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The man behind the doorway is holding a vibroblade. A sharp one; likely from the kitchen. Obi-Wan curses himself out quietly – he should’ve known to hide the knives again. How the one vibroblade they had was pulled from the counter is beyond him; efficiency, he supposes, is the man’s main goal right now.
Obi-Wan doesn’t have anywhere to go, really – the armed man is standing just by the doorway, and Obi-Wan is well-aware he will stand there for hours, even if he has to wait for Obi-Wan until he drops. Obi-Wan doesn’t need that. Sure, he would prefer to eat something before waking Cody up – but at least now he knows Cody is well and far removed from himself, perhaps even gone at the moment. Cody doesn’t lurk like that, in a stance ready to strike him down just before he enters the kitchen. The man Obi-Wan’s been watching over for a few months now, however, does.
Obi-Wan shakes his head. Nothing is going to change because of his contemplations.
He keeps himself consciously anchored to the callings of the Force, alert and ready for a warning from any side. Then, he takes a breath, brings up his hands and steps forward. It’s going to be a scuffle, is his last thought before it breaks out.
The man has a scar crawling down his face and a dozen more elsewhere, and he’s regained enough strength to knock the breath out of Obi-Wan’s lungs once he slams him into the wall and brings down the blade.
Obi-Wan ducks his head out of the way and the blade is buried in the chalky surface just to his side, sliding in between the stones all the way to the hilt.
“Good morning,” Obi-Wan says, breathless. In a way, he reasons, it might as well be a decent day. At least they get the worst out first.
The man wearing Cody’s face snarls and rips the blade from the wall, digs his nails into Obi-Wan’s tunic and aims again. This time, Obi-Wan dives under his arm and spins them around, knocking the man into the wall instead. The man kicks at his shin – Obi-Wan doubles over in pain and the man kicks him back up, jamming his knee right into Obi-Wan’s nose, shoving him backward. Grabbing onto one of the corners of the walls, Obi-Wan stays upright, though it does take some hurrying to jump back from another kick, this time to the abdomen. Him and his damn legs, Obi-Wan thinks, for one moment, remembering a different day.
He can feel, vaguely, that his eyes are watering from the kick. He’d better pick it up and do something about this, or his opponent will actually stick that blade somewhere where it matters.
Obi-Wan can’t use concentrated Force pushes or the like without immediately putting a very obvious and very stupid, if he may add, energy imprint on the planet, pointing conveniently to Luke and his location, but he really doesn’t want to fight this man any more than he already has.
As soon as he brings up his hands, he notices that the man with Cody’s face has frozen in place, his fists clenching and unclenching as he stares at Obi-Wan, then looks down to the ground, then looks back up at him – and closes his eyes, finally, gritting his teeth.
“As I said,” Obi-Wan repeats, wiping off the little trickle of blood dripping down his lips from his nose, “Good morning, Cody.”
The man blinks. He’s Cody for a second, for a fraction of that, not for long, but long enough.
His eyes are open again – and again, he goes for Obi-Wan.
Obi-Wan waits until he’s in front of him, ducks to the left, then elbows him in the side, trying to make it as blunt as possible, just enough to throw him onto the floor. The vibroblade goes clattering across the ground, hitting a table leg and staying wedged in, buzzing quietly – the man reaches for it, his arm falling just short. Taking his eyes off Obi-Wan is his last mistake.
Obi-Wan comes crashing down, falling onto the man’s legs, pinning him in place with his knees and going for the arms when Cody brings his fist back up with a swing at his face, and even though he avoids it, Cody reorients himself and just latches onto his wrist, ready to flip them over. Obi-Wan tilts himself to the other side and struggles against him. Cody is strong, has been getting stronger – but Obi-Wan has got his weight giving him an advantage here, one he wouldn’t get were he to simply pin Cody to the wall.
The fact that it’s a struggle both startles and overjoys him. Cody tugs him closer, tries to hit him with a kov’nyn. Obi-Wan just flinches back, then does the same – the press of their foreheads is less than gentle, but at least Cody’s head is not a threat anymore. The man’s full of surprises, Obi-Wan can’t give him the benefit of the doubt, but he needs Cody to at least marginally calm down before he can do anything.
“Hold on, hold on, hold on,” Obi-Wan is muttering. “You’ll be out in no time.”
He can’t hurt him; he can’t knock him out. Both of those things will not help either of them in the long run. What seems to work the best is holding him down until he regains a sliver of his own mind, until he goes at least a little limp and lax and then Obi-Wan can put him under, if it’s vital to their safety. But getting there takes time and effort, and a lot of words that Cody doesn’t even recognize right now.
Sometimes Cody manages to injure himself before he gets to Obi-Wan. It’s easy to push him into the Force when he’s injured, too. But that’s not the right course of action, no matter what Cody seems to think.
“Traitor,” speaks Cody’s voice, right into Obi-Wan’s ear. “Jedi. Shelterer.”
“No, Cody. No. It’s just me.” He tries his best to rip his hand from Cody’s hold, but the man’s got a grip of steel – “It’s just me.”
Cody shakes his head, keeps shaking his head, throws it back so it slams against the floor. His eyes are closed, teeth bared in a strain. “Just you.” It’s a sign, a good thing, usually, when he starts trying to wrench himself away from Obi-Wan, but not like this.
“Yes, just me. That’s right.” Obi-Wan tugs him up, away from the floor; Cody’s tried to knock himself out before, it never ends well – “Don’t fight it, my dear. I’m not going anywhere.”
“Traitor. Jedi.” He closes his eyes. Obi-Wan feels his hand let go, slowly. “Just you.”
“That’s it, love. That’s it.” Finally, he grabs Cody’s wrist and puts it to the floor below them, pressing his free palm over Cody’s eyes, feeling still a hand thumping weakly against his hip. “There you are. You’re okay. There you are.”
Gradually, even the hand slows and falls to the floor. Cody’s eyes get heavy-lidded, like this, unseeing and unrecognizing for a little while.
Obi-Wan sits up straighter, slowly works toward standing up. His knees give him hell, what else is new. Cody stays on the floor, completely out of it, for now. Obi-Wan sighs, stretches just a little bit as he waits for Cody to snap back to reality. And to himself, hopefully. They’re quite late for breakfast already, can’t have that impeding lunch time. Maybe they can take a walk in the evening. That’ll be progress, hopefully, if they don’t end up wrestling in the sand again.
Cody’s eyelids flutter, eyelashes brushing skin and leaving one on his cheek as he blinks out the uneasy moment of rest Obi-Wan forced him into. Obi-Wan crouches down next to him again, tilts his head.
“Oh, dear,” he mutters, waiting for him to sit up but not touching – never touching. Cody had been afraid of – either way, Cody’s asked him not to. “Whatever shall we do.”
Cody looks at him with sad, sad eyes, and Obi-Wan tries his best to smile at him.
When he comes to the hut first, there is no sign of Cody in there. The shell of him shows up at Obi-Wan’s doorstep, unexplained, and at first Obi-Wan considers the possibility of being found out, but then he sees the helmet dropping to the ground, scattering sand, and he sees Cody. Alone. His armour is scathed and scratched, he’s missing half his chestplate, snapped clean to parts, a thigh guard, a rerebrace and vambrace, a pauldron misplaced on the same arm. All imperial. Not a fleck of paint. It looks like the result of a crash. He barely looks like himself, haunted and hollow. But there’s no mistaking the scar lining his temple.
Obi-Wan calls quietly, “Cody?”
Cody stares at him, for a moment, then sneers, and Obi-Wan just manages to duck out of the way in time.
Still chipped, his mind supplies, as he flinches away from a swing and barely manages not to upturn the little chair he’s got outside the hut. Cody, following after him, does it for him. He trips, however, on the leg and the tricky step Obi-Wan’s got there on purpose, and only succeeds in knocking Obi-Wan down halfway, grabs at his leg and pulls. Obi-Wan disentangles himself as quickly and harmlessly as he can, and crawls backward for a moment before leaping back to his feet, turning around and seeing Cody already ready for him.
He's swaying on his feet, just a little bit. There’s dry blood on his face, and Obi-Wan now sees more clearly the burns on his armour. He wonders to himself if Cody truly crash-landed, and if that’s why he’s alone.
The Empire, is the word that brings him the most dread, is Cody here with the Empire? Have they found him?
Fear is not an appropriate response to the situation from Obi-Wan’s part, but he considers at least the massive tug of anxiety in his stomach to be rather fitting. If he’s been found out, then he runs again, he takes Luke and runs again, and Force knows if he can even help Cody, and –
And he spirals, he realizes, he spirals. He can’t have that, not now.
Distantly, as he comes back to himself, he realizes that Cody’s been standing in place. Almost frozen. His eyes are glimmering in the light, so much brighter like this, hazel, almost, instead of the comfortable darkness Obi-Wan is familiar with. His pupils are uneven. Obi-Wan is not quite close enough to tell, but he senses the effect of a concussion.
But this isn’t the concussion, the reason why he isn’t attacking yet.
Obi-Wan tries again, very, very quietly.
“Cody.” It’s not a question, this time. It’s a statement. It’s Cody’s name, and Obi-Wan knows that. It’s a fact.
Cody tilts his head to the side like he’s trying to shake the effects of some sort of hypnosis. But Obi-Wan does not back his words with the Force.
“Cody,” he says, and it’s as soft and gentle as it was always meant to be.
“No,” Cody throws back at him, and takes a step forward. His hand drops down to his blaster – that’s a smarter idea, Obi-Wan reckons, and lurches forward first. Better to take care of it now than wait and see if the Negotiator can work his way around a trigger-happy brain chip.
He grabs the blaster by the barrel, feels it fire in his hand, go red-hot for a single moment before it’s cooling again. He pushes it out of the way in time, rips it out of Cody’s hand, his own scorched in the process, and goes for Cody’s head.
Obi-Wan doesn’t remember the last time he’s headbutted someone, but the muscle memory must’ve stayed there, because Cody goes down where he stood, if only for a moment until he blinks himself back into the moment and gets up on one knee, rising –
Obi-Wan kicks him across the legs, sweeps, more like, and Cody falls on his back again, and Obi-Wan is out of ideas other than just dropping his entire body weight and as much more as he can muster up, draping himself over Cody. Their legs are tangled together, and he presses Cody to the ground with his hands, as hard as he can.
“Are you alone?” Obi-Wan asks, only a tad frantic, because everything depends on this, everything.
“I failed my mission,” this unfamiliar man hisses, “I came to make it right.”
“Are you alone, soldier?” he repeats, hearing his tone grow into something like a command, something like a General’s word. He hates it until, unexpectedly, it gets results.
“I am alone,” the man confirms grimly. “It’s my mission. I failed it.”
“And how did you find me?”
“I was not supposed to look. Tatooine is. Forbidden. But I had a feeling. I have to make it right.”
In spite of it all, relief washes over Obi-Wan. He doesn’t have to run. He doesn’t have to snatch Luke up from his family and hide away. They’re safe.
With the newfound strength, he senses Cody before he can even kick up at Obi-Wan’s more dishonourable areas, and, with some great effort, flips him around so his face is pretty much down in the sand. Cody grunts, squirms underneath him.
There is dried blood underneath his collar, and when he turns his head to the side, Obi-Wan sees the bloodshot eyes staring back at him. The sun doesn’t reach them, here, and he looks away before the memory of gentle dark eyes can be replaced by something so much bleaker.
“Don’t move,” Obi-Wan tells him, barely hearing his own voice. “Please, don’t move anymore. The last thing I want is to hurt you.”
“I’m a good soldier,” the man who isn’t quite Cody but looks and sounds, oh, just like him, insists. “I follow my orders.”
“You are,” Obi-Wan agrees, if only to placate him, to reach around easier. “I’m aware of that.”
“I have orders. You’re to be killed.” He digs his knee into the sand and kicks back, the hard boot slipping off Obi-Wan’s thigh. Obi-Wan yelps as the heel hooks onto his knee and rips the pants there.
“I’m aware of that as well,” he manages. “You’re making it very clear.”
“You’re a Jedi,” the man throws, like an accusation, an insult, like it’s something he should shy away from.
“My name is Obi-Wan.” He slams his foot down on the offending ankle, hears the man’s breath punch out and cringes himself. “What’s yours?”
There is no answer. Of course not. This man is not Cody. It’ll take a moment to bring him back to himself.
Might as well.
Obi-Wan wraps an arm around Cody’s neck, trapping him in a hold, and while the gloved hands open up bleeding scratches in his skin, he grabs Cody’s head, pulls it back as much as his body allows and presses his hand against the sweaty forehead.
He finds it, he tugs on it, feeling it struggle against his fingers, the black tendrils wrapping around his mind, swallowing him up. Obi-Wan has done this before, he knows how - it’s worth it, luring the occasional clone away from Mos Eisley, Mos Espa, shattering the chip chaining them and seeing the expressions on the Imperial officer’s faces when the bodyguards they took along open fire on them.
What’s less pleasant is explaining the current state of the Galaxy to the clones later. Sometimes he gets hurt. Sometimes the clones hurt themselves. He tries his best to prevent both cases.
But he is here, with Cody, and he’s not going to let him do either.
He readies himself, focuses on the gentle press of the Force, slowly wrenching the tendrils away, ripping them apart, uprooting them one by one as he rids Cody of the plague in his head. This is the only way the two of them will figure things out.
It’s a little more personal than with any of the other clones he’s pulled back into themselves over the years, but that makes sense – he’s encroaching on Cody’s mind, and he knows how to do it, because Cody’s let him before. And he knows all the corners of it, knows exactly what to scratch off, knows exactly what to rip away before it takes root, and he goes straight for the source, for the chip, for the Dark, and finds it wedged so deep inside. He pulls and tugs, and none of it works. Obi-Wan frowns without even knowing he’s doing it, without feeling anything but the cold unknown in Cody’s mind that used to be so familiar, that Obi-Wan had mapped out, that he’d seen and felt and loved.
He takes the sliver of the Dark, then, with both hands, metaphorically, and coats it in Light. He rips said Light from his own heart and finds it steady and alive because he’s kept it that way for so long, because if he hadn’t held on so tightly, he’d be so deep in the Dark side he would’ve already forgotten what it was like to see the sun. And he covers the Dark in Cody’s head with this unyielding Light, and he watches the sliver diminish and fade until it evaporates pitifully, drying into nothing.
He buries himself in the Dark, and shields himself with Light.
Again, Obi-Wan goes for the chip. He feels it splinter and crack, and come apart, slowly, and the damage was already done, he’s just finishing time’s job for it, and he tugs, and pulls, and –
A terrible ache flares up his arms, into his head, it feels like he’s splitting into two. He can hear a blood-curdling noise, and it only grows louder as he gets himself together and extracts his own conscience, as quickly and harmlessly as he can, out of Cody’s mind, only to find something worse.
Cody is screaming. He’s trying to shake Obi-Wan off, but it’s not voluntary – he’s convulsing underneath him, trying to rip him off his back with scratching fingers, raking across his tunics, and screaming, and screaming.
Obi-Wan slams shut any openings he’d left to Cody’s head, and pushes his Light into the farthest corner, leaning over Cody, his mouth dropping open in horror, in fear. What has he done? How has he failed?
“Hush,” he tells Cody, quietly, and the hold he has on the man begins to feel more like an embrace and less like a headlock. “Hush – K’uur, k’uur. I’m sorry, Cody. I don’t know what I did wrong. I’m so sorry. We’ll figure it out, calm down, k’uur, k’uur. Cody, Kot’ika, k’uur.” 1
And, to his disbelief, Cody calms, slowly, underneath his hands, hearing the words, perhaps not understanding, perhaps simply succumbing to exhaustion. Either way, he quiets down, stops spasming so much, his scream dies down to a wail, a whimper, to silence. He stops resisting altogether except for the faint kick of his leg or a twitch of his arm. Nothing else other than that.
Obi-Wan feels like he’s just been run into the ground by an AT-ST unit. What in seven Sith-spitting hells did he just do to this poor man?
He thinks, and he recalls, and he realizes that –
He remembers being told – by Rex or Ahsoka, or perhaps it was neither? – about the way the chips were implanted. That they had different holds, that the Commanders, who were allowed just a little more of what the Kaminoans presumed to be ‘free will’, needed their chips to be just a little more failproof in turn. Break it when it’s too firmly attached, and it’ll kill the clone. One can only wait for it to deteriorate, fall apart enough, then try again.
That is also why, Ahsoka or Rex or someone else told him, that is also why there was virtually no way for a CC-designation clone to resist the Order. The chip took over too much. They wouldn’t even blink before it all was gone. There was no way.
They were trying to comfort him. But perhaps they also gave him a clue.
The last thing Obi-Wan wants is to fry Cody’s brain. He leans over him, Cody’s fingers still twitching in vain. Obi-Wan covers the temples with his hands, feeling a dozen new scars underneath his palms, and eases him into oblivion. Force suggestions don’t leave a significant or lasting impact in the field around him, and so he can use it to put Cody to sleep. The man is too hurt, too exhausted to resist.
After he’s gone limp, Obi-Wan gathers him into his arms, plastoid and all, and stands up. He carries him inside, further safety precautions be damned, because Cody’s not getting the upper hand on him like this, not with all those injuries and especially not with the damage Obi-Wan inflicted on him.
He puts him on his own bed. The poor thing deserves at least that much after Obi-Wan nearly Force-short-circuited him.
“Well,” he tells Cody’s unconscious form, trying to figure out how to unclasp the armour he’s never had to remove before. “Looks like we’re going to be working together again for a while, dear.”
“Good morning,” Obi-Wan repeats for the third time, this time, finally, to a man that is Cody from the head to his toes.
He wakes slowly, and it takes him a moment to recognize Obi-Wan – but then he mutters something in response and asks, in a hoarse voice, “How bad was it?”
Obi-Wan hums, tilting his head and considering the question. “Nothing tragic,” he tells Cody, who looks at him like Obi-Wan was just the one attacking him. “You waited for me in the kitchen, jumped me then. We went down, and I pulled you into the Force.”
He never gives Cody the long answers. After a minute or two, Cody remembers the whole thing anyway. Obi-Wan can always tell by the time he glances down and frowns, a distant horror overtaking his features for a measly second before he shakes his head.
“Kriffing hell,” Cody says, and Obi-Wan only nods in agreement. “Kriffing hell. Are you okay?”
“I’m alright,” he assures, even though Cody looks thoroughly unconvinced. “I hope I didn’t dislodge any of your ribs, though.”
“My ribs are fine.” He taps his fingers along his sides, just to check, then leans forward, just shy of Obi-Wan’s space. He thinks of things to say and finds nothing, evidently, just shakes his head with a sigh again. Obi-Wan understands. He wishes he didn’t have to do it every damn morning, but the Galaxy has never cared much for an old man’s wishes. Cody looks like he’s thinking similar thoughts, and his are a thousand times more warranted. Obi-Wan can’t imagine it. Knowing he can lose himself at any moment. Cody lives with that. And neither of them can help it until the chip has come apart enough, and still both of them try, uselessly, because there is no try. There’s never been a try.
"You tore a vessel," Obi-Wan tells him, gently, taking his chin, moving past those futile thoughts. "In your eye. Stay still for me."
Cody lifts his head off Obi-Wan's hand instead. "Sorry."
“For blowing a capillary? That’s hardly an offense to warrant an apology, dear.” He grabs him again, softly brushing a thumb over his lip. “Don’t move.”
Cody complies, though hesitant. “You know what I’m talking about.”
“Yes. Frankly, that didn’t seem bad, did it? You hardly even resisted once I had you down.” Obi-Wan motions for him to close his eyes. Listening to his breathing, he focuses on the flow of blood in Cody’s body, letting his thoughts float along unassumingly. He’s not much for a healer, but it’s not like a little tear in the eye is a gaping wound. It’s harmless, really; and Obi-Wan has to admit to himself that he just likes staying close to him again, when he’s like this, when he’s not trying to rip Obi-Wan into pieces or punt him into the ground. He likes being able to offer Cody at least a smidge of comfort, show him that he’s not taking this personally, that Cody and The Man Who Isn’t Quite Cody are two different people, that he knows, he understands.
Cody snorts. Attempt unappreciated, evidently. “I’m sorry you had to. Do that.”
“Yes, well, so am I.” He neither sees nor feels it, but he knows Cody’s eyes are darting around under his care. “Best to leave it unmentioned, I believe. Or I’ll start to think you’re honestly apologizing to me again.” He lets his hand drift down Cody’s face, pressing his fingers to his forehead and bringing them down over his eyelid, just lightly brushing against the skin. He feels it twitch underneath his fingertips, and he feels the blood sinking, sinking, until it’s all gone.
Cody draws in a breath. “Come on.”
“Let it go, dear, you have nothing to apologize for. This isn’t something you’re doing. It’s something that’s happening to you.” He drops his hands and leans back a little, prompting Cody to open his eyes and look at him.
“But it’s my body. And it feels like I’m powerless to stop it.”
“We all are, sometimes.”
He scoffs. “Said like a true Jedi, huh.”
“Oh, I knew a few back in my day,” Obi-Wan tells him dryly. Cody winces, just a tad. Obi-Wan sighs and rises to his feet with little difficulty, pulling Cody up as well. The nails, once they dig into the arm, scratch against his skin and don’t let up until a second after Obi-Wan’s let it go. “I don’t think you see where I’m going with this. I – I know why you apologize, I understand it. But sometimes, I… All I see is you trying to claim a fault that isn’t yours. I have to see it, because I have to see you for you. And when it’s you, all the bloodshed and the fighting and what have you, they’re all distant. But when you’re blaming yourself for what has happened, you write that into your own mind and merge those two different things together, but, Cody, I only ever see you like this. That other – man, he’s not you, and you can’t claim he is. I can’t call someone who hunts me like this by your name, and I’m asking you with all I have that you don’t make me do it.”
“…Right.”
Obi-Wan knows when he’s failed to convince someone once he sees it. He sighs, allows himself a single brush of his hand against Cody’s cheek, and rounds him to ready the place for that oh-so-belated breakfast.
"Ni ceta," is what Obi-Wan hears, approximately. His voice is hoarse and there are tears in Cody's eyes, as he tries to move away but Obi-Wan shifts a little closer. "Ni ceta, ni ceta."
His neck is bare. Like he's giving Obi-Wan the means to just kill him, like this. That’s the meaning of the apology, in its most basic sense. 2
"Oh, Cody," Obi-Wan breathes softly, feeling shaking hands wrap around his throat and squeeze. He moves his palm to Cody's head, presses there, drags him down to slumber again. The hands grip his throat for a moment longer and the terrified eyes don't seem to close, and Obi-Wan leans even closer, "No, Cody, no. Sleep. Sleep, Cody. Don’t think."
Slowly, the wet eyelashes flutter down. His breath evens out. The hands slip off Obi-Wan’s neck. The calling of the Force is strong, and Obi-Wan’s been pleading with the Force for Cody’s life ever since he first saw him.
He can only hope Cody feels Obi-Wan rocking him gently as he drifts away.
“Every time the chip makes you launch yourself at me, I act as though I’m trying to wrench you from its grip,” Obi-Wan continues, picking up the vibroblade, pulling it out of the table leg with a strain, and Cody is strangely quiet, but he needs to know, he needs to understand. “So whatever you do, Cody, you’re free to – just please don’t make me think that it’s you.”
Cody takes a step abruptly, but he doesn’t look angry. If anything, he just looks very, very lost. “I’ll go,” he says, just like the hundreds of times when they were tiptoeing around each other, and Obi-Wan never stops him.
He steps out of Cody’s way once he realizes he’s in it. He just said he was free to do whatever. Cody doesn’t brush his shoulder against Obi-Wan’s, unlike those hundreds of times.
Obi-Wan returns to the doorway to clean up the mess they made of the kitchen and lets the Force handle the warnings.
It’s only a week since Cody fell asleep begging his forgiveness when he hears it next.
“Obi-Wan.” He whips around to find uncomfortably familiar dark eyes staring at him. “Obi-Wan.”
He reaches for him. Just to check. “Cody.”
“Obi-Wan,” Cody says, again, and takes a swing at him.
He leaps back in time and ducks forward as soon as Cody’s fist whirls past. Obi-Wan falls back on him.
“Cody,” he says, again, insistently. If it’s him – if, somehow, he’s coming back to himself...
Cody’s watching him warily, even as he squirms and fails to get away.
“Cody.”
“Obi-Wan,” Cody replies, so softly, and still he tries to wrench his wrists from his grip. “Obi-Wan?”
“Cody, it’s okay,” Obi-Wan tells him. His eyes look so big, if reddened, his lips parted. “It’s okay. You’re okay.”
“Please,” Cody says, and tries to take a stab at Obi-Wan’s eyes. “Obi-Wan, please, I don’t understand.”
And Obi-Wan doesn’t either, not really, because if Cody knows who he is but is still trying to kill him, then the disconnect between the chip and his brain is far larger than he’d imagined, and he can’t even tell if it’s a good thing.
On one hand, perhaps he won’t have to wait for years, like this.
On the other, the only thing Cody can see, right now, is him trying to kill someone he once loved. Perhaps, though Obi-Wan dares not hope, still loves.
“I don’t want to,” Cody says, quiet and lost, “I don’t want this. Why?”
He’s always ever been gentle. He’s never raised a hand against anyone outside of the battlefield. He was of endless patience – Anakin took a jab at him, once, saying that he’d be a great Jedi. Obi-Wan feels his vision blur – he cannot help him in any way. He cannot help him. He can’t help Cody, only pacify his brain until Cody can’t tell what’s going on, that his hands are being forced, that his body has been taken away from him.
That only makes hearing Cody sob his name that much more gut-wrenching. “Obi-Wan, please,” he keeps on, because he trusts him, because any other time during the Wars Obi-Wan has been able to help him, somehow, or at least he’s tried. With anything. And he can’t help him anymore, not now. “Obi-Wan, please,” he repeats, and Obi-Wan grits his teeth so hard they have to crack. “Make it stop, I don’t want this. Make it stop.”
Obi-Wan stops trying to avoid his hands, feeling them claw at his chest, and covers Cody’s head beneath his own palms, and makes it stop.
It’s always silent, when they’re not having a go at each other. Silent or, at the very least, relatively quiet. Cody’s always been soft-spoken, generally, when he was not commanding his troops, and Obi-Wan is quick to adapt; though, admittedly, he misses the laughter. He could make Cody laugh, once. It was one of the most wonderful sounds he’d ever heard.
He doesn’t particularly like the silence. He doesn’t like the way he and Cody have been cooped up with nothing but their own thoughts and no way to share them without saying too much, without saying something that would hurt.
Obi-Wan starts with the little things, just as he did when they were getting to know each other. Small talk. It’s not much for conversation, but Cody has a way of talking that makes one want to listen – and Obi-Wan likes listening to him, and talking to him, and he notices a small, sad glimmer in Cody’s eye when he talks.
And so they make their way up.
“You know what I always thought about your name, before you told me it came from ‘Glory’?” Obi-Wan asks him, gently disentangling Cody’s curls with his fingers. There’s enough work here, like this, before he even needs to grab a brush. Cody hadn’t exactly managed to hold back when he swept Obi-Wan’s feet from the ground this afternoon and tried to suffocate him. It was a long wrestling match in the sand. Now, he has Cody sitting, reluctantly, with his back facing Obi-Wan as he works through the coiling hair. Cody doesn’t answer him, so he tells him himself, “I thought it came from ‘kotyc’.”
Cody tilts his head. “Strong?” he manages. His voice is hoarse. He probably breathed something in when Obi-Wan pinned him down, facing the ground, and knocked him out with the Force again.
“Yes.” Obi-Wan pulls apart a particularly stubborn strand and brushes his finger along its length absent-mindedly. “I thought it fit.”
Cody laughs a small and sad laugh. “I wish it did.”
“You don’t think it does?” Obi-Wan is distantly aware he’s breaching dangerous territory, but they need to get there sooner or later.
“Some strength this is.” He sounds bitter, bowing his head just a bit, the curl slipping from Obi-Wan’s fingers.
Placidly, he just takes another into his hands, smoothing it out. “You’re one of the strongest men I’ve ever known, love.”
Cody relaxes under his hands, just a bit, as much as he can let himself. It’s not much. “That can’t be true. Look at us. All because of some banthashit in my skull.”
It always comes back to the blasted chip, and Obi-Wan is slowly running out of ideas on how else to tell him that the chip is not him.
“You can’t control the chip any more than you can control the weather. And if tomorrow brings a sandstorm, I will not blame you any more than I will if you pull a vibro from the kitchen again.” He slides one hand just a little lower and taps a finger against Cody’s temple softly. “This thing was sewn and welded and wired to your brain in every way they knew how because of who you are, because they knew you’d be strong enough to resist in any other case. They put in a perfect plan of ruin, and so we will undo it perfectly. And, either way…”
He leans down, pressing a gentle kiss to the top of Cody’s head, hearing his breath hitch in his throat. “I love you,” he says, simply, without leaning back up, and Cody makes a choked noise. “I love you, that’s why I’m here.” He drops his arms down to wrap them loosely around Cody’s neck, beard brushing against the graying hair as he speaks, “And I see that you’re trying, so hard, and sometimes you shake when you wake up because you’re fighting to restrain yourself so viciously. I see it every time – kotyc, ori'kotyc. Never think that I don’t. I see you. I love you.”
“I,” Cody says, and his voice is so hoarse, “I love you too.”
It’s the first time Obi-Wan’s heard that in years. He bows his head, hiding his face in Cody’s hair, and lets out a shaky breath, feeling as hands slowly come up to touch his arms – and then fall again, immediately, but it’s progress. “I’m glad to hear it,” he tells him.
But they only ever get a blissful moment of this sort of silence.
Hands come up again, rough and hurtful, this time. “Obi-Wan,” Cody manages, an alarmed tone, rising – and the hands yank him forward, and he only narrowly avoids getting his skull cracked on the floor.
He comes, running and paranoid, to the Lars’ aid. The threat, a few moisture thieves that Owen is usually perfectly capable of dispatching himself, are hardly worth his effort, but he wakes up before dawn with the Force blaring alarms into his head; and perhaps he hasn’t slept that much, and perhaps he is exhausted because he fell asleep with his hand on Cody’s head, and perhaps he panics. He wills Cody into a couple more hours of sleep and stands up, and runs for his speeder.
Obi-Wan helps, don’t get it wrong. It’s just that it isn’t strictly vital, and Owen doesn’t tend to appreciate him showing up to anything less than a live-or-die situation.
He stops by Obi-Wan’s hut later to give him a piece of his mind, again, and Obi-Wan stands and takes it calmly because, well, he has self-control and he knows what the Lars family doesn’t, and he understands how they feel.
Then, the door behind him creaks open, and his insides freeze in place.
“You should go,” Obi-Wan says, cutting whatever the man was saying off, stepping abruptly between Owen and the door a few meters from both, Force-grabbing around to watch his own six. “Now.”
Owen may just be a farmer, but Obi-Wan doesn’t quite like the glint in his eye. “I’m not done, Kenobi.”
Well, this should be the first time Obi-Wan will be the one to cut their meeting short. Cody steps out behind him, and Obi-Wan speaks, quietly, “But I am. Be safe, Owen.”
“That’s more likely to curse me than wish me well,” Owen points out, raising an eyebrow. “What’re you keeping in there? A raider?”
Cody is just off to his side, now, Obi-Wan feels the eyes on his back, watching him like he’s an easy target. But Cody’s not charging at him yet. He’s holding back.
Obi-Wan breathes out. “You must leave.”
Owen takes his words as if they are said to Cody, and only moves forward, crossing his arms. Obi-Wan hears Cody’s breath hitch in his throat behind him as he strains. The eyes slip off his back, stare at Owen. Cody’s control is cracking. Owen doesn’t see it, mistakes Cody’s tension for simple introversions, doesn’t see the way his nails dig into his palms, doesn’t see Obi-Wan’s increasing restlessness as he shifts, bit by bit, forward, away from Cody before he can let go -
“Oh, a clone? That’s a first.” Owen looks to Obi-Wan. “You’ve got dealings with Imperials now?”
Obi-Wan’s men had always said he had a sweetly blank face to put on whenever he wanted to intimidate someone.
“Owen Lars. I said, you should, go.” He puts as much suggestion into the sentence as he can without sounding like it’s one made with the aid of the Force. “Now. And may the Force be with you.” And may the Force hold Cody down until Owen can turn around, he adds, internally.
Owen scoffs. Obi-Wan doesn’t relent. He’s looking at him like he’s staring down Grievous, Dooku and Maul combined. It’s a concoction of his worst expressions. If Owen doesn’t take the hint now, Obi-Wan will start signing to him in Huttese, specifically because not only do they both know it, but because it also offers the widest array of ways to tell a man to kriff off as quickly as he possibly can before he gets, politely put, mandatory assistance.
Thankfully, it doesn’t come to that. Owen shakes his head and spins on his heel, throwing a ‘We’ll talk next time’ over his shoulder before making his way back.
As soon as he’s a respectable distance away, Obi-Wan snaps around as well, finding Cody – significantly too close for comfort. He can almost hear the gritting teeth as he takes a step back.
“Cody,” he says, calmly, one hand in front. Always calmly. “We need to go back inside.”
Cody looks at him, but Obi-Wan isn’t sure if the chip lets him process the words.
“Go inside, Cody. I’ll be right behind you.” It’s like his feet are stuck to the ground. He’s looking at Obi-Wan like he’s a Separatist droid, ready to tackle him head-on, and Force knows what’s holding him back.
The smidge of his mind that’s still his own, evidently.
It took Obi-Wan quite a bit of time to get used to those empty eyes and start associating them with Cody’s – well, episodes, instead of wanting to step back and shrivel up, asking what he’s done wrong. His face is too familiar, his presence is getting more and more familiar, Obi-Wan relies almost completely on the Force spiking warnings into his head, now. If he were not Force-sensitive, he could not tell what was happening from just the back of Cody’s head. He would certainly be dead.
Well, but if Obi-Wan was not Force-sensitive, he wouldn’t be here at all in the first place. Perhaps none of them would.
Dark eyes. Beautiful eyes, as he moves for Obi-Wan, but Obi-Wan can’t look too long or he’ll lose focus. Cody’s control is splintering as he jerks back and forth in stuttering steps. Obi-Wan can’t blame him. He’s already asked too much. And Owen is far enough, now.
He lurches forward to grab Cody before Cody can grab him, ends up kicked away, Cody clutching at his throat or for a stone in the sand, and they go through their daily dance all over again.
It gets worse when he’s waking, his mind clouded, the chip’s presence the only clear thing in the fog. He’s going for Obi-Wan before he’s even fully conscious, sometimes, especially if Obi-Wan is nearby. He remembers sitting by Cody’s bed, waiting for him to wake, to see how far they’ve come – and then, the second the Force screeches for him to recoil, Cody’s hand shoots to the side and knocks the cup of tea from his hands.
It had been easy to subdue him, that time, because apparently even a chip-controlled brain knew that a boiling splash of tea scorching one’s entire arm was supposed to hurt.
Other than those times which are already thinning out, and isn’t that unironically wonderful, Obi-Wan rarely gets caught off-guard. Most of their scuffles begin and end with him sighing and consciously subjecting himself to another session of what he prefers to think of as just heavy sparring. Slowly, the number of times when Cody recognizes himself increases in frequency and timespan, and if Obi-Wan wasn’t terrified of a slip-up, he would’ve been overjoyed, but here he is.
They are getting closer, he knows that much, and it’s the best news he’s found out in a long time, but with them come doubts, as they always do. It’s been months. Obi-Wan is used to living this way, now, tracing Cody’s every step each morning to avoid taking a knife between the ribs. He’s used to greeting him in the mornings from the other end of the room, and kissing him on the top of his head only when his back is facing Obi-Wan. Caution feels like it’s grown into his bones at this point and sometimes he still feels like that isn’t enough. Like one day he’s going to make a misstep, or another mistake, and it’s going to cost him everything, perhaps himself – even worse, perhaps Cody.
He dreams of his failures, he always does. He dreams of his shortcomings, and how things might’ve been better, and he dreams of things that haven’t yet happened, things that could still go wrong.
He dreams, tonight, that Cody succeeds. It only takes Obi-Wan one moment of unawareness, and he’s gone – suddenly, painlessly, but that doesn’t matter. What does is that he leaves Cody with his task completed and his mind in shambles – before he goes, he just manages to see him wrap his arms around Obi-Wan’s body and scream, long and broken, into his chest.
In an instant, Cody’s voice turns into his, their screams melt into one, and he wakes up.
It’s dark, in the hut – it’s still night-time.
He knows his dreams warn him. Cody is half-kneeling on his bed.
Obi-Wan flinches on instinct, throws his hands over his chest in defense, but Cody doesn’t – Cody doesn’t move. Just sits there, empty-eyed, and watches Obi-Wan helplessly. Himself.
So Obi-Wan leans forward, drops his hands. “Hello there.”
Cody nods with naught a word.
“Are you alright?” It’s a tentative question from Obi-Wan’s part. He has loads of undeniable proof that Cody’s anything but alright, and yet he asks anyway. He must.
It seems to him that Cody inches closer. Just a bit. Perhaps it’s more visible because he draws back twice as much immediately afterward. “You were screaming.”
“Ah.” Obi-Wan grimaces, remembering his bloody hands. Poor Cody, having to wake up to hearing him like that. “So I was. I’m very sorry.”
“Don’t.” Cody looks at him like he’s missing something painfully obvious. “I’ve been a lot to deal with.”
“And I’ve told you time and time again that you are worth it,” Obi-Wan reminds him, softly. “Besides, that doesn’t mean I got panicked because of you. “
“Look at me and tell me honestly that one wasn’t me.”
Obi-Wan looks away from him instead. “Cody, dear. We’ve talked about this.”
“It was my name.”
He turns his head back, bows it slightly to get a better look at Cody’s face. It’s Cody’s turn to avert his eyes, now.
“What?”
“When you were screaming. It was my name. In Mando’a, in Basic. You were – “ He gathers himself, shakes his head before continuing, “You were begging me for something, I – “ He doesn’t stop shaking his head.
Obi-Wan reaches out, but drops his hand before it reaches Cody. He can’t do that now. They both know it.
“I hate this,” Cody says, finally, and his voice doesn’t sound right, breaking just a little. “Obi-Wan, I kriffing hate this.”
Oh, and Obi-Wan does too. He barely remembers the dream now – though he does recall, at Cody’s mention, the endless stream of Cody, please, Cody, please, as everything around him was swallowed by the darkness – but here’s Cody now, looking absolutely crushed, looking this close to tears, and Obi-Wan can’t do a damn thing about it. And so many wants spiral in his head again, to take his hands and rub gentle circles into the palms like before, to lie down with him and let him hide completely under the blanket, forehead pressed against Obi-Wan’s chest, to grab his face and kiss him until he can’t remember anything in the world that had ever made him hurt.
Oh, kriff it all to the seven Sith-spitting hells.
Obi-Wan shifts to the edge of his bed and wraps an arm around Cody, closing the distance in spite of it all. Cody makes a gutted noise and leans closer, only to shift away and then back again, torn between wanting to stay a safe distance from Obi-Wan and just feel the warmth Obi-Wan’s projecting so hard for one moment. He settles on the latter, in a moment of weakness, hiding his face in Obi-Wan’s shoulder and shaking, shaking.
“I know,” Obi-Wan says, softly, rubbing his knuckles up and down Cody’s back. “I know, Cody, I know.”
“Obi-Wan,” calls the small voice, and he hums a response. The Force lies dormant in his head, surrounding, clear of any warnings. “Obi-Wan,” says the voice again, more insistently, though it still trails off at the end, like someone’s throat is closing up. “Obi-Wan, please. Wake up, please, wake up.”
It's warm, here, in his bed. The Force is alert, but only wary. Obi-Wan mutters an excuse.
“Come on, you have to – Obi-Wan, I can’t stop it.” Slowly, his eyes flutter open. He sees the wall of his hut. The voice is coming from the other side. “I can’t stop it, I can’t – Obi-Wan!”
And now the Force wakes, jolts him upright. He jumps just in time to see Cody lunging for him, and dives off the bed, regretting it immediately as Cody throws himself to the side and knees him in the stomach. Obi-Wan will physically feel his guts shifting, one day, he thinks, and, digging his nails into Cody’s arms, throws his entire body weight on the poor man. His makeshift bed isn’t made for this, creaking and cracking as they both try to get the upper hand over the other, but Cody still hasn’t fully healed and Obi-Wan pins him down, carefully wrapping one hand around both wrists and pressing them to the side. Cody tries to bite at his hand, as a last resort, but doesn’t reach him.
“Darling,” Obi-Wan murmurs to him, as Cody thrashes and kicks underneath him in futility. “Darling, well done. Well done. I am so sorry.”
“Wake – up – “ Cody wheezes through his teeth, eyes closed, turning his head to the side.
“I’m awake now,” Obi-Wan assures him, snaking a hand over Cody’s eyes. “I’m okay. We’re going to be okay.”
Cody only kicks for a minute or so more before going limp with a shaky exhale. Obi-Wan slumps over him, levelling his breathing. He barely woke up in time. The Force did get through to him, in the end, but why hadn’t it earlier? He’d only heard Cody’s voice.
Perhaps that’s the point, he figures grimly, the fact that he received a warning from Cody, and only when that didn’t work, the Force came to aid.
Obi-Wan picks himself up and then lifts Cody’s legs onto his own bed carefully. Pulls the blanket over him and leaves him there for the remainder of his rest, unwilling to jostle him too much. He deserves the few hours of shut-eye more than anyone else.
He hisses, into the Force, Warn me, even if he does. The Force gives him no answer, and the dawn breaks in silence as Obi-Wan sits at the end of the bed, watching over the man sleeping in his bed.
Obi-Wan makes dinner whenever it involves anything sharp – which is to say, Obi-Wan almost always makes dinner. He only ever has one knife on the counter, he only ever keeps paper plates on the table. Until Cody’s chip breaks, the knives are hidden better each time, and paper plates have to work for now. If it’s fish, sometimes he just lays it out on a few old newspapers, cuts them up there and pushes the slices to Cody, one by one. They drink from the few plastic containers he has, too, or just with their hands - because taking a transparisteel cup to the back of the head is an experience Obi-Wan is determined to keep a one-time thing in his life.
All that being said, he doesn’t think it’s so bad. They’re not skipping any meals because Cody’s far more interested in killing him rather than eating a bowl of soup anymore, that’s for sure. They’re not particularly filling foods, perhaps, but they work. Obi-Wan falls into routine of considering his options, asking Cody what he thinks about this or that (Cody never refuses anything, doesn’t even have a preference, and Obi-Wan is beginning to think he’s doing it because he feels guilty), and then keeping himself busy with the food, humming something he remembers from the days that seem so far away, now. Looking at him like this, one would think Cody’s chip is already broken.
But Cody sits at the table, eyes buried in the hard surface, breathing slowly, and the illusion breaks.
“I wish I could help,” he says one evening, quietly, arms crossed over chest so tightly his hands are nearly shaking.
Obi-Wan stills, just for a moment. He knows this feeling. The hopelessness that stems from the inability to be useful. He recognizes its sting.
“I know you do,” he answers him, slicing a pear. Ripe fruit isn’t uncommon in the markets, but it’s certainly rare he and Cody get to eat it fresh, too. “You’ll be able to, soon enough.”
“But not now.”
“No, not now.”
If Obi-Wan were to hand Cody a knife, even for assistance, their dinner would get bloody.
He pushes a plate with the sliced pieces toward Cody. “Here – you deserve it,” he tells him, smiling in good humour. “For saving my life.”
Cody snorts. “Saving your life. Okay.” After a moment, he reminds him, “I tried to kill you.” But he warned him, beforehand, and the Force felt lazy again, only giving him enough time to duck out of the way and hit a shelf on his way out. The bruising on his elbow wasn’t even the chip’s doing this time.
“And am I dead?” Obi-Wan asks him, watching as he opens his mouth, closes it, and resorts to half-hearted glaring. “It’s not going to fly in itself. Eat, Cody, you need it.”
“It’s a pear.”
“I’m sure a pear alone won’t kill your appetite.” Obi-Wan pulls back a chair, sits across from him. “Cody, if I need to start hand-feeding you to get you to eat, I will do that, and it will be very embarrassing because I will inevitably drop things on you. You’re better off doing it yourself, trust me on this.”
Cody shakes his head with a snort. “I’ll probably start trying to bite your hand off or something.”
“And you tell me you’re not hungry.” Obi-Wan tilts his head, giving him a little smile.
“Obi-Wan.”
“Cody,” he replies on instinct. Sometimes Cody just – calls his name. Just his name. To ground himself. Obi-Wan’s gotten into the habit of doing the same.
There’s a moment of silence. Obi-Wan stares at the pear like he’s expecting it to jump into Cody’s hand itself. Honestly, it’d be a smaller wonder than if Cody actually reached out and took it.
“It’s constant,” Cody tells him, suddenly. His eyes dart across the ground – he almost looks ashamed, but far more frustrated. “You don’t understand. I never don’t have the urge to – to reach out, and – kriff, it’s always there. Now, too. Always. And I know it’s not me, and it doesn’t get easier because of that. If anything, it gets worse. I know it’s not me, and it just feels foreign, like I can’t control it because it’s not me.”
Obi-Wan looks up at him, mulling over the quickly spilt words. Of course Cody would be thinking about the chip, not allowing himself to take any of Obi-Wan’s distractions. Too responsible and too afraid.
Obi-Wan wants nothing, nothing more than to step up and wrap his arms around Cody, let him hide his face in the crook of his neck and let him forget, and the want isn’t diminished by the knowledge that he can’t, not without hurting both of them.
It’s torture, that much he can read from Cody at any time. He’s living through torture. Cody’s never been someone who throws punches first and listens second, no, he’s always been the opposite, if anything; the constant aggression is so unlike him it must be horrifying, it must feel like something twisted and ugly in his chest that keeps on forcing his hand. It must feel like a nightmare.
“And it terrifies me, that maybe one time I’ll just – I won’t warn you in time, or you won’t turn around in time, and I’ll just – “
“I will not let that happen,” Obi-Wan promises firmly, reaching out to take his hand. Even that slowly curls into a fist in his hold, and he lets him go. “Cody, trust me. The Force, it’s like it pinches me about those things, even before you know what you’re doing, I can feel you every time it -… But,” he adds, cutting himself off when he notices Cody ready to butt in, “If you’re worried that I’m getting too close, just tell me – if only that eases you, I’ll take a step back. Just - talk to me, it’ll make it easier for both of us.”
“It won’t work.” Cody leans back. “The only way it might would be if you – if you just took that thing out.”
“It gets ripped apart in the process. If I do it too early, you saw what – I mean, you didn’t, but let me tell you, you had a seizure when I tried last time.” He leans forward insistently, making up for the distance Cody put between them. “It could – it could make you have a stroke, cause an aneurysm… I’m not doing it.”
“Would you rather wait until I kill you?”
“No, I – I can’t do it right now, Cody, I can’t, that would –"
“What is feasibly the worst thing that would happen?” He sounds so angry, now, as if it’s only a matter of Obi-Wan’s safety and not what dismantling the chip could do to him, that it could break him, it could –
“I could kill you!” Obi-Wan tells him, his voice rising, quivering.
Cody’s shaking his head, doesn’t look like he’s thinking when he blurts out, “Maybe you should!”
It’s like something shatters. It feels that way, always, when something like this is said, in any context. Obi-Wan feels like someone took away his voice, and Cody looks away, cheeks dark – anger, shame, anything and everything. Neither of them speaks for a moment.
Obi-Wan’s eyes dart away – then, he stands up so abruptly the chair screeches against the floor.
“Don’t say that.” All intonation is gone from his voice as he guards it from breaking again. And still, despite his best efforts, it shakes.
He rounds the table, stops by Cody. Cody’s not looking at him.
“Obi-Wan – “
He drops down physically, laces his fingers over Cody’s legs. Cody turns back to him, startled by the sound and the touch. “Cody, don’t say that.”
His eyes close. “Obi-Wan.”
“Cody.”
“You have to understand, you – you say it’s progress.” Cody’s eyes are still closed, he doesn’t seem to want to open them as he speaks, doesn’t want to see Obi-Wan so close to him, even as his hands hover over Obi-Wan’s, twitching. “And then every inch of me wants to disprove that.”
“Not of you, Cody.” He raises one hand to touch Cody’s cheek. “We agreed that it isn’t you. This is progress for you, not whatever the chip makes you do.”
“It doesn’t change what I do,” Cody says, even as he leans his head against Obi-Wan’s palm.
“Perhaps not, and yet it changes everything else.”
“I know it’s not my fault, Obi-Wan, I’m not an idiot,” he says sharply, sniffing as he opens his eyes and immediately looks at the wall to their side. “You don’t have to tell me things I already know like they’re going to help.”
So Obi-Wan doesn’t. He doesn’t speak, lets Cody have some silence, and just stays there with him. Sometimes, in the Wars, all Cody needed was for Obi-Wan to just sit with him for some time, wrap his arms around him, kiss him carefully from time to time. Obi-Wan can’t do it, now, but he supposes replacing those comforts with words wasn’t really to Cody’s benefit. So he keeps quiet. For a minute or for fifteen, he doesn’t really know.
Cody stirs, then, and it looks like he’s been trying to say something for a good while. “I’m sorry about – that,” he mutters, waving a hand vaguely.
“Don’t apologize. You didn’t do anything wrong.” Obi-Wan’s hand brushes against Cody’s thigh. “We can just… hold on a little longer, can’t we? This is hardly the most terrifying thing we’ve ever faced.”
“The stakes are higher.”
“I know, love. But you’re doing so well.” Force, how he wishes Cody never knew what fighting his own body felt like. He wishes he could’ve found a better way to do this, something that wouldn’t be putting him through such a nightmare. And yet all wishes are forbidden, and the inorganic blood of the biochip in his brain does not concern itself with dreams.
Not for long, now, if he can help it. His thumb draws an arc under Cody’s eye. “It’s hard. I know it’s hard. Probably harder than anything you’ve ever done, love, I know. But the chip's effects are diminishing more and more with every second that passes.” His voice falls to a whisper. “There’s not much left. I can feel it. You only need to hold on for a little while more.”
Cody shakes his head, heaving a sigh. “That’s the problem. I can’t know if I’m strong enough.”
“Why, you’re more than strong enough, dear.” Cody looks at him, brows furrowed, and Obi-Wan smiles. It’s not a happy smile, but neither of them can muster up anything more than that. He reaches up and gently covers Cody’s hand with his. “I’ve been practically sitting in your lap for the last five minutes and you haven’t laid a finger on me.”
As if he just noticed, Cody flinches away from him so quickly he almost upturns the chair. Obi-Wan shakes his head and stands up, ignoring the glare in his back.
“That was reckless,” Cody scolds him. Obi-Wan shrugs.
“It also made a point.”
“What point,” Cody mutters behind him, staring at the table like he’s trying to find some god in the scratched surface. “That there are moments when I’m not actively trying to kill you?”
Obi-Wan glances over his shoulder. “That you’re getting better, Cody,” he tells him, watches him look up with big eyes. “That this isn’t going to stay this way forever, and, soon enough, it’s going to be over entirely.”
Cody is silent, as they eat dinner and after that, and Obi-Wan doesn’t prod at him. Truly, tonight, there’s a lot to think about.
Cody’s injuries are healing and his strength is returning. Obi-Wan knows this because he rebandages the wounds across his arms and puts new cold compresses on his knuckles himself. He also knows this because it’s getting harder and harder to escape Cody’s hold, when he pins him to the wall, grabs him by the throat and tries to choke the life out of him. And it’s a more and more frequent occurrence that Cody wakes from his Force-induced slumber because Obi-Wan disentangles himself from him only after they’ve both hit the floor and barely manages to roll over before he’s hacking up a lung.
Cody’s always been good at close-quarters, better than him, especially when he can’t rely on the Force for it, and it’s beginning to get very obvious. His episodes get spaced out but turn far more brutal quickly, like the chip itself feels its influence fading and tries to make up for it with the viciousness of the punches, sharp jabs to the ribs, violent kov’nyne. Still, Obi-Wan can handle it. Thank the Force, he reckons, that he spent all those hours sparring with Cody years ago. Neither of them has changed much – this surprises him, but mildly so. It’s not like they got much varied training since the Wars’ conclusion.
And so, they can hold their own. With his admittedly limited assistance of the Force, Obi-Wan can eventually overpower him.
He is only truly scared of failure once.
He is doing something at a counter, and he has a blade. The Force warns him, he turns around – and Cody’s far closer than he thought, leaping at him like a cat.
Obi-Wan is holding a knife.
Instead of countering whatever Cody’s going to do, he chucks the blade across the room as far as he can, better for neither have it than run the risk of Cody somehow getting it from him. He then brings up his hands – but it’s too late already. Even then, Cody surprises Obi-Wan – grabs one arm and pulls him forward, and, before Obi-Wan can flip them around like he’s done maybe dozens of times, now, Cody turns to the side and jabs him in the face with his elbow.
Obi-Wan has seen the stars countless times, but the strike right between his eyes gives him the pleasure of seeing them once more.
He can clearly taste the blood in his mouth, but he doesn’t even get the chance to spit it out before Cody wrenches him back down on the counter and grabs his throat. The stars in Obi-Wan’s eyes fail to fade, and, gasping for breath, he subconsciously wraps his hands around Cody’s wrist, hooking his fingers under the palms and trying to rip them away from him. It’s a futile effort – Cody’s got all his strength and bodyweight focused on the task at hand. Obi-Wan chokes, sputters, he can’t swallow nor take a breath, and there is absolutely nothing on Cody’s face. He looks almost at peace, and, for a moment, Obi-Wan wants to reach out, press his palm to his cheek, and keep him that way, keep him at peace, Cody looks so beautiful when he’s at peace, those dark eyes full of such serenity – affection, when he looks at Obi-Wan –
But the man holding him down is not Cody.
Obi-Wan cries out in frustration.
He kicks around until he can hook his ankle on Cody’s leg and tug – Cody stumbles, but only for a second, dragging Obi-Wan a few inches to the side on the rough surface before slamming him down harder, a yelp ripping through Obi-Wan’s throat at the scraping against his back before the hands around his throat steal even his voice away from him.
Cody is relentless, above him, and his throat feels like he’s closed it completely, like there’s a blade in there, slicing along the walls. Obi-Wan can’t make even the smallest sound, and he’s felt this only once before, his throat caught in the clutching claw of General Grievous, but it was Cody, then, who broke him out, whose blaster bolt bounced right off the corner of where Grievous’ metal socket reached the organic eye, and the droid had dropped Obi-Wan, and then he’d been free.
What does he do, now, when Cody’s the one who has him in his clutches?
He coughs, a dry wheeze, and tastes iron. Remembers that there’s blood in his mouth, swears that he's going to make it up to Cody, somehow, and, rather undignifiedly, spits it out at Cody’s face.
Luckily enough, it gets him. Cody cries out in surprise and ducks away, instinctively shaking his head in frantic jerks, giving Obi-Wan just enough time and leeway to open his mouth.
“Cody,“ he gurgles out, the sound staying in the back of his throat, and it hurts even to breathe. “Cody.”
Cody turns back to him. The blood is dripping from his face. It’s vile.
His expression has tensed, no longer the meaningless blank Obi-Wan saw before, and he raises his hand – to strike Obi-Wan, perhaps, and even with the world swirling in seven different directions, Obi-Wan gets ready to kick him while he’s pulling away, grab him, do something, anything at all for this not to turn into the dream he has so often –
Cody brings his fist down, and clocks himself square in the jaw so hard it carries him to the side, the remaining hand slipping off Obi-Wan’s throat completely. Obi-Wan gasps for air and freezes for a singular moment, fully and thoroughly shaken. He’s wheezing for a minute or two, perhaps, as his throat just doesn’t seem to work right – and once the yellow spots finally leave his eyesight, he slides off the countertop and hits the floor hard.
He crawls his way to where Cody’s collapsed over the leg of the table, and he checks on him – Cody’s heart is beating so quickly it’s a step away from leaping out of his chest, and Obi-Wan breathes a sigh of relief before he gently slides a hand over his forehead and commands him to drift. He doesn’t have the energy to put him under for long, and he can only hope that what limited strength he retains in the Force is enough to knock Cody back into his own body for the while.
He slumps over before he knows it, barely managing to prop himself up with his arms by the sides of Cody’s head. His breaths are too shallow, they come too fast. He tries to slow them down and only succeeds in sending himself into a coughing fit, so he drops to the side without even trying to disentangle their legs, covering his mouth and hacking up a lung.
Cody is, admittedly, very strong, and that’s never been an issue before this.
Over a few minutes, Obi-Wan gathers enough strength to sit up, carefully lift his legs off Cody. And Cody stirs, then, with a grumble of discomfort. It won’t be long until he wakes up, now – Obi-Wan leans back a little and waits.
His eyelids flutter, he opens his eyes, tries to open his mouth, to speak. Groans. There’s a nasty bruise blooming on his cheek.
“Don’t rush it,” Obi-Wan advises quietly. “There’s plenty of time.”
“Obi-Wan.“ It’s more of a breath than a word, and Obi-Wan realizes his own voice isn’t that much louder, either.
“Cody.“
He must read something out from Obi-Wan’s face because his eyes widen and he jumps, bolting into a sitting position, just shy of being able to grab him again.
“Gar ani’la kebiin, haar’chak!“ It’s not unusual for him to react in Mando’a, initially. Obi-Wan thanks the Force that he’s fluent, most days. Others, he wishes he didn’t know what Cody was saying. “Osik’la be’kaminii – kriff!” Obi-Wan raises his head just in time to see Cody wiping at his face with wide eyes, shocked at the frankly disgusting red that streaks his hand. “Obi-Wan, is this your blood?” 3
Obi-Wan doesn’t answer him, only stands up and moves to the counter, swaying just a bit as his head takes back the air he needs. The smudges of blood going down the side of his chin and cheek are answer enough. He pulls the rag from the counter handle, wets it and sits down in front of Cody, moving it to his hand, his face. All without a word.
Cody leans back, sort of looking like he wants to be as far away as possible. Obi-Wan doesn’t have the strength to pretend it doesn’t sting, but he knows why it is the way it is.
“Stop, stop. Obi-Wan.” Cody’s looking at him like he’s a ghost. “Is this, your blood.”
“I’m sorry,” Obi-Wan says, quietly.
“What? What, kriff, no, I – I’m sorry! Obi-Wan, kriffing stars, what did I do to you!?”
“Just roughed me up a little. Calm down.” He raises his hands, makes a placating gesture. “Nothing a bit of rest won’t fix. Don’t look at me like that, dear, it’s alright.”
“Jate’manda.” Cody shakes his head. “Where do you keep bacta?” 4
Obi-Wan perks up immediately. “I’m not going to use it. Limited supply,” he explains. “Better keep it for something serious.”
“It is serious,” Cody argues. “You’ve got bruises on your neck.”
Obi-Wan feels his throat. Surely enough, it hurts. Still, he disagrees. “Those aren’t going to kill me, Cody.”
“Damn near close to it, though.”
“Not at all. Let it go, dear.” He stands. Cody follows, holding onto the edge of the table.
“It – “
“Let it go.”
Cody mutters something certainly argumentative, but doesn’t speak up.
Obi-Wan goes to find the knife he threw. It’s lodged between the floorboards. He picks it up – pulls it out with some force – and goes back to cutting their food, washing it beforehand.
Cody is silent, for the rest of the day. He always seems to be silent after his chip is exceptionally successful. Never fully, of course, and he’s getting better and better at reining it back in with chanced acts that mostly consist of him breaking insignificant things to keep his mind intact, but there are still days. Today is one such day, and Obi-Wan knows better than to pretend like everything is alright. He might want to, but Cody never takes it well. He’s more afraid of hurting Obi-Wan than Obi-Wan is of getting hurt.
Well, he supposes that’s nothing new. But there are few worse things, he’s decided, than getting blood wiped off his face by his lover, who, through no fault of his own, will hardly even dare meet his eyes.
So he stays silent, too. Well-into the night. Until he bids Cody goodnight, out loud, and gets a whispered answer. It’s enough. He’ll never ask for more than he’s given.
The next day, Obi-Wan tries to say, ‘Good morning’, as he always does, and his throat is so dry his voice breaks the second he parts his lips.
Cody looks up at him with a frown. “Obi-Wan?” Obi-Wan blinks, clearing his throat, coughing twice, precisely. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” he manages, even though his tongue feels heavier than the dunes of sand outside. “Just my throat acting up.”
He tries his best to say it in a way that won’t make Cody think about it too much, but Cody’s hands ball into fists for a second before unclenching, and his eyes linger on Obi-Wan’s neck for too long. He looks up to Obi-Wan’s face and parts his lips.
“Sorry.”
“What, no, hey.” Obi-Wan steps closer. “I’ll be fine, don’t worry about it.”
That’s the end of that. Or so Obi-Wan thinks.
Around twenty minutes later, he leaves his room to find Cody to ask him about something that escapes him, and nearly trips on a cup outside his doorstep.
He looks down. Blinks. Crouches, checks out the cup – it smells nice. Just a little too sweet –
Obi-Wan freezes, his nose almost touching the tea. Cody. Cody, his dear Cody can never get the sugar quite right, and toward the end of the Wars, Obi-Wan started adding too much himself, subconsciously. He recognizes this tea.
“Did you make this?” he asks after he finds Cody down on the couch, picking at his clothes subconsciously.
“Yeah.” He almost looks nervous. It’s cute.
Obi-Wan smiles, sits down across from him and takes a sip. It’s lukewarm, Force knows when Cody put that there. He doesn’t appreciate it any less because of that. “Thank you,” he says warmly. “It’s very good.”
“Thought you’d need it,” Cody tells him, gesturing vaguely to his throat. “Since, you know. Yeah.”
“Yeah,” Obi-Wan agrees, chuckling. “I appreciate it. I do hope you’re not trying to apologize to me like this, though.”
A moment of silence passes, and he sighs.
“Cody.”
“That’s not it,” Cody mumbles. “That’s not it, I… I just like making you things. Tea’s one of them.”
If Obi-Wan’s heart turns to mush at his words, he’ll never admit it. He does, however, pretend very hard that the sudden redness in his face is because of the alleged heat in the tea. “I,” he echoes, a little uselessly, “I appreciate it. Really, Cody. I do.”
Cody looks up at him. “Good.” And that’s truly the end of that, now. They stay together in silence, a comfortable one at that, until the Force yells at Obi-Wan to put the tea down and brace. He makes it in time.
Cody keeps making him tea, since that requires neither knives nor other sharp objects. He makes cup after cup and leaves it somewhere around him for him to notice. Some of them are cold by the time Obi-Wan gets to them, but he nearly tears up at the first one, so the following ones have a similar effect.
Obi-Wan drinks the tea. Slowly, his throat improves.
Obi-Wan notices something curious, after waking up early one morning and settling down next to Cody’s bed with a slice of bread and some butter. He doesn’t have much of an appetite early in the day, he never did, but it’s never stopped him from eating when he knows he has to. And he does, now. Force forbid he gets dizzy in the middle of a scuffle. He’d never forgive himself.
The food leaves a salty aftertaste. He looks down – usually, the bread is almost sweet, dotted with some sort of plant seeds. Shrugging lightly, he keeps eating anyway. Taste doesn’t exactly matter to him anymore, as long as he has something to chew.
He keeps glancing at Cody every once in a while, finding his eyes closed and his chest rising and falling steadily. Obi-Wan smiles, inwardly, at just how peaceful he looks like this. This is everything compared to the forced, fabricated calm he gives off in a fight. This is everything, he knows, now. He finds himself wishing Cody had the chance to feel it himself, this sense of serenity, of being able to just – stay, there, without fighting himself, and be safe with Obi-Wan by his side.
It isn’t like Obi-Wan is planning to leave him any time soon – unless Cody decides to, naturally – but it’s the first part they’re going to have to work on. Sometimes Obi-Wan feels like he’s going mad. Days mush together, at times, marked apart only by the things Cody says that aren’t a regret or a whisper of the present, and sometimes Obi-Wan feels like he’s been dropped into the past, like there’s the rays of sunshine painted on Cody’s chest and a helmet under his arm, and…
And then he always has to stand up and go outside. Stare at the shimmering blue of the sky that he knows has nothing but the empty vastness of space beneath it. He stares until he remembers where he is, that there can be no future he’d sworn to have with Cody, there can be no showing him all the planets he’s been so fascinated with – there can be no life of any kind until he takes the chip out, and then Cody will choose to stay or to go.
He knows Cody will choose to stay, and nothing else can hurt as much. This isn’t what Cody deserves. He deserves all that they planned together during the Wars and more, he deserves freedom that he will never truly have, as a clone. Obi-Wan has no idea what he’s ever done to even deserve Cody.
Sometimes he ends up on his knees in the sand, gasping dry into his hands, wondering when the exact moment was when the Force knew he’d fail so many. What he could’ve done to rectify it.
Sometimes – sometimes, and most often – Cody walks out after him. Those are the only times he’s less afraid to touch him, because the desert and his thoughts are far more dangerous to Obi-Wan than whatever chip Cody has. And so Cody grabs his arms, picks him up, sometimes. Gets him inside. Sometimes, but not often, they talk.
I don’t want to see the kriffing Galaxy if you’re not coming with, damn you, Cody told him, once, after he spent a good while trying to prove to him why staying would just be mindless torture, Seeing the Galaxy was one part of the deal. Doing it with you, that was the other. I won’t separate them. You won’t spend the rest of your life here.
Obi-Wan wanted to laugh, then. I might, if I must.
Then if you might and if you must, I’ll spend it right here with you, once that blasted chip is out of my head. Cody had been insistent. There was no moving him. I don’t know if you’re wilfully blind or really just this kriffing oblivious. I don’t want the Galaxy, Obi-Wan. I only want you.
He frowns at the memory. Just a bit. It’s a good one.
Obi-Wan wants many things, and some of them are very far removed from the path of a Jedi he’s walking, but, really, so is his life at this point. Kriff, to his knowledge, there are no more than half a hundred Jedi alive, most of the surviving clones are still in the Empire, and there is so much suffering echoing across the Galaxy that he’s built up inner shields so strong the Council would’ve thought he was hiding something, were he to somehow turn back time. But if those shields weren’t up, he wouldn’t be here. It would’ve crushed him into nothingness.
Most of his wishes are – very trivial, very logical. He’d like, for example, for there to be jogan fruit in the markets of Mos Eisley more often. Obi-Wan rarely makes it there before it’s all gone – it’s not that expensive, one can make it into pretty much any food they want, and, he admits, sheepishly, Cody likes it.
He’s almost forgotten where he is, when he’s reminded by a stir to his side. Obi-Wan snaps his head at the movement in the corner of his eye, and finds Cody’s are already open. He hasn’t moved, but Obi-Wan places the salty bread down, nevertheless.
They stare, for a brief moment.
“I’ve never seen you cry before, I think,” Cody says. Obi-Wan, who was opening his mouth to bid him good morning, snaps it shut. Was he crying? “You alright?”
Obi-Wan furrows his brows, brushes his finger at the corner of his eye. “Yes, I – I didn’t even feel it.” That’s why the bread is salty, he figures, glancing wistfully at his breakfast before summoning a smile. “Must be sleep dust, don’t worry about me.”
Cody doesn’t look convinced, exactly. “Want to talk about it?”
Obi-Wan wipes his face decisively. “Not particularly. It’s just… Me.”
“If you say ‘infinite sadness’ again…” Cody throws his head back on the pillow, staring at the ceiling, and Obi-Wan gives a chuckle.
“Something of the sort.”
“Nobody’s built to suffer.” It’s words he’s heard before. It’s his own words. He said them, to Cody, during the Wars. What a mess. “You keep assigning yourself anguish like it’s an especially unpleasant batch of flimsiwork. Obi-Wan, we’re not going to be miserable forever. I know that. You’d better know it too.” Cody rolls over to his side, catches his gaze and holds it. His hands clench and unclench on the blanket.
The Force, that’s what whispered to him about his destiny. It whispers to all Jedi, and the harder one resists, the easier it is to claim them. It’s never made sense to Obi-Wan, resistance. And so, here he is. No matter what Cody says.
But he looks so, so sure. Obi-Wan wants to believe it so badly.
It takes him a moment to realize his lips had been moving. Cody leans forward.
“Hey. You with me?”
“Right here,” he says, and finds himself a bit choked up. Clears his throat, smiles a little. “Look at how the tables turn.”
Cody leans back, gluing his eyes to the ceiling again. “You made me believe things could change. It’s fair I do the same.”
“This is not a very fair Galaxy.”
“Doesn’t mean there can’t be fair men living in it.”
Obi-Wan nods quietly. It’s true, what Cody says. Things will change, inevitably, and he’ll either leave or he’ll stay. He’ll stay, Obi-Wan knows it, and it makes his chest tight again. Cody deserves better. Cody deserves better.
It’s now, as he watches Cody search for the meaning of life in the empty ceiling. It’s now that Obi-Wan notices it.
Cody hasn’t touched him, hasn’t gone for him, hasn’t even tried. There has never been a morning as long as this. There has never been so much peace as the suns chase the last traces of darkness away in the sky.
“Cody,” he says, carefully. “How do you feel?”
Cody turns only his head, this time. Looks at him inquisitively. “Um. Fine? Why?”
“I think,” Obi-Wan tells him, slowly, in as low a tone as he can muster, “that it might be about time I see what I can do about your chip again.”
Cody’s eyes widen in surprise.
He doesn’t move a muscle out of place toward Obi-Wan for the entire afternoon.
Cody dreams, too. Obi-Wan wakes with a start, sometimes, his senses flaring into overdrive, but he finds no immediate danger around, nobody standing above him, nobody lunging for him. Nevertheless, all the pull to sleep is gone from his mind, and then he hears a quiet noise – and a thump.
“Cody,” he understands, and jolts upright, throwing off his blanket. It’s a few steps to reach him, in the only other room on the side. He sleeps there by his own request. To get as much space between him and Obi-Wan, to give him as much time as possible to wake up properly before Cody can get the leg up on him.
When he gets there, he finds Cody most often on the floor, one hand clutching at the edge of the mattress as he looks around frantically, even as he stands up, swaying on his feet, unsure whether to find Obi-Wan or stay there, because even though he has dreams of the Wars far more often than anything, sometimes his nightmares match Obi-Wan’s, mark his success, the chip’s triumph –
Obi-Wan rarely leaves him with that choice, slowing down his step only when he’s right in front of the door, gently pushing it open and peeking in, just enough to see whether he should be ready for a fight or not. More often than not, Cody looks like a lost dove, blinking up at him.
He makes a choked noise, now, “Oh,” and reaches for Obi-Wan. “You’re – “
Obi-Wan doesn’t need to ask what the dream was about. He comes crashing down and Cody grabs him first, all safety measures be damned, digging his face into his chest as Obi-Wan softly checks up on him, brushing his hands along his shoulders, the sides of his head, settling, finally, on his back and rocking Cody back and forth.
“I’m okay,” he assures him. Cody nods, and Obi-Wan ignores the wet patch spreading over his chest, brushing his fingers through the dark hair. “I’m right here.”
“You’re here,” Cody echoes.
He stays but for a moment, his arms locked so tightly around Obi-Wan it feels like he’s trying to join them together.
Then, he drops his arms as suddenly as he wrapped them around him.
“Wait, Obi-Wan,” Cody mutters, hesitantly, quickly, as if he’s afraid that if he doesn’t say it now, he won’t be able to afterward, “Get away from me. Get away.”
“You’re not doing anything,” Obi-Wan tries, but he feels Cody shaking his head against his chest, pushing him back and pulling him to himself again, as if he’s unsure if he wants him closer or farther. “Cody, you’re not doing anything. You’re okay. I’m okay.”
“Please,” Cody manages, “Please, you can’t be near me. Please get away from me.”
“Okay.” He moves back, then, Cody’s hands slipping off his shirt as he retreats far enough to press himself to the other wall, sliding down until his legs are crossed. “I’m here, now. Is that better?”
Cody leans back on his elbows, looks at the door, then at Obi-Wan. “No,” he says, “but stay. Please.”
Obi-Wan tilts his head. “I will.” After a second, he asks, “Would you like to talk about it?”
“Not any more than you ever do.”
“Point taken.” He glances at the door himself, too. “It’s still very early. Perhaps you should go back to sleep. Don’t worry, I’ll wake you up if you slip into something unpleasant.”
Cody just sort of, gives a snort. Yes, Obi-Wan realizes he’s oversimplifying everything. But he doesn’t really know what else to say. Or to do.
Well, no, he knows what he should do, but the problem is that he can’t get close to Cody. What else is there, other than the words he doesn’t want to hear? Cody stares forward, and his gaze looks so empty, it seems like he’s somewhere away. It sparks an idea.
“I could sing to you,” Obi-Wan offers pleasantly. “My voice might not be much good, but…” But, singing often brings the illusion of safety with it, or at least a lighter mood. Both to the singer and the listener.
Cody tries not to look at him. His eyes dart anyway. “That sounds - nice,” he says, uncertainly. “But not the war songs.”
“Not the war songs,” Obi-Wan agrees, raising his gaze to the ceiling. “I know a few Stewjoni ones. I doubt you’ve heard them before.”
Cody nods absent-mindedly. “Sounds nice,” he repeats, then looks away. “Just – stay there, okay.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Obi-Wan tells him, leaning forward with a little smile. Cody shakes his head and the expression falls.
“No, I mean – just – don’t come closer than that, alright?” he clarifies, finally managing to look everywhere but at Obi-Wan, and Obi-Wan would object, would say he’d be fine an inch or so closer to Cody, neither of them would die because of that – and it would be correct until it wouldn’t.
“Alright,” he concedes, resting his head against the wall where he’s sitting. “Alright. I won’t.”
Cody nods, settling in the corner, sitting on his legs. It can’t be very comfortable, but it’s certainly restrictive.
Obi-Wan’s heart has been breaking with every detail he sees of Cody trying to put as much of a time window for Obi-Wan to react between them, and Force damn him all over again if he lets it shatter because of the way Cody sits.
He closes his eyes for a moment. In spite of it all, he trusts the Force to warn him. He opens his mouth. He sings.
He doesn’t remember where and when he learned this song. He can only assume it was during one of his research projects gone wrong, when he’d end up sifting through the Holonet for hours instead of doing his work, finding one topic after another to be fascinated by. It wasn’t uncommon for him to pursue more in-depth knowledge of the phenomena he found interesting, the languages he liked the sound of –
Stewjoni was, understandably, one he barely needed any effort to learn at all. It still feels closer to him than Basic, even.
He knows many songs. He never sings them, or at least he hasn’t before. They used to be something just for him, to recite quietly like poems when he was doing something mindless or anxiety-inducing.
It’s something just for him – why wouldn’t he share that with Cody?
So he sings. It’s not a lullaby, but it’s not a drinking song either. It falls somewhere in the middle, a sharp melody that he somehow still remembers, something that reminds him of his childhood, the crèche, when he never would’ve thought he’d end up somewhere like this, having failed so many, having ruined so much.
Stones on gritty roads will howl, the song echoes, wooden canes bloom green. Perhaps it is not a very happy song, but there’s no way for Cody to know that.
“Wait for me,” Obi-Wan sings, and his voice really isn’t suited for this, but Cody’s eyes are closed, and he’d sing it again a thousand times just to see his chest rising and falling like this, slowly. “Wait for me.”
When nobody will ever wait again.
He blinks, surprising even himself with the abrupt ending of the song.
Cody is asleep, head fallen back against the wall, lips just slightly parted over the teeth. Obi-Wan stands up and shifts closer, brushes a strand of hair off his forehead.
“I’ll wait,” he says to Cody quietly, in Basic, well-aware the man can’t hear him but not meaning it any less because of that. “I’ll wait as long as it takes, don’t you worry. I’ve - I'll be patient, I promise you. I’ll wait for as long as you need.”
With that, he draws back, as far away as he’d promised, and watches drowsily as the suns creep up in him.
The evening is cooler than most, which means it’s only pleasantly warm. They sit outside for a few minutes while they drink, watching the sunset. They’ll have to go inside and do what needs to be done, soon, and Obi-Wan finds himself fretting. He shoves the feeling down decisively, but Cody notices anyway. Of course he does.
“You look worried.”
“Don’t mind me. I’m always worried,” Obi-Wan replies, and it’s not exactly a lie. He hasn’t felt anything less than mildly anxious for the past year.
“Don’t be.” Cody finishes his drink, puts down the cup. “I’ll be fine.”
Obi-Wan nods, because that’s exactly what he’s worried about.
What if he does it wrong? What if it only makes things worse, like the first time he tried to fix Cody’s mind? What if he ends up with a more severe seizure, one that Obi-Wan can’t bring him out of, can’t calm him down, can’t – What if he kriffs it up, like he knows he’s capable of doing, like he’s done before, like everything he seems to do, these days, and –
“Obi-Wan.” Cody has such a nice voice, he thinks absent-mindedly. “…Obi-Wan.”
He gets himself together and replies, “Cody.”
A little chuckle from his left – and then a spike across his head from the Force.
Cody reaches to the side with a little noise, suddenly, and crumples the cup on the ground by Obi-Wan’s hip, crushing the plastic entirely. Obi-Wan half-jumps to his feet before settling back down.
Figures. Cody hasn’t tried anything for most of the day.
Obi-Wan rises, puts down his own cup, throws a handful of sand in to hold it in place, then turns to Cody. “Need me to—?”
“Let’s just go,” Cody manages, standing up by himself and shaking his head until it spins. After that, he looks up, a bit more composed. “Think that’s it. Better not wait for the next one.”
Obi-Wan takes the chip’s outburst as the last kick of the dying and leads Cody inside. He doesn’t think much about where to sit him down, so they just settle on the little couch by the door.
It feels strange, finally being here, seeing Cody look at him expectantly. Like it’s a dream, and somewhere, deep inside, he didn’t think he’d actually get to have it.
Obi-Wan takes a breath.
He brushes his palm down Cody’s cheek, gentle. “I’m going to need you not to flinch away from me, Cody.”
“I won’t,” he promises, his hands bunching up Obi-Wan’s robes where he holds onto him, and Obi-Wan isn’t sure whether it’s the chip’s doing or not, but it doesn’t matter anymore.
“Under any circumstances.” He pauses, dropping his arm, looking into those dark eyes. “Even if it – flares up. You have to stay close to me, let me keep contact.”
Cody’s eyes widen, then narrow. “You’re telling me not to fight it even if I try to… attack you, or something.”
“Oh, no, well, fight it, by all means, but if it includes trying to push me away or the like, try to refrain.” Obi-Wan tilts his head as he gently takes Cody’s hands off his robes and puts them down on his thighs. “I’ll keep my focus on the chip entirely.”
“Even if I hurt you.”
“Even if you cause me physical pain, yes, Cody, but the chip will break, and then that’ll never have to happen again.” He sounds a little impatient, he’s aware of it, but doesn’t Cody know, by now, that Obi-Wan would do anything for him? That a kick or a shove here and there doesn’t matter to him in the slightest for as long as he gets to help Cody get rid of the contraption in his brain that’s forcing his hand?
“That’s ridiculous.”
“It is what it is.”
“You’ve got painkillers,” Cody suggests. “You could drug me off with those, I’d be too out of it to do anything.”
Obi-Wan sputters. “I’d prefer you alive, thank you very much.”
“What an inadvisable decision.”
“Cody.”
“Alright, alright, sorry. Do your thing.”
Obi-Wan shakes his head with a sigh, moving on. “Admittedly, I don’t have a clue on what it’s going to feel like, so I apologize in advance.”
He looks away. “I don’t care.” Cody’s hands clench and unclench around nothing on his thighs. “I don’t care what it’s going to feel like. Just get it out of working order. That’s all that matters.”
Obi-Wan presses his lips together, bringing his hands up to Cody’s face, brushing a stray curl off his forehead. “Okay.” He can already sense it, the little budding tendrils of the darkness in Cody’s head, coiling around the spot he needs to reach and overwhelm, crowd with his own Light’s closeness. What surprises him is how weak it seems, now. But it’s been months. To find it weak had always been their goal.
He closes his eyes and does his best to try and put himself in the right headspace with practiced ease – it almost works, until he tries to press at the guarded presence of Cody in the Force and the feeling he receives in return is akin to that of his mind’s presence being blasted into the wall by an electric shock.
Obi-Wan simply tries again and again, having done this more times than he can recall, now, until he slips through the shields and hears, somewhere away from him, Cody make a sharp noise.
He knows it doesn’t feel right. He knows that, in some way, it can even pain Cody. But it’s either this or their routine, and he knows, now that he's so deep within Cody's head, that Cody is willing to go through far more than he thought before he ever settles for trying to raise a hand against Obi-Wan again.
And so, Obi-Wan locates the chip, and focuses his hold around it.
It defends viciously, and with the last traces of his consciousness he can feel Cody tense up, then shake underneath his hands, then move him and knock their heads together. It’s a hard kov’nyn, not a kiss, but he doesn’t let it unbalance him, he only presses his eyes shut tighter, clenches his jaw and floods the chip with all the Light he has.
The chip in and of itself is not Dark. It’s simply an inorganic bioimplant. But nothing exists in a vacuum, and the problem is the Dark flooding it, and the traces of Cody’s Light being suffocated inside it, at times. It blinds him, sends a cloud of smog over his eyes. That is the real danger, and Obi-Wan’s task is to mitigate it before he does anything else, before he rips the chip apart. It’s the most effective way to do that – the quickest, too.
While he’s been able to simply make the Dark retract into the chip and diminish with the other clones, Cody’s is a little more persistent. The Dark thrashes and kicks, screeching and reaching out to pull him in and trying to distract him as painfully as possible. One second it’s something as trivial as hearing the Force equivalent of a blood-curdling scream next him. The other, he sees the people he loves, loved, dead at his feet. It’s not a very wide variety of choices. It’s Cody’s selection of nightmares mixing with his. It’s last year, and all the years before that.
However, after months of wear and tear, emphasis on the second part, the chip is falling apart, and the Dark is weak; certainly not enough to withstand the Light of someone who knows how to disperse it, how to cover it, not enough to fight against someone who knows enough about mind control and Force influence and the Dark side to turn it into a tool and into a weapon. Obi-Wan may not have been the best Jedi, but he was controlled and meticulous with every brain he wired and rewired in his wake. This helps. The Dark was meant to take over the clones for long enough to get results – which succeeded – but it’s not capable of resisting the aftermath, Obi-Wan’s pulling and tugging and prodding, because this is something he studied enough to sow it into his blood, and no blasted Sith’s behavioural microchip is going to make a formidable opponent once one’s successfully used Force suggestions to help even mad kings keep their peace treaties.
But, oh, it’s certainly going to try. Obi-Wan was right – these are its last kicks.
He knows that Cody’s hands rise before he feels them on his face, Cody clawing at something on his cheek, leaving it hot with running blood. His nails are short and blunt, but that doesn’t change anything with how forceful his hand is, how quickly it rips down the marks on his skin. It hurts. It is also very easy to ignore it. He’s felt pain before. This is hardly his first telepathic operation.
Cody is muttering an endless stream of his name, just that, the word echoing like a prayer in his head, in the Force, all around him, and Obi-Wan lets it ground him as it does Cody, and he wraps the Dark up in more proof that it will not be allowed to fester here, and reaches up to close his Light around them both.
“Obi-Wan,” he hears above him. Or perhaps below him. He cannot tell. It’s getting hard to read the noise through all the screaming. “Obi-Wan, Obi-Wan.”
“Cody,” he calls back, croaks out. “Ready.”
It’s not a question nor a statement, and Obi-Wan doesn’t wait for an answer.
He grips the source of the hell of last year, and, swiftly, severs it into two. Then four, then eight, and he keeps tearing at it, tearing, tearing, until it’s gone, and reduced to dusty, useless remains, and it’s all over.
Cody gasps, gapes and – stays there, like that, for a second, until he regains his breath. Until his eyes focus again, dart, ending up on Obi-Wan, who draws back further.
Then, he extracts himself from Cody’s head, trying to breathe deeply the whole time, and collapses back into his own body.
Obi-Wan is aware his hands are shaking. He’s aware he can barely see through the rising tears in his eyes. He’s aware that he buried himself in the Dark so deeply, trying to rip Cody from its hold, that it still clings to him, that he needs to shake its last traces before he can move on.
Cody opens his eyes in front of him, creases of tension smoothing out, and the traces melt away.
Obi-Wan would say, Cody, but he doesn’t. He waits. He feels the Light pooling all around them, and he waits. They did it, he knows that much. Still, he waits.
“Obi-Wan,” Cody says, after a minute.
“Cody.” His words reach barely above a whisper, tearful and uncertain and all.
“It’s gone,” Cody says, and his voice breaks, and he raises his arms but doesn’t touch Obi-Wan, not yet, no – “The – whatever was making me hurt you. It’s gone.”
“The constant?” Obi-Wan asks slowly.
Cody looks up at him. “…Yeah,” he responds at last, “That’s gone. I don’t, I – Wait, wait.”
Obi-Wan waits, freezing himself in a state between hope and wariness. Cody brings up his hands to Obi-Wan’s face, presses his palms to his cheeks, brushes his thumbs underneath his eyes.
One quick snap to the side, something Cody is certainly more than capable of, and Obi-Wan is dead, his mind supplies, helpfully.
And even as he knows it, he doesn’t move at all.
Cody lets out a choppy chuckle. A frantic little thing, as he leans in and rests his head against Obi-Wan’s, noses brushing, no sign of any violent kov’nyn, only a gentle press. “There you are,” he mutters, and kisses the corner of his lips, and kisses the soft patch of skin underneath his nose, and kisses his brow, and Obi-Wan grabs his wrists and closes his eyes against the lovely onslaught, and feels the –
He's so endlessly familiar, in the Force.
Obi-Wan opens his eyes with a little gasp when Cody cups his face a little firmer – it burns – and flinches to the side, pressing into one hand but escaping the other. Cody drops both so quickly the knuckles knock against his thighs.
Obi-Wan raises his hands, feels his cheek. The blood has dried, but the skin feels like he’s been grating sandpaper on it for hours. As soon as his hand makes contact, he draws it back, hissing.
“Surface scratch, don’t worry,” he’s reassuring Cody before the man can even open his mouth. He taps his finger on his cheek very very lightly, and doesn’t wince. “It’s nothing.”
“Obi-Wan,” Cody says, and he says the next words so joyously Obi-Wan’s heart jumps in his chest, “the chip is gone. I can’t hurt you again, you said it yourself. So let’s just seal up your wounds this time. That bacta will not see much use after that.”
“You’d be surprised,” Obi-Wan grumbles, but Cody bows his head to meet his eyes and from the way he looks at him it’s as if half of Obi-Wan’s face is missing. “Cody, it’s nothing to worry about.”
“It hurts,” Cody states. Obi-Wan looks away, shrugging with a little smile.
“I’d be willing to get a lot more hurt if that meant – “
Obi-Wan trails off mindlessly once Cody presses their foreheads together again. “You don’t finish that sentence,” he tells him, hoarsely. “Not now and not ever.”
All sorts of kisses can steal one’s breath away. A Keldabe is no different. Obi-Wan stays quiet for a moment.
“Alright,” he breathes, finally.
“Alright,” Cody echoes, and smiles. “Bacta?”
Obi-Wan rolls his eyes, breaking them apart in the process. “Fine, Master Healer. But just a pinch.”
“No more,” Cody agrees, and draws back. He stands up and stays that way for a moment, swaying on his feet. Obi-Wan rises after him, puts a tentative hand on his back.
“I’m fine,” Cody tells him, looking a little dazed, his smile turning dumbfounded. “Just, uh. Feels a little like – “ He spins around once, and Obi-Wan can hardly keep himself from laughing. “Freeing, I guess. Good.”
“Good,” Obi-Wan repeats, making it to the counter first and pulling out the little box with the smallest vials and containers of bacta he has. “Don’t you become a vigorous jogger on me.”
“I’ve always been one,” Cody bites back.
“Don’t you want to sleep in the morning?”
“Don’t you? Could ask you the same question. You’re always up earlier than me.”
“Now that just isn’t true and you know it.”
They quiet down once Obi-Wan pulls one of the containers from the box. The bacta is a little aged, a thin and pale membrane forming over the top. He mixes it back in with his pinkie, careful to smooth out any inconsistencies.
Cody holds out his hand. Beckons him over with two fingers. Obi-Wan tilts his head, sighing as he hands over the bacta.
“I can do it my—”
“Trust me?” Cody looks up at him. He seems – uncertain, like he’d have no problem with it if Obi-Wan really insisted he wanted to do it himself.
But this really isn’t about him. Cody knows Obi-Wan trusts him, knows that trust didn’t falter all through the process of dismantling his chip. This is about Cody trusting himself, and Obi-Wan cannot refuse him that.
Obi-Wan smiles. Just a little. “Of course.”
How gentle are Cody’s hands, when he rubs the thin layer of bacta onto his face. Obi-Wan had forgotten. Cody hasn’t touched him without flinching back, anxious of what he could do to him, for months. Before that – years, years without him. Obi-Wan would rather die than return to that.
Cody’s featherlight touch on his face takes away all possibility that that might one day be the case.
Once it’s all done, Cody reorders the little box and puts it back himself, and Obi-Wan watches him as his eyelids grow heavier and heavier. Cody’s familiarizing himself with where things are, now that there’s no danger in him getting to it. And doesn’t that just make something bloom in Obi-Wan’s chest, as he steps forward, subconsciously, and, while Cody’s still standing and fidgeting with something by the counter, rests his chin on his shoulder.
“Hi,” he mutters. Cody smiles, putting the utensil back into the drawer and tilting his head to the side, gently bumping their temples together.
“Hello. You’re slumping.” Obi-Wan reasons that it must be true. The bacta on his face is a soothing sensation, though it’s nothing compared to Cody’s warmth so close to him. He hums a response, though he senses a flash of worry spark in the Force. “You alright?”
“Fine,” he says. The spark doesn’t diminish. “Really, Cody. You smothered me in bacta, there is no reason I wouldn’t be alright, I’m just…”
A moment of silence, a sigh.
“You’re…?”
“I am – I am so, so tired,” is his final quiet admission. Not just because of the breaking of the chip.
At first, there’s a chuckle. Then, Cody touches him like he’s made of transparisteel, gathers him up and pulls him closer, to his front.
It just so happens that they’re holding onto each other as they simultaneously decide it’s been quite enough adventure for today, stumbling back to the closest room they find.
They end up on Obi-Wan’s bed after he tugs Cody in after himself once the man shows even a hint of hesitance, and curls up close to him.
Cody smiles, pulls his head over his chest, and kisses his brow.
Obi-Wan does the only reasonable thing in the situation - he closes his eyes, listening to Cody’s heartbeat. For once, the Force hums contentedly; mostly, perhaps, because of their intertwined fingers, and Cody’s head, falling on his shoulder, and Obi-Wan gently tracing blessings into his free arm. Cody deserves this, Obi-Wan thinks; he’s been through too much. He just wishes he could’ve stayed strong for longer, he wishes he could’ve let Cody have this, wrapped up with him instead.
As if hearing his thoughts, Cody brushes his hand up to Obi-Wan’s hair, looking out, eyes darting as he – he’s shaking, Obi-Wan notices, even as he comforts him. He’s shaking.
“Cody.” Obi-Wan reaches up, brushes a hand against his face gently.
“Sorry,” Cody mutters. “I just – still can’t believe it.”
“Don’t apologize to me. It’s over, now,” Obi-Wan tells him, feeling the last slivers of strength draining out of his body because Cody is so gentle and he’s missed him so much, and – “It’s over now.”
Cody only wraps his arms tighter around Obi-Wan, resting his chin on top of his hair. After a minute or so, Obi-Wan feels a kiss being pressed into the crown of his head and smiles when he hears Cody sigh, like he’s letting out a breath he’s been holding for months.
“It’s over now,” echoes his voice, quiet and soft, like he’s smiling himself.
For the first time in quite a while, Obi-Wan falls asleep and does not dream about anything at all.
The first thing that Obi-Wan knows, when he wakes up, is warmth. It’s not unusual, considering he does live in a desert, but it’s a different sort of warmth, he recognizes, because it’s flowing from two sources – the physical warmth in the arms around him and the gentle glow of the Force. He blinks the dreams away before looking down and seeing Cody.
All his muscles lock in place and then relax instantly as he remembers. He remembers, and the arms he’s got around Cody cling to him of their own volition, dig in and hold on like he’s the last thing in a storm.
They’ve shifted in their sleep, it seems, and now Cody’s head has somehow ended up on Obi-Wan’s chest, laid just so he can hear his heartbeat. Perhaps consciously.
Cody looks peaceful again, asleep. Obi-Wan has seen this so many times before, but the difference now is that he knows that, even after those dark eyes open, nothing will change in his expression. He won’t jump at Obi-Wan, won’t try to tear himself off or grab at him. He’ll only blink away the sleep, perhaps, just like Obi-Wan did, and then he’ll remember too.
He’s here now, the Force whispers with such confidence it makes Obi-Wan giddy, makes him tug Cody even closer to himself, he held out, and he’s here now, and he’s not going anywhere.
For a moment, Obi-Wan frowns. Whether Cody stays or goes, now, is not up to him.
Cody snores, softly, and just once. And Obi-Wan realizes then that the Force isn’t making a decision for them, isn’t picking that up from him, but from Cody himself instead. He’s still tangled in the Light of him, in the overwhelming ease that flooded the moment Cody’s chip broke, because so much of what Obi-Wan remembers his Force presence to be returned to the surface, pouring back out like rain in a desert, and by the time Cody had kissed him he knew he was holding his Cody, with not a sign of the constant strain to keep himself contained because there was nothing left to contain, nothing left to protect him against.
Obi-Wan loves him. He says it often enough, and he means it every time, but he seldom stops to think about it. Even when he does, though, it only solidifies his thoughts, he loves him and he loves him, there is nothing else to say, he loves him when everything is dark and horrible around them and even when it gets between them, he loves him. Even when love wasn’t a good enough stitch, he still tried to close at least the corners of Cody’s wounds with it.
And now he has him, here, and the Force whispers to him unabashedly that Cody doesn’t want to leave, throws Cody’s happiness from yesterday back at him, and Obi-Wan will wait before asking him about it, but he’ll wait longer before that, basking in the Light that he knows subconsciously to be true.
He brushes his hand against Cody’s hair, petting here and there softly. The patches of white look – beautiful, on him, though he has far less of them than Obi-Wan does. Though, all things considered, that’s probably better than the opposite.
At his touch, Cody stirs and wakes, slowly. He keeps his eyes closed for a good while after he comes to, subconsciously leaning into the touch, but the drowsiness around him gradually dissipates with every passing moment until he bows his head away to yawn.
“Good morning,” Obi-Wan whispers. The silence feels sacred to him, almost. Strange how quickly things change.
Cody cranes his head back to look at him from underneath his eyelashes, blinking away the sleep dust. Obi-Wan basks in the familiarity of those dark eyes, light swirling like pools of honey in the sun, and smiles.
A quick and overwhelming bout of happiness washes over him unexpectedly, so full and so potent he fails to realize that isn’t his happiness at first, and then Cody’s eyes widen, and he traces the sudden joy back to him with ease.
“It’s still gone,” Cody tells him, then clears his throat. “The – You know.”
“I know,” Obi-Wan confirms, resuming the slow stroking of Cody’s hair. “It’s going to stay that way.”
“Felt too good to be true, yesterday.” It’s a fair confession. “I thought that, once you fell asleep, maybe I should bring you back to your room, go sleep here somewhere, see what happens then.” Now that isn’t quite so nice.
Obi-Wan reaches out with his other hand. Taking the hint, Cody reaches back, letting Obi-Wan wrap long fingers around his palm. “Have a little faith in me. It’s over and it’s never happening again, I can promise you that with everything I am.”
Cody’s eyes are glistening. “That feels – kriff, you have no idea how good it feels to hear that.”
Obi-Wan raises his hand, presses a gentle kiss to the bruised knuckles, and says nothing. He knows.
Cody looks at him and says, suddenly, “You know I’m not going anywhere, right?”
And Obi-Wan laughs, because he knows that, too. Can’t believe it, perhaps, still thinks Cody would see so many more joys in life if he saw what it had to offer himself, but all that and knowing are two different things. “I do,” he admits.
“Not unless you want me to,” he adds quickly, like it’s Obi-Wan that would be better off making the choice, and Obi-Wan feels a chill crawling up his spine.
Force, has he made him think that it’s Obi-Wan who’d prefer life without him?
“Cody,” he says after a moment, and presses closer. He scoots down so they're around the same level and wastes no time in burying his face in Cody’s neck, breathing him in. "I know what I’ve said, I know what it must’ve sounded like, so let me tell you this. There are not enough words in all the languages I can speak that could feasibly be enough to explain how much I do not want you to leave. If I was a more selfish man than I already am, I would physically glue myself to your hip. Regardless of how needlessly difficult that would make housework.”
Cody laughs into his hair. It’s such a lovely noise. Obi-Wan squeezes his eyes shut and latches onto his shoulders, feeling arms wrap around him again. “Good,” he hears a voice above him, coloured by a smile for the first time in what feels like forever. “Point taken. I won’t leave.”
Obi-Wan nods, as well as he can in this position and just gives them both a minute to – stay. Together, finally, not just in the same room, but together, in the same bed, sharing breath, sharing warmth. He hears Cody’s heart beating without putting a hand on his chest, he feels the familiar steadiness slowly flooding back into the Force, he feels calm, quiet, and he knows that Cody feels the same because there wouldn’t be half of this feeling without him.
“We should,” he says, after what feels like forever and it better be that way, because somewhere Obi-Wan wishes for this never to end, “We should get up. We’ve still got – “
“No,” comes an answer.
He cracks a smile. “No?”
“I’m staying here, I think,” Cody mutters, sliding down and nuzzling his face into Obi-Wan’s tunics insistently. “Probably forever. Yeah.”
Obi-Wan tries his best not to laugh. He is unsuccessful. Cody stills to listen to the joyous sound. “Without breakfast, love? Hardly a pleasant existence.”
“Don’t need breakfast. I have you.”
“Make something clear for me.” Obi-Wan hums, bowing his head to press a kiss somewhere into his hair. “Do you mean that in the traditional sense of sustaining yourself on love alone or are you implying you intend to cannibalize me? Because I’m getting mixed signals here.”
Cody raises his head. He looks groggy, but that, with the sight of him glaring at Obi-Wan with an offended frown, makes for such an adorable image. “You must ruin every moment, don’t you?”
Obi-Wan simply can’t help it and laughs again. Cody groans, falling back on him and leaving him with no other option than letting out a melodramatic ‘oomph’.
“Well.” Obi-Wan turns his head to the side. Sure, most days they used to be up before dawn, but the sunrise is so beautiful from the inside as well, and Cody’s here, in his arms, looking up at him with those pretty dark eyes, and he can think of so many things to talk about, so many ways to spend the time. “Perhaps we can stay a little longer. But only a little.”
Cody snorts, ever the skeptic. “Sure, love.”
“I’m very serious.”
“Sure, love.”
He chuckles and lets it go.
It will take them time, a lot of it, to stop measuring distances between each other, counting, in their heads, the seconds it would take to get away from each other. It will take reassurances and words and days when nothing seems right, and the Force whispers to him of Cody’s hands digging into his forearms, of quiet pleas, Check again – I know, I know, it’s nothing, but Obi-Wan, please check again, and them pushing each other away when they wake, on instinct, and while he knows that, in the end, ultimately, they will be okay, they aren’t out of the woods yet.
But Obi-Wan doesn’t have to think about that, right now, and Cody looks as peaceful as he’s always wanted him to look. Always wished for only that.
The morning is long, on Tatooine.
And they, Obi-Wan reminds himself, intertwining their fingers, have thousands of more to go.