that there are tiny scrapes of white caught in the uneven metal. If he had to guess, it’s white plastoid.
Obi-Wan suddenly knows with unerring certainty that Cody punched that dent into the bulkhead.
Cody is watching him, mouth set in a hard line.
“The men,” Obi-Wan echoes. “It will comfort them.”
Cody is fully armoured, his helmet held under his arm, the plastoid knuckles of his gauntlets even more scraped and scratched than they usually are. “Yeah,” he agrees, his eyes dark. “The men.” He sucks in a laboured breath and Obi-Wan watches as his shoulders suddenly slump. The atmosphere is taught around them, stretched as tight as the skin of a drum. “Ah, that’s a lie. It’s not for the kriffing men, sir. It’s—”
Cody’s comm buzzes.
The tension snaps.
Cody puts on his helmet and takes the comm where Obi-Wan can’t hear it. After a moment, he says, “Ghost’s ready to go, General. I’m holding them up.”
“Of course,” Obi-Wan says, tucking his hands into the sleeves of his robe. “Don’t let me keep you.” He takes a long, level breath and calms his racing heart. “I apologise for the intrusion and for questioning your command decisions. For this mission, the size of the guard is acceptable.”
“Thank you, sir,” Cody says. “See you on the other side.”
Obi-Wan inclines his head. “May the Force be with you, Commander.”
“You too, General,” Cody answers, and doesn’t say anything more.
§§§
The diplomatic niceties on Ganyda Prime certainly don’t require an honour guard of fifteen highly-trained specialist soldiers but they’re rather more eventful than Obi-Wan expected.
What he thought was going to happen was that he’d show up, shake some appendages, indulge in some polite conversation, then bluster about the details of the Ganydian system’s pointed neutrality while Ghost and Contour do the real information-gathering on the second and fifth worlds. What ends up happening is that Obi-Wan turns up, shakes appendages, indulges in conversations, blusters about neutrality – and is then surprised after a lengthy formal banquet by the daughter of the Ganydian Monarch appearing out of nowhere in his bathroom.
Once he’s convinced Waxer not to shoot her, Princess Mede tells him that her family’s government is being threatened by the Separatists, that covert droid factories have been installed without their permission on two of their worlds, and that there is something even more covert than the droid factories happening on the dark side of the seventh planet. She gives Obi-Wan a datachit in the shape of a jade pendant that apparently contains all the information the Monarch has managed to glean on the seventh planet and then disappears back into the secret corridor she came from.
“Well,” Waxer says, eyeing the pendant that’s now hanging around Obi-Wan’s neck. “That’s getting decrypted on a server isolated from the Negotiator’s mainframe.”
“A wise precaution,” Obi-Wan agrees.
Once the diplomacy has run its course, Obi-Wan and his honour guard return to the Negotiator and go back to pick up Contour and Ghost. Neither company had much trouble on their respective missions, no casualties, the only injury the newest member of Contour who slipped on some scree and bruised his tailbone. They hold an impromptu command meeting with both Cody and Rattleback still in their armour, and the first thing Obi-Wan does is share the contents of Princess Mede’s pendant, carefully decrypted on an isolated server and even more carefully checked for bugs, booby-traps, and Separatist plots.
“It’s a map,” he tells his men, watching Cody’s dark eyes dart across the schematics and star charts and geological coordinates. “A map to a covert facility on the seventh planet that even the Ganydian royal family aren’t supposed to know about.”
“It’s a kriffing fortress,” Gregor comments, crouching down to get a better look at the floor plan of the main building. “You seen these gun emplacements, sir? You’d need kriffing siege weaponry to get through those.”
“The question remains,” Obi-Wan observes. “What exactly are those gun implacements hiding?” He looks up at Cody and Rattleback. “Was either of you able to glean any useful information from the droid factories?”
Rattleback’s arms are folded. “I was,” he answers, his jaw set. “There was mainframe data in the droid factory on the fifth world that mentioned some kind of Seppie bioweapon.” He plugs a datachit into the terminal, brings up a new slew of information, medical charts and hydrocarbon strings and pages and pages of statistics. Half of them are blacked out and unreadable. “Some kind of mutagenic virus, it looks like.”
“It wouldn’t be the first instance of the Separatists indulging in a spot of biowarfare,” Obi-Wan says heavily.
“There’s no data that we could find on what the virus targets, though,” Rattleback points out. “If it’s in there, it’s redacted beyond what our systems can retrieve. We can try to get the boys in intel to work their magic, see what they come up with.”
“No need,” Cody says, producing his own datachit and thumbing it in alongside Rattleback’s. It takes Obi-Wan a moment to place the emotion in his commander’s voice. It’s rage. Obi-Wan’s stomach drops as Cody says, calm and level and furious, “We hacked the sealed database on the second world’s factory and found this.” He brings up the data. “Clones,” Cody says as Obi-Wan watches clone biodata scroll past, genetic sequences, physical characteristics, blood type, every piece of information you could possibly need to – well, to build a mutagenic virus. “I’m pretty sure,” Cody says, simmering, “that they’re making a bioweapon that targets clones.”
Obi-Wan takes his anger, his disgust, his horror, feels them all, and then lets them go. “Well,” he says as Waxer snarls and Gregor mutters and Cody just stands there, rigid and calm and utterly furious. “We can’t have that, can we?”
Cody looks up at him, his face bathed in the blue light from the holoprojector, and Obi-Wan thinks that his commander looks very, very tired.
There’s no clear consensus from the collected intel on whether or not the Separatists have been successful in creating a clone-targeted bioweapon but Obi-Wan isn’t about to give them any more time to get it done. Gregor’s right about the facility’s defences which means that it won’t be an easy fight but, with any luck, if they move fast enough the 212th will have surprise on their side. Cody comms the bridge and has Negotiator set course for the seventh planet even before their impromptu strategy meeting is over.
There’s no need for Obi-Wan to dismiss his officers because they’re out of the meeting room before he has a chance to say a word, practically running to ready the battalion for what hopefully won’t turn out to be a protracted siege. Cody’s the last one left, leaning on the edge of the holotable, staring darkly into the fritzing blue projections. “This could get very bad, very quickly,” he says quietly, not looking up at Obi-Wan. “If they’ve got that virus and a decent dispersal method…” He trails off, his jaw tight. “Our helmets have filtration systems – I’ll have every trooper double check his systems before mission go. Anyone with any kind of error doesn’t deploy.”
“Agreed,” Obi-Wan says, nodding. “And we have biohazard suits, do we not? We should use them.”
Cody grimaces. “They’re not manoeuvrable. We had to fight while wearing them in training – most of us ended up with rips in the suit, so we didn’t die from enemy fire but we did die from whatever hypothetical poison we were being gassed with.” His helmet is sitting next to him on the holotable. He sets his hand on top of it. “Helmets are a better bet. The filtration systems are good enough. And we’ll just have to brief the men not to touch anything that looks like it’s going to kill them.”
Obi-Wan doesn’t like the sound of that but he trusts Cody’s judgement. He folds his arms and allows a brusque, “Very well.”
Cody glances up at him. “You don’t agree?”
“I would prefer there to be some kind of redundancy in place,” Obi-Wan answers. “If this virus is in production and if it is airborne, then a failure of a trooper’s helmet filters is potentially a death sentence. I would prefer it if we could guard against that in some way.”
“There’s a lot of ‘if’s there, sir,” Cody observes, one eyebrow raised.
“I merely want to keep the men safe,” Obi-Wan answers.
“There’s only so safe we can be,” Cody replies, almost wry. “We’re soldiers and this is a war. The priority right now has to be taking out this bioweapon. If they have got a virus that’ll take out clones and they release it, that would be—” He stops unexpectedly, a muscle jumping in his jaw. The wryness is gone. Obi-Wan watches his commander take a breath, get himself under control, and say, “What is it that General Yoda says? The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.”
“The Jedi are the few,” Obi-Wan counters. “That is the point of that saying. It is taught to younglings in the crèche. As Jedi, it is our obligation to prioritise the needs of the galaxy over our own desires.”
Cody’s dark eyes flash. “You don’t get to have a monopoly on self-sacrifice, sir.”
Obi-Wan knows that his commander isn’t talking about the Ganydian operation anymore but they don’t have time for any other conversation right now. “I am merely trying to ensure that no sacrifice is required at all,” he cautions. Cody looks down at the holotable, grimacing. “Yes, we are at war so danger is inevitable,” Obi-Wan tries, “but this mission presents a specific danger that we must do everything we can to protect against. Consider the possibility of biohazard suits.”
Cody doesn’t look up at him. “Understood,” he grits out, hands white knuckled around the edge of the holotable.
That isn’t what Obi-Wan wanted. “Cody, I don’t—”
“Understood, sir,” Cody interrupts, standing straight, hands clasped behind his back. “I’ll speak to the officers and to the CMO. We’ll work out a strategy. I’ll update you when I know more.”
He goes without waiting to be dismissed.
There’s a bad taste in Obi-Wan’s mouth. He puts it to one side and refocuses on the plans of the facility on the seventh planet.
§§§
The consensus of the 212th’s command staff is that biohazard suits are bulky, unmanoeuvrable, and anyway no one’s done combat training in them for years so wearing them is more likely to cause harm than good. Obi-Wan trusts his command staff so he relents, but he does insist that any trooper whose helmet filters tested at anything less than 100% efficiency on their last tech check sits this mission out. He gets no argument from the officers, although he does overhear some grumblings from the rank and file. They know to keep it to themselves, though, and by the time the Negotiator drops out of hyperspace and into orbit of the dark side of the Ganydian seventh planet, the infiltration team is primed and ready to go.
“This is a stealth operation,” Cody raps out over comms as the shuttle—quicker and more manoeuvrable than a LAAT/i—slips out of the Negotiator’s shuttle bay and dives towards the planet. “You’ve all seen those gun emplacements – a frontal assault would be a bloodbath. Fortunately Captain Rattleback spotted the security gap in the waste culverts. It won’t be pleasant but it’ll stop us all getting killed.”
“Thanks for that, Rats,” a voice that Obi-Wan thinks might be Boil mutters into a comm that—he presumes—has been accidentally left open.
“Latrine duty,” Rattleback jabs back over the open comm line, and someone else snickers.
Obi-Wan can’t help a smile.
Cody gives an excellent impression of not having heard a word of that little exchange. “Structural munitions with Gregor. Data core with Rattleback. Command centre with me and General Kenobi. You all know your assignments. Watch each other’s backs, keep your helmets sealed at all times, and if any Seppies smash any ominous vials of gas, get out of there and call it in. Understood?”
There’s a general noise of agreement.
“Good,” Cody says, his rifle propped against his shoulder. “ETA three minutes.”
The men lapse into the strained, easy quiet that Obi-Wan knows as the calm before the storm. A few helmets are inclined together, pairs and threes communicating over private lines. One trooper joshes another, shoving him playfully, dancing backwards when he’s pushed in return. It’s comfortable. It’s unbearably tense.
Cody stands as still as a heron on the edge of a lake.
Obi-Wan hasn’t spoken to his commander since Cody dismissed himself from the meeting room. It’s not because he’s been avoiding Cody or Cody’s been avoiding him – it’s just because there’s been no time. There never is, in this awful war, but there’s even less when the possibility of a genocide hangs over their heads. There is always something to be done, some burden to bear, some sacrifice to make. There’s no time.
“Thirty seconds,” Cody says over comms.
Obi-Wan doesn’t need to check that his lightsaber is at his belt but his fingers dance over the hilt anyway. He breathes, low and soft, a rhythm of preparation and readiness. His mind is clear, his body is calm, his intention is set.
When he looks up, moments before the shuttle touches down and the hatch drops open, Cody is looking right back at him.
§§§
It isn’t a complicated plan, really.
Obi-Wan and Cody will lead a squad of troopers to the area of the facility that the blueprints identified as the command centre. They’ll take control, quash any opposition, and then determine as best they can what exactly has been going on here and how much has been communicated out of the Ganydian system. At the same time, Gregor’s squad will mine various load-bearing parts of the structure with explosives and Rattleback’s squad will do the same to the facility’s data core. When Obi-Wan and Cody have determined the scale of the operation and dealt with it accordingly, a prearranged signal will be sent and detonation timers activated.
It’s really quite simple, which of course means that absolutely nothing goes to plan.
The waste culverts are supposed to lead into a mostly-empty monitoring and storage area but, at some point after the Ganydian Princess got her hands on the plans, that area was swapped out for a secondary droid recharging station. They stumble straight into a tangle of battle droids and it all goes downhill from there, really. They stick to their tasks as much as possible, the officers shouting orders over closed comms, but it’s chaos.
Obi-Wan feels the lives of his men winking out like fireflies in the night.
But there’s no time to mourn because this is a war and there are more important matters to consider than the lives of a few soldiers.
They push on, through corridors flashing with weapons fire and labs lined with the dissected corpses of captured clones, past bubbling vials and complex theoretical simulations and what Obi-Wan thinks is a projection of casualty numbers. They gain the command centre with two-thirds of their numbers left, only to find that the flesh-and-blood scientists in charge of the facility have locked everything down and then sealed themselves in a panic room that nothing short of a super battle droid is getting through.
Or at least that’s what the scientists appear to have done, right up until they drop down out of the ceiling, syringes in hand, and hurl themselves at Obi-Wan’s men.
They’re not fighters, though, and most of them are subdued without the troopers breaking a sweat. One, though, a burly male with a beard down to his waist and shoulders as broad as a speeder bike, isn’t quite so easily stopped. He breaks his needle against Opal’s armour with a scream, headbutts Jaybird to his knees, and gets his hairy hands around Immer’s neck and throttles him until his rifle drops from nerveless hands.
At which point the massive scientist drops Immer, snatches up the DC-15, and turns it on Obi-Wan.
Obi-Wan’s lightsaber is already in his hands, the blue blade bitter and ghostly in this ghoulish place, but he doesn’t get a chance to raise it. The scientist pulls the trigger, his mouth open in a fanged snarl, spraying bolts of light towards Obi-Wan, but not a single one gets near him because Cody—Cody!—puts himself in the way without a moment’s hesitation. He just steps forward into the muzzle of the rifle. He stands between Obi-Wan and the man firing at him without a moment’s hesitation.
“Commander!” Waxer roars, so loud Obi-Wan’s comm crackles in his ear.
The scientist goes down in a hail of fire, the stolen rifle clattering to the decking, but Cody goes down too. He collapses in a heap, his armour burned and cracked, raw, bloody flesh seeping through the broken pieces, stinking, burning, bleeding, hurting, dying. Obi-Wan can feel it. He can feel the light of Cody’s life dimming. He can feel him fading. It sticks in his mouth. It makes him want to vomit.
But there’s nothing he can do to help.
There’s no proper medic with them but Immer has a good amount of field medic training. He takes over, coughing and spluttering with every breath, and Obi-Wan goes back to his role in all this, the Jedi, the general, the leader, the one who puts everything he cares about to one side because this is a war and there’s no time for that.
He does his job.
Cody’s already done his.
With the help of one of the surrendered scientists, they access the facility’s databanks and ascertain that this is the only place this particular awful bit of research is stored. They wipe the databanks, load the scientists onto the shuttle, recover as many of their dead as they can while taking heavy fire from the remaining droids, and then blow the charges in the data core and the superstructure.
They get in and they get out.
Obi-Wan sits next to Immer and an unconscious Cody on the shuttle back to the Negotiator. He holds the IV bag that Immer shoves into his hands, he passes gauze and autoinjectors when he’s told to, he presses his knee against Cody’s limp leg and hopes that that will somehow give his commander strength. He feels the fluttering embers of Cody’s life. He feels them refusing to go out.
That bar of orange paint is still smeared across the chest plate of Cody’s armour, just above his heart.
§§§
Cody spends two full days in medical.
Obi-Wan spends those days in post-mission debriefings with the GAR and the Council, strategy sessions with his officers and a handful of his fellow Jedi, and a long, horrible meeting with CMO Gauge to sign off on the closure of records for the sixteen troopers who didn’t make it back from the seventh planet of the Ganydian system. There’s a stack of paperwork he needs to get through and some kind of crisis on a remote planet called Hoth that Aayla has asked for his advice with. The captured scientists attempt to escape so he has to deal with that. At one point, he has a shower.
Just for a moment, he misses when he was dead.
But there’s no time for that.
He gets the news that Cody has woken up just before he receives an emergency call from Bail and is up half the night in urgent holocalls to half the Galactic centre. He glances at a report from Gauge about Cody’s condition in the moments before heading a second diplomatic mission to Ganyda Prime. He hears from Gregor that Cody is going stir-crazy in medical at the exact moment that the Negotiator shakes under them because a Separatist ship has opened fire.
There’s no time.
Cody’s report on the Ganydian mission comes through two weeks after Obi-Wan helped Immer carry his bloody, broken body into the Negotiator’s medical bay. It’s written in his usual precise, concise style and it’s mostly a) an analysis of the varying tactics used by the battle droids, b) an assessment of the risk involved in relying on external intel, and c) an encomium to the troopers who lost their lives.
It makes very little of the fact that he threw himself in front of short-range rifle fire to protect his general.
General Kenobi’s safety was my priority, Obi-Wan reads, and he feels his throat close in on itself. I took appropriate action to head off the danger.
Obi-Wan switches his datapad off and tosses it to one side. He can still smell Cody’s burning flesh. He can still taste the fading embers of his life.
His comm buzzes. It’s Mace, calling from the other side of the galaxy.
There’s never any time.
Obi-Wan takes the call.
§§§
Between a meeting, a mission, and a post-Hardeen medical with Gauge that he’s been putting off for three days, Obi-Wan finds a moment to meditate. He’s been rushed off his feet since they entered the Ganydian system so sleep has had to take priority over oneness with the Force, which is all well and good but it leaves Obi-Wan feeling stretched and thin. It’s like there’s pieces of him missing. It’s like the things there important to him are being scraped away and lost in the Negotiator’s hyperspace trails.
Past midnight according to the ship’s internal comms, travelling from one war zone to another on the other side of the galaxy, Obi-Wan settles into a cross-legged meditation stance and lets himself slip into the warm embrace of the Force.
He breathes. That’s all there is to do. He breathes.
He’s been meditating for a little while when he feels a familiar presence getting close through the forest of lives around him. It’s a fire on a winter’s night, it’s a cup of tea at the end of a long day, it’s the touch of hand against bare skin that hasn’t been touched for too long. There was a moment on the seventh planet in the Ganydian system that Obi-Wan thought he wouldn’t feel that presence ever again. Now, like this, immersed in the Force, he understands that he is more glad than he could ever express that he’s feeling it now.
Obi-Wan opens his eyes at the exact same time as the door chime sounds. “Come in,” he calls, sinking to the floor of his quarters.
The door opens and Cody steps inside. He’s not wearing his armour this late at night, just his tight-fitting regulation blacks, and there’s a datapad under his arm. “Sorry to interrupt,” he says, one eyebrow raised at the sight of Obi-Wan sitting on the floor. “Have you got a moment, General? There are some things I want to go over with you for the upcoming campaign on Iybek.”
Obi-Wan unfolds from the floor. “I’m fairly sure you’re supposed to be on medical leave, Commander.”
“I was on medical leave,” Cody corrects. “Gauge cleared me two hours ago.”
Obi-Wan eyes him. “The last I heard, Cody, you were off active duty for another week at least.”
Something flickers in Cody’s expression but it’s gone too quickly for Obi-Wan to identify. “I’m fine,” is what he says. “The medics agree. It’s in your inbox if you want to check.”
“I trust that you wouldn’t lie about that,” Obi-Wan answers wryly. “However I don’t trust that you wouldn’t overstate your fitness in order to escape from Gauge’s clutches. Gregor mentioned something about an abortive escape attempt that ended with you cuffed to a bed?”
Cody grimaces. “Sclep is overenthusiastic.” He takes the datapad out from under his arm and holds it out. “The Rybek campaign, sir?”
Obi-Wan takes the datapad but he doesn’t look at it. He’s looking at Cody, at the curl of his scar, at the wave of his hair, at the way he stands to attention even when there’s no one here who’s asking him to stand to attention. His eyes are bright in the artificial light.
He had Cody’s blood on his hands. On the seventh planet in the Ganydian system, on the shuttle back to the Negotiator, on the way to medical, on the long, slow walk back to his quarters. He had Cody’s blood on his hands and when he washed it off, it spiralled away into the drain of his shower like a sunset.
“You will not do that again, Commander,” Obi-Wan says. The words come out flat. They almost sound angry. “I will make it an order if I have to.”
Cody looks startled. “Sir?”
“What you did on the Ganydian mission,” Obi-Wan says, and Cody’s face immediately goes blank. “I am a Jedi. I do not need to be protected and I will not have you putting yourself in harm’s way to do so. Am I clear?”
Cody doesn’t answer. His expression is as flat as Obi-Wan’s words.
“Am I clear, Commander?” Obi-Wan repeats, and he’s not angry, he’s a Jedi, he isn’t angry, but he can’t let his commander take that risk. He can’t. He’s too valuable. He’s Marshal Commander of the 7th Sky Corps. He’s a master tactician and a ferocious warrior. He’s Obi-Wan’s right hand man.
His blood was warm and sticky on Obi-Wan’s hands.
“I can’t obey that order, sir,” Cody responds, perfectly neutral.
Obi-Wan’s eyebrows jump. “Excuse me?”
“I can’t obey that order,” Cody repeats, just as neutral. “We clones were made to protect the Jedi. If I have to give my life to save you, sir, then I will. You can’t order me not to.”
“I don’t need protecting, Commander,” Obi-Wan insists. “And you are much more than simply a clone, Cody! You all are. I will not have you diminishing your own importance like that.”
Cody’s eyes flash. “Are you going to order us all not to protect you, sir? Are you going to order us to stand back and let you die when there’s something—anything—we can do to save you?”
“I am a Jedi!” Obi-Wan snaps. He’s still holding Cody’s datapad in his hands. He slaps it down onto his desk. “I can deflect the poorly-aimed shots of a genocidal Separatist scientist in my sleep.”
“But you can’t!” Cody roars, and all of a sudden he’s crossed the space between them and he’s so close to Obi-Wan that he can feel the warmth of his body. “You didn’t,” Cody grinds out, his eyes blazing, his face flushed. “I’ve seen the footage, General. You didn’t deflect those kriffing shots and it kriffing killed you.”
It takes Obi-Wan a moment. “You mean—”
“You were shot dead on a rooftop in Coruscant by a bounty hunter,” Cody says over him. “You went down before anyone could do anything. You died and I didn’t stop it. I wasn’t even there.”
There is so much pain in his commander’s face. Obi-Wan thinks it’s been there all along.
“I watched the footage,” Cody blurts. “I had to go digging in the archives of the Guard to get it but I had to see. I had to know. And I really kriffing wish I hadn’t because it’s all I can see when I close my eyes. You, getting hit, going down. Over and over again. And I was on the other side of the system when I should have been there, taking that shot for you. I was – I was doing a karking audit. You were dying and I was counting shuttles.”
“It was a mission,” Obi-Wan has to say, has to explain, has to reassure. “It wasn’t real.”
“It was real,” Cody counters. He’s a few inches shorter than Obi-Wan, all the clones are, but right now, Obi-Wan barefoot and Cody booted, they’re of a height. He’s very close. His eyes are very dark. “It was real,” Cody repeats, his voice shaking. “We lost you. I lost you. Do you have any idea what that feels like? I lost you and I never even told you—”
He stops, his mouth slamming shut.
For a moment, they stand there in silence, staring at each other. They’re barely a handspan apart, sharing each other’s air. Obi-Wan can taste caf on Cody’s breath, sharp and bitter like the pot that brews continuously on the Negotiator’s bridge. His chest is heaving like he’s run the length of the ship. His eyes are wide and shocked.
—and I never even told you—
Obi-Wan has to know.
“Cody,” he starts.
It breaks the spell.
Cody backs away from him, spine ramrod straight, hands clasped at the small of his back. “Please accept my apologies, General,” he raps out, his gaze fixed somewhere to the left of Obi-Wan’s face. “It won’t happen again. I—” Cody—calm, professional, collected Commander Cody—stumbles over his words. “I shouldn’t have interrupted you,” he barks, retreating towards the door, his shoulders square and shaking. “I’ll go. Apologies, sir. It won’t happen again.” And he turns, reaching for the door release.
“Wait,” Obi-Wan rasps.
Cody freezes, his hand hovering above the release.
Obi-Wan’s heart is racing. “I won’t stop you if you want to leave,” he says, barely louder than a whisper, “but please stay. I—” It’s his turn to falter, now.
Cody hasn’t moved. He stands as still as a cliff face, his back to Obi-Wan, his hand stretched towards the door release. He doesn’t look back, he doesn’t say anything, he doesn’t acknowledge that Obi-Wan’s spoken at all.
But he hasn’t left.
“I wanted to tell you,” Obi-Wan says. “I don’t mean that I thought the men should know or that it would be tactically advantageous to have you as back-up. I wanted you to know, Cody. I—” He has to swallow. “I was overruled,” he finishes, and Cody’s shoulders tighten. “Secrecy was paramount. The secrecy of the mission. But it wasn’t what I wanted.”
Slowly, slowly, Cody’s hand drops from the door release.
Obi-Wan has to know. “In your quarters,” he says, his mouth dry. “I noticed a mark on the bulkhead. A dent.”
“I was on the bridge when the news that you’d been killed came in,” Cody answers, not turning back. He speaks calmly, levelly, like they’re debriefing after an particularly uninteresting mission. “A holocall from General Koon. He told us. It didn’t feel real but I knew it was. I didn’t want there to be any rumours because I thought that would just make it harder for the men so I made an announcement over shipwide comms. It had to come from me. ‘The general is dead.’ I made the announcement, I finished my shift, I went back to my quarters. And then I punched the wall. Fractured three fingers and had my wrist in a brace for a week.”
Obi-Wan closes his eyes. “I’m so sorry.”
“It broke my heart,” Cody says in that same level voice. “I never knew what heartbreak felt like before but I think I know now. Makes me jealous of the Seppies, to be honest. Droids are lucky they can’t feel like this.”
“Cody,” Obi-Wan falters.
Cody turns back to face him. His eyes are bright with tears but he isn’t crying. “And then you were alive again,” he whispers, teeth bared and suddenly furious. “You walked back onto the ship like nothing had happened. I couldn’t believe it. I still can’t. It’s a miracle. It’s like a dream but I know I’m awake.” He laughs, fractured, and lurches forward, towards Obi-Wan. “And now you’re asking me not to do everything I can to save you? You’re asking me to let you die again? I won’t lose you again like that, I won’t. I can’t. I can’t! So don’t ask me to!”
“I won’t,” Obi-Wan answers, stricken, and before he can tell himself that it’s inappropriate, that it’s forbidden, he closes the distance between them and takes Cody’s face in his hands. Cody sucks in a sharp breath but doesn’t pull away, and Obi-Wan whispers, “I never wanted that for you. I never wanted any of this for you.”
Cody feels like blown glass in his hands, one wrong move away from shattering into nothing.
“Forgive me, my dear,” Obi-Wan says softly.
And Cody lets out a long, rustling breath and gently presses his forehead against Obi-Wan’s.
Neither of them speaks, just breathing each other’s air. Silence wraps around them, binding them together, hearts beating in complementary rhythms. Cody’s tears slide over Obi-Wan’s hands, still cupping his cheeks. The too-warm heat of Cody’s skin blazes against Obi-Wan’s palms.
They’re on the edge of something, balancing on the precipice.
“Sir,” Cody croaks.
“Obi-Wan,” Obi-Wan corrects before he can think better of it.
Cody shudders. His hands come up to wrap around Obi-Wan’s wrists. “I think,” he starts, then licks his lips, tries again. “I think I need to report a fraternisation violation.”
It’s so unexpected that it makes Obi-Wan laugh. Cody’s answering smile curls against his fingers. “Yes, I suppose I had best do the same,” Obi-Wan whispers. “How unprofessional of me.”
Cody huffs a laugh and tips his head back. Obi-Wan’s hands fall away from his cheeks but Cody doesn’t let go of his wrists. “I really did come here to go over the Iybek campaign,” he complains, sounding plaintive. “I didn’t mean to start confessing things I shouldn’t even be thinking about.”
“I’m rather glad you did,” Obi-Wan answers, something raw and bloody cracking open inside him. “It’s a gift to know that I’m not alone in this.”
For a moment, Cody’s face is so full of joy and so full of wrenching sorrow that it hurts to look at him. “We can’t, though,” is what he says, ragged, every word dragging itself out over hot coals. “It is unprofessional. You’re my CO. And you’re a Jedi, I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to, ah, fraternise at all. We can’t.”
“I know,” Obi-Wan agrees. He pulls his wrists out of Cody’s loose grasp, lets his arms fall to his sides. “There’s too much at stake. This war, it’s difficult enough as it is. We can’t afford to complicate it any further.”
Cody’s nodding, his gaze fixed over Obi-Wan’s shoulder. His expression is a death mask.
Obi-Wan breathes, and whispers, “But after.”
Cody’s gaze snaps to him.
Obi-Wan offers him a crooked smile. “Wars don’t last forever. There will be a life afterwards, a life of peace. And then.” He can’t say it. He won’t tempt the universe like that. It’s dangerous enough to imagine it. “After.”
“After,” Cody murmurs. His face is unreadable, then his lips twitch in a grin just as crooked as Obi-Wan’s. “Well, I am good at waiting.” He nods, his right hand slowly opening and closing. “After the war.”
“When it’s done,” Obi-Wan agrees. “Then, there will be time.”
“After,” Cody breathes like a promise.
They watch each other in the stillness of Obi-Wan’s quarters, space open and empty between them.
Obi-Wan sees it when Cody’s gaze flickers to his lips. It’s only a moment, barely more than a heartbeat, but it jolts through him like thunder. It wouldn’t be hard, after all. His quarters might be the quarters of a High General but they’re still not particularly big – one step, maybe two, and it would be easy to pull Cody into his arms. It would be easy to press their bodies together. It would be so easy to kiss him, to plunder his mouth, to taste the caf on his tongue as well as on his breath. It would be easy and it would be perfect and it’s something that Obi-Wan has wanted for so long.
He’s fairly sure from the look on Cody’s face that he’s thinking about doing the same thing.
Just one kiss. That wouldn’t be a bad thing, would it? Just one.
But Obi-Wan can’t. He isn’t strong enough. It could never be just one kiss, not with Cody. If Obi-Wan took that step forward, if he crossed that space between them, if he pressed their lips together and kissed his commander breathless, then he wouldn’t be able to stop. He’d kiss him and kiss him and never let him go. He’d never let him put himself in danger again. He’d do everything in his power to keep him safe. One kiss, one crack in the dam, and the water would pour in. It would be easy and it would be perfect and it would ruin them both.
“Kriff,” Cody swears through gritted teeth, jerking his face away.
“Quite,” Obi-Wan agrees, remarkably breathless given that he hasn’t moved an inch.
“I should go,” Cody says, strangled. “I don’t want to go, though. You should know that. I want to—”
“Perhaps it’s best if you don’t finish that thought,” Obi-Wan hastily interrupts.
Cody opens his mouth like he’s going to continue nonetheless, then closes it again. “Yeah,” he rasps. “Good point.”
Obi-Wan draws himself up as much as he can, folding his hands into the ends of his sleeves. He summons all the calm he can muster, cloaking himself in the quiet of the Force, and plucks Cody’s datapad off his desk. He holds it out, keeping his fingers to one edge. “The Iybek campaign can wait until the morning briefing. Until then, get some rest.”
Cody takes the datapad. Their fingers don’t touch. “I could say the same to you, sir. You look pretty exhausted.”
Obi-Wan is exhausted. Then again, when is he not? “I suggest a bargain, then,” he offers. “I’ll sleep if you sleep.”
“Deal,” Cody answers, smiling a tired smile. “Good night, sir. I’ll see you in the morning.”
Obi-Wan nods, not trusting himself to speak.
Cody keys the door release and goes. He hesitates in the doorway, silhouetted against the bright corridor, and glances back over his shoulder – but it’s only for a moment. He goes, stepping back out into a world where they can only ever be a general and his commander, and the door slides shut behind him.
Obi-Wan sits down heavily on the edge of his bunk and buries his face in his hands. He’s shaking, every part of him trembling uncontrollably, all the tension pouring out in one final burst.
Cody’s hands on his wrists. Cody’s forehead pressed to his. Cody’s breath warm against his lips.
Obi-Wan knows what it is to be in love. It’s selfless and it’s beautiful and it’s hopeless. It’s the greatest gift that the Force has given to the galaxy and it’s the greatest torture. Sorrow and joy, ecstasy and agony, delight and horror.
He never expected to be loved in return.
“After,” he whispers to himself in the quiet of his quarters. “After. Yes. That will do.”
§§§
When Obi-Wan walks into the daily staff briefing the next morning, Cody is smiling at something with Rattleback and Gregor, datapad tucked under his arm and mug of caf in one hand. He says something that makes Waxer snort with laughter, hands the datapad off to Rattleback, and takes a sip of his caf as Waxer nudges past him. He’s in a worn old set of bridge greys that have scuffing on the cuffs and a mess-hall-related stain on the back of one knee. He looks comfortable. He looks like he’s where he belongs.
Over the rim of the mug, Cody meets Obi-Wan’s gaze. His eyes are impossibly warm.
After, Obi-Wan tells himself.
“General,” Cody greets, keying the holotable on. “Nice of you to join us, sir. Grab yourself a caf – I’ve got a few points of interest about the Iybek campaign that we need to discuss.”
Obi-Wan accepts a cup of terrible mess hall caf from Rattleback and takes up his usual position next to Cody at the head of the holotable. There’s a shimmering blue holo of a jungle spread out in front of them, dotted here and there with coloured markers indicating hostile forces, resupply points, and key strategic targets. Obi-Wan has seen most of it before but there are a few extra tags here and there. Cody’s handiwork, no doubt.
Cody is a beacon in the Force beside him. “Alright,” Obi-Wan’s commander says, arms folded. “There’s a lot to get through so we’d better get started.”
Obi-Wan takes a breath, steadies himself, and goes back to the war.