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The day after the Clone Rights Bill was signed into law, Cody got out his earrings for the first time since the war began. As soon as word got out that Obi-Wan had arrived, that the fighting would begin any day now, Cody and all the other Vode like him had put away anything that would give them away. They’d physically tucked away any and all markers and mentally tucked away any hint that some of them were different.
Cody had known since he was a cadet that there were others like him and that they would have to effectively disappear during the war. He just hadn’t anticipated how hard it would be.
His hands shook as he pulled out the small box from where he’d hidden it in the back of his desk drawer. Just a tenday ago, Alpha had come to Coruscant so he could be present when the Bill was signed, and he’d wordlessly pressed the box into Cody’s hand when they’d had a moment alone. He hadn’t opened it until today.
Sitting in the box were three pairs of earrings: one blue, one purple, and one pink. He looked at them, confirmed his current thought pattern, and took out the blue ones. He put them both in and could feel himself relax immediately. He thought about putting the others in his pocket just in case, but ultimately left them on his desk.
After so long as “he,” it would probably take a while until anything else felt safe.
He put it out of his mind and stepped out his door. Since the war had ended, many of the Vode had signed on officially with the Jedi and had been provided appropriate housing. The Temple had emptied over the last several decades, and no more so than recently, so there was plenty of room. Cody had an apartment pretty high up, only a few levels down from the main entrance. He was just high enough to see the artificial sunlight from outside instead of relying on portable generators from the Jedi.
He walked the few levels of stairs up until he hit that main level, thinking he’d go to the commissary there for firstmeal. He was halfway across the entry hall when he saw a sister for the first time in years.
He stopped in his tracks, and she did the same. He took in her makeup and jewelry, all familiar from their childhoods. What was different though were her clothes. She must have been stocking up because her dress was definitely natborn-made. It was a silky looking fabric that wrapped around her stomach and draped gracefully down to her knees. He met her eyes, and saw beskar just barely hiding nerves.
“What’s your name, sister?” he asked softly.
Her eyes flicked to his earrings, and she relaxed. “Star. What’s your name, brother?”
“Cody,” he replied. He offered his arm, and she gripped his forearm.
“It’s nice to meet you, Cody,” she said quietly.
“And you, Star,” he said. He squeezed once and let go. “I have a meeting, but I’ll see you around?”
“Yes, brother, I’ll definitely be around.” She smiled once more and walked past him.
He reached up and touched one earring, took a deep breath, and continued on his own way.
A few days later, Obi-Wan commented on it.
“It’s been so nice to see some of the Vode trying new things in the wake of the Bill being signed,” he said quietly to Cody, a smile on his face and his eyes on a sister and a vod walking together down the hall.
For just a second, Cody froze. They’d hidden for so long that it was instinct to deny, to distract. But instead he touched one earring and took a deep breath.
“Some new things, sir, and some not so new,” he said quietly.
Obi-Wan snorted and turned to face Cody even as they kept walking. “I’ve told you, Cody: the war’s over, there’s no excuse at all to keep calling me ‘sir.’”
He grinned a mean little grin. “Yes, sir,” he replied smartly.
Obi-Wan sighed, then apparently gave up for now. Instead, he said, “Speaking of, though, I’ve been meaning to tell you that I like your earrings. Do you know, I never even noticed you had them pierced before this week?”
Cody again didn’t know what to say for a never-ending second. “I got them pierced when I was three,” he finally said, not wanting the silence to linger even longer and enter “suspicious” territory.
“Well goodness, I definitely should have noticed then, if they were pierced the entire time I’ve known you!”
Then Obi-Wan just turned back forward, changing the subject to their next meeting.
And Cody realized Obi-Wan would never ask on his own. He’d told them all several times before that he was not entitled to any information about them and their culture they did not want to share, and his behavior had shown how strong that belief is. He would look at a question about Cody’s earrings or the Vode’s “new” style choices as unforgivably intrusive.
It was on the tip of Cody’s tongue to tell him, but something made him stop. He wanted to call it fear, but he knew intellectually that Obi-Wan would be understanding, supportive.
But what other word could describe this heart-pounding feeling?
A few tendays later, Cody put on their purple earrings. They paired them with a Vode-made hair product to loosen their curls until they were individually defined.
They spent the entire day with Obi-Wan, just as they usually did. They saw his eyes flick to the earrings several times, to their different hairstyle, but he did not ask.
And they did not offer.
That day opened the door just a crack, and Cody had just as many “they” days as “he” days after.
They met more sisters and vode, worked all day most days with Obi-Wan, and finally met up with all of Haran Squad at 79’s one night. Bly, being the responsible one, had booked them a private booth in the loft area so they could actually talk but also look down on the main bar and dance floor.
When Cody finally pulled themself away from work, they were almost the last one there. Only Fox and Ponds had yet to arrive, and they were just as bad workaholics as Cody was, so they weren’t surprised. Wolffe and Rex were quietly chatting, lumping themselves together like the token nu’ame their Squad joked they were.
Cody slid in next to Bly, glad to see her looking like the sister they’d grown up with. She was wearing a Vode-made necklace, wires intricately twisted in swirling loops, and bright pink makeup on her eyelids and lips. Like most of their sisters had started to, she was wearing a natborn-made dress, this one in Three-Twenty-Seventh yellow.
And she was smiling just as bright as her dress.
“Cody!” she called, throwing an arm around their shoulders. She pulled them in and looked at them the same way they just looked at her. “It’s good to see you,” she said, eyes soft, and Cody knew what she meant.
A hand landed on their head from behind and mussed up their curls. “Absolutely agreed!” Ponds said even as Cody ducked away from kaysh hand. “Was starting to think we’d never see these curls again!”
Kaysh slid forcefully into the other side of the booth, knocking into Wolffe and Rex. As Wolffe turned around to snap at kaysh, Cody turned to greet their big sister.
“Hey Fox,” they said.
She nodded shortly to them. “Cody,” she said, sitting down next to them and immediately putting her head in her arms.
Cody reached out and stroked her long hair, recognizing an incoming headache when they saw one. She had her hair loose tonight, which made their task easier.
“What is it now?” they asked as softly as the bar’s music allowed.
She turned her head enough to glare one Corrie red-lined eye at them. “What isn’t it?” she asked, then she went back to fully facedown.
“Hey Fox!” Wolffe shouted because he had no concept of self-preservation when it came to his siblings. “I heard through the rank and file you’re fucking Vos?!”
Cody stopped their petting and stared, joined by the rest of their siblings.
Fox attempted to ignore her little brother, but the rest of them could be patient when it really mattered. Finally, she lifted her face fully out of her arms, glower already in place, and grunted, “Yeah.” Then her head fell down again.
Ponds and Rex abruptly lost their damn minds, shouting about Vos’s attitude and Fox’s virtue respectively. Wolffe’s mouth just dropped open, like he couldn’t believe she’d admitted it. But Bly asked the question Cody hadn’t realized they cared about until that moment.
“Does he know you’re a woman?”
Just like that, they all shut down again, waiting on Fox’s response. She grumbled something into her arms they couldn’t understand, so Cody did their due diligence as the nearest vod and leaned over to get the intel. They blinked twice at what they heard and sat up.
“She says he knows, and that he knew already . Or at least suspected,” they report, a little dazed from the implications.
It was Ponds’s turn to drop kaysh mouth open, looking as flabbergasted as Cody felt. Wolffe and Rex looked a little surprised, but they couldn’t really understand the way the rest of them did. And it was Bly, once again, who unknowingly gave the reaction Cody needed.
“If he knew,” she began slowly, “then how many of them already do without us saying anything?”
Suddenly, desperately , Cody needed to know the answer.
That question was the only thing on Cody’s mind for the next few days. Every time he passed a Jedi in the hall, he wondered if they knew. Every meeting that had at least one each of both sisters and Jedi, he asked himself if the Jedi suspected.
And every second he spent with Obi-Wan, he debated simply asking the man if he was aware that Cody was am’yc.
Yet every time Cody opened his mouth to do so, that same choking terror stopped him. If Obi-Wan does know, then will he take Cody’s confirmation as permission to tell other people? Or in using Cody’s proper pronouns with him, will Obi-Wan accidentally use those pronouns when talking to others to refer to Cody, inadvertently telling those people about him?
If Obi-Wan doesn’t know, will he look at Cody differently? Will he defy everything Cody has learned of him and scorn Cody, reject him directly because he revealed his truest self?
And yet, it stung when Cody had a “they” day and Obi-Wan referred to them as “he.” Either answer to the question would make that stop, either with Obi-Wan using the correct pronouns or their interactions ending by one of their deliberate choice.
But he had to ask the question first.
Another few tendays passed by, and Cody was still wrestling with the karking question. He was no closer to a decision when Obi-Wan invited him to a Knighting Ceremony. He’d never seen one, so he agreed to go.
Then, the craziest thing happened.
“The Council has had an eye on them since before the war’s end, and we think they are very close to mastering Ataru despite still being a Padawan!”
Cody mentally paused and replayed what he just heard.
“Cody, are you listening?”
He blinked and tuned back into the present.
“Yes sir, sorry sir,” he said automatically. Before Obi-Wan could make his customary protest to the honorific, Cody kept talking. “Did you say what species Padawan Buffan is?”
Obi-Wan thought for a moment. “I don’t think I had, but they are near-human. Why?”
They .
He could ask the question. He could tell Obi-Wan he was am’yc. Obi-Wan just implied that having nonbinary pronouns was entirely normal for humans and near-humans. Obi-Wan would support Cody if he told him.
He should tell him. Right now. Tell him. Tell him. Tell him. Tell him .
Cody cleared his throat.
He hesitated for too long.
His courage was gone.
“Just wondering what type of gift to get them. I’ve heard it’s the thing to do for occasions like this when a youngling reaches adulthood,” he said, inwardly cursing himself for being a coward.
Either Obi-Wan didn’t notice his long pause or chose to ignore it because he simply went on to explain that gifts were unnecessary for a Knighting. And all through the impromptu lecture on what exactly happens during that Ceremony, Cody could barely hear any of it over the inner echoing refrain of self-loathing.
Then it happened again.
And again.
And again .
And each time, Cody’s mouth stayed silent and his mind screamed.
At this point, months had passed since the Bill was signed. Clones’ lives were improving everywhere. Jedi and Vode were living and working together in peace. Sisters and vode were finally able to be themselves.
And Cody was losing their mind.
They couldn’t go on like this. Every time a seemingly perfect moment came in which to tell Obi-Wan they were am’yc, they just couldn’t . And yet they felt if they kept it inside much longer, they would implode.
Their thoughts went around in circles, wondering about the question and how to ask and if it was even necessary to ask and what would happen if they didn’t ask and around and around and around.
Finally, they remembered a bit of advice Alpha had given them way back on Kamino. It had been so long ago that Cody hadn’t even recognized their true self yet.
Alpha had taken one look at them and solved most of their problems with one sentence. “You need to get out of your head, utreekov’ika,” he said.
Over time, Cody had learned different ways to apply that advice, but there was one that almost always worked: writing. It was incredibly old-fashioned, of course, but getting their thoughts recorded on something that wasn’t the overworked neurons in their head really helped to settle their emotions.
So one night, Cody got out a padd and wrote. They wrote that they were am’yc, what that meant in their life, how vode like them expressed themselves. They wrote about the struggle they’d been through for almost a year now, of trying to remember how to be themself to the fullest. They wrote that they still hadn’t had a “she” day since before the war.
Then, before they could overthink it, they coded it with a basic encryption and sent it to Obi-Wan.
Somehow, they fell asleep soon after.
Cody met Obi-Wan in the entry hall that morning as they both headed for the commissary. As soon as they saw him, they slowed down, abruptly terrified at what reaction they might receive. But the letter had been sent, so there was nothing to do now but face whatever happened next.
And in some deep part of them that they’d almost forgotten, despite what they’d been telling themself for months, Cody was not a coward.
They straightened their shoulders and strode forward, acting as though they didn’t pause at all. They even walked just that much heavier so their steps echoed in the nearly empty hall, so their approach could not be ignored.
They would not be ignored.
But it was unneeded, for Obi-Wan was already looking at them. They watched his eyes flick to their earrings in an oh so familiar gesture. Then, they moved to meet his own eyes.
And Obi-Wan smiled at them.
“You know, I was just thinking, ‘I have something important to discuss with Cody, so I hope I see them this morning,’” the Negotiator said.
Cody raised one eyebrow. “Oh? And what was that, sir?”
Obi-Wan laughed. “That we really should skip this boring meeting and head to Dex’s for some flatcakes instead. What do you say, my good vod?”
Cody laughed too, just a step under hysterical with the force of their relief. Obi-Wan waited patiently for them to finish, an even gentler smile on his face.
They straightened, feeling their lips stretch with the biggest grin they could remember. “I could go for some flatcakes, sir.”
And they followed their friend out into the ever-changing galaxy.