Chapter Text
Cody shows up to the morning meeting holding a goose.
It takes a moment to register what it is; he’s clutching the bundle so tightly it’s entirely obscured, like a tripped landmine he’s trying to keep inert. Then it rears its ugly head and lets out an unholy scream, and before anybody can do more than identify it as “bird?” it’s launched itself at the holotable. If Rex hadn’t ducked in time, it might have decapitated him. Of course, while everyone else is trying not to panic and get a fix on the thing, General Skywalker turns to face it—“Hey, buddy!”—and opens his arms wide.
Rex looks reflexively at General Kenobi, who is watching Skywalker croon at the bird with a shattered-glass expression that makes Rex feel like he’s seen inside him, which, no thank you; he turns away from that horror show to catch the breathless look Skywalker sends Cody’s way, eyes shining with hope, only for Cody to say, inflected with such thorough disgust it would make a lesser man flinch, “Absolutely the fuck not.”
And then it clicks: soulmate goose.
It seems to have registered for everyone around the table, nat-born and clone alike, and they’re coming out of the bird-induced shock to start whispering among themselves.
Rex has heard of soulmate geese, of course. There was the pre-deployment module on Kamino, and he’s seen some of the nat-born officers hustling after their goose down a hallway, waiting to see who was on the other end. Once, it turned out they were already married to each other, which had been sweet. But as far as he knows, Cody is the first clone to get a goose.
Skywalker is clutching the bird to his chest like it holds state secrets. Cody looks like he’s ready to commit treason.
“We really should go over the schedule,” Kenobi says after some ineffectual throat-clearing, and Cody snaps to attention in a parade rest that manages to be both defensive and defiant.
It’s an odd feeling in Rex’s chest, watching him stand at rapt attention as Kenobi does his valiant best to brief them, standing so straight and still he’d put a shiny to shame. Cody’s clearly decided on a course of action and is, in his excruciatingly bloody-minded way, determined to pursue it to its logical and strategic ends at any cost. The goose could squawk all it wanted, and Skywalker could keep gazing at him beseechingly til the stars died out. He’d stay eyes front, back straight, feet a shoulder’s width apart.
Rex does his best to pay attention; he really does. They’re on base for mandatory resupply and maintenance. On the plus side, it means a rare break from the endless battle-hopping, but it also means the briefings aren’t exactly what he’d call mission-critical. Focusing would have been a challenge even without the giant bird rustling in Skywalker’s arms, and the whole holotable is trying to do their best impression of people who give a shit about fire safety protocol.
Kenobi stops halfway through the readouts and sighs. “Dismissed,” he says, and Rex wishes he could find it in himself to feel even a little badly about it. But even if life is incidental to a soldier, it keeps happening at the same pace as war; that is to say, every day. There will be other boring briefings. The goose is a much more pressing matter.
Everybody dawdles in the shuffle to gather their things and check their comms, trying and utterly failing not to cast nosy glances back at Cody and Skywalker. But eventually, only Rex and Kenobi have an excuse to hang back. “All right, General Kenobi?”
“What? Oh, yes. If anyone is up to the task of—er—wooing Cody, it’s Anakin, I suppose.”
They look over to where Cody and Skywalker are engaged in a ferocious tug-of-war over the goose. Skywalker seems to have clasped Cody’s hands over his death grip on the bird, and Rex can practically smell the yearning as his general makes aggressively optimistic eye contact.
Cody doesn’t break his glare. He’s always been braver than Rex. “Skywalker,” he says. “Don’t make me take your other hand.”
Rex turns back to Kenobi. “You want to put credits on that, sir?”
“The Force works in mysterious ways,” Kenobi says, much too cheerful, and gives Rex a side hug, something he has never done before in his life.
Everyone is being extremely normal about this.
Skywalker lets go. Cody practically sprints out of the room with his goose—it’s hard to tell which one is bristling more indignantly—leaving Rex to catch Skywalker at the door. He’s looking at Rex speculatively, and he gets a bad feeling as they walk out into the corridor.
“Say, Rex,” Skywalker says, in a pseudo-casual tone that’s only ever brought Rex misery and pain. “You’re pretty close with Cody, right?”
He doesn’t know how to answer that. Close. Physically? Frequently, and at length. But what Skywalker wants is—is wooing intel, and Rex can’t help him there. He doesn’t know anybody more woo-resistant than Cody; in fact, he doesn’t quite rightly know what persuaded Cody to enter into their arrangement, although he supposes that it has to end now. He knows what happened (parking lot; whiskey), but the mechanics of it: what gears turned or jammed to keep it going long after the honeyed streetlight faded and they were back on campaign. Even if he knew how to help Skywalker, would he? There’s an uneasiness slithering in the pit of his stomach, and he shoves it away. He’s not delusional, he knows—he wouldn’t—
“Sure,” he says.
“I’m sure it’s a lot to deal with,” Skywalker says, punching the buttons for the lift. “Being the first one with a goose and all.”
“Mm.”
“Like, you didn’t grow up hearing stories about it, right?”
“We got a pamphlet.”
Skywalker makes a disagreeable noise and frowns. “Pamphlet.”
“Yes, sir. It was part of our last module before deployment.” Not that anybody paid attention. Rex knows for a fact that Fives slept through enough of it that he’d had a panic attack the first time he saw a pregnant woman.
“Module.”
“Sir, we’ve discussed this. Repeating words isn’t actually a question.”
“I guess…when I was with”—Skywalker flashes a darting, furtive glance, which Rex knows for a fact he thinks is subtle—“Padmé, we didn’t have a goose, but we thought it was just a matter of time, you know? That maybe the war needed to be over so we could focus on each other.”
Rex can’t help himself. “You were plenty focused, sir.”
“But then when we, you know. Ended things…”
Yes, Rex knows. Worst deployment of his life. The equipment damage had been extensive, expensive, and erratic. He’d had to look up how to requisition a urinal.
Skywalker shrugs. “I just—I thought that was it for me, you know?”
To be fair, he’s a little curious about that one. Rex, for his part, has never been so overcome with sadness while pissing that he had to engage in property damage.
“But I guess—this is a second chance.”
And the flooding. He’d wanted to apologise to every taxpayer they met for six months after.
“I don’t want to mess it up again.”
Well, kriff.
Skywalker’s voice is earnest and brave, and it holds within it a universe of hope and hurt. Amidala ending their relationship had split him to the bone, and he’d seamed himself together and was willing to try again. This is why, despite it all, he’d kept Skywalker’s secret, kept his mouth shut and filled out endless requisition forms, despite Cody’s repeated insistence that he let medical examine him for Force-induced brain damage.
“You won’t, sir,” he says. If Rex were a total sadist, he’d suggest asking Fox or Bly or one of Cody’s other batchmates for help, but he doubts even the Sith would be that cruel. “But I don’t know how much help I’ll be.”
“You and Cody hang out all the time,” Skywalker wheedles. “You have to know his favourite—”
His face burns. If Skywalker is about to ask what Cody likes in bed, Rex is pitching himself out of the airlock headfirst.
“—snacks, or something.”
“…Snacks.”
“Yeah! Something special.”
Rex blinks. He doesn’t know if he’s ever seen Cody eat anything other than rations. “General Kenobi might be more help, sir.”
“Oh, good call,” he says approvingly, like Rex is some kind of tactical genius. He claps Rex on the shoulder and steps out of the lift. “We should probably tell the boys what’s going on, you know. Just let them know nothing’s gonna change.”
“I suppose I’ll be in charge of that briefing, sir?”
“Probably for the best,” Skywalker says. “Seeing as you’re detached from it all.”
Yes. Detached. Rex resists the urge to lie facedown in the corridor and heads to the officer barracks to prep.
Rex doesn’t know what he’d expected exactly, but this was worse. He’d known the Gossip Army of the Republic couldn’t keep its trap shut worth a damn, so a briefing seemed like a good idea to set the record straight and answer any possible questions.
Apparently, he’d vastly underestimated his brothers’ imaginations and appetite for holodramas. He’d brought his troops to the hangar housing the Resolute because it’s the only place other than the base mess they’ll all fit, and he’s not doing this anywhere Cody might be.
“Right,” he says. “So I’m sure you’ve heard what happened this morning, and—”
“Is it true they’re married now, sir?”
“What—”
“I heard that nat-borns treat getting goosed like marriage.”
“Don’t be stupid. Why would a goose—”
“I heard you have to kiss for it to go away.”
“Well, I heard you have to fuck in front of it for it to go away.”
“That’s banthashit, and you know it—”
Rex might be losing the room. “Quiet,” he barks. “Chat in your own time. There are two key points to this briefing, and they’ll all be based in fact, not—rampant innuendo. First: Marshal Commander Cody received what appears to be a soulmate goose this morning, and it has indicated that General Skywalker is his soulmate.”
Someone lets out a dreamy sigh. If there are gods, they’ve abandoned him.
“Second: I will not tolerate public speculation about the specifics of the situation nor the nature of their relationship, romantic, sexual or otherwise. This is new territory for all of us, but that’s no call for disrespect. General Skywalker has assured me”—banthashit, Captain, he hears in Cody’s voice—“that nothing will change. And they deserve their privacy as much as anyone. Understood?”
“Yessir.”
“And if you want accurate information on soulmate geese, there’s a leaflet included with your deployment packet.”
“Sir, nobody keeps those,” somebody calls from the back.
“…I will see that leaflets are made available. All right?”
“Yessir.”
“Dismissed.”
It’s only 0930. He needs a drink and a nap, but a group of troopers is hovering by him with all the delicate grace of a nerf stampede. “What can I do for you boys?”
“I’m so sorry, Captain,” Echo says. “This must be really difficult for you.”
He frowns. “The briefing? Seemed like it went all right.”
“No,” Fives says, shouldering his way into their little huddle. “The whole thing? Y’know, sir.” He flaps his arms in such an aggressively stupid way that Rex regrets there isn’t a recording. “The goose!”
“It’s been an…unusual day,” he concedes. “I’m sure it’s been trying for everyone.” He wants to get on with it and ask what exactly the fuck they’re on about, but they’re still on shift, and he’s trying to set an example. Fat lot of good it’s done them. “Why do—”
“Because you—”
“Because you and the Commander are so close,” Echo says, too loud, pinching Fives in the vulnerable gap in the armour up by his armpit. Subtle.
“Seems like you like him, sir,” Fives says, pinching Echo viciously in return. “Like, a lot.”
Finest troops the galaxy has ever seen. He’d laugh, but Dogma looks so earnestly worried that the impulse feels unkind. “…Sure, I like him. Same as everyone else.”
He may as well have said it in Wookiee for all it helped. Now they all look a little worried, and Fives is exhibiting something like pity, exponentially raising the banthashit quotient attached to this entire conversation. “I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”
“Sir,” Echo says, and he’s right to sound careful; this feels increasingly like a hostage situation. “Everybody respects Commander Cody very much. But—”
“Nobody actually—”
“—We don’t know him well enough to like him.”
“What’re you, running for Senate,” Fives scoffs, and privately, Rex agrees. They’ve already marched directly into a minefield. At this hellish juncture, diplomacy is, at best, a frivolous accessory. “What he’s saying is—”
“Commander’s a bit of a bastard, sir,” Kix offers from the edge of the circle. “‘Bastard,’ of course, being a morally neutral term that doesn’t reflect one way or another on people who are into that sort of thing.”
Dread flexes its sticky fingers in his stomach. “What do you—into—”
“Plus,” Fives says, “you’ve been fucking like tookas for months.”
Rex lets them all pickle in the following silence, long enough to cultivate some real anxiety, and then a little longer. Then he looks them each in the eye. “You are all,” he says, “extremely fucking dismissed.”
They salute and scuttle out of the hangar.
He thinks about sitting on the floor behind the empty rations crates and just—taking ten minutes. Ten minutes where nobody is going to interrogate him about Cody’s snack preferences, or ask vague and leading questions about how he’s doing, or generally be weird at him about the goose. He’d been nothing but a spectator, standing on Skywalker’s other side. Why anybody expected him to know anything special about it is a total mystery, and aggravating besides.
His datapad chirps. He gives the dark patch of floor behind the crates a last, wistful look before he checks the message.
From: CMC CC-2224
Re: Req. Issue - Z-6 coolant canisters
Captain Rex,
In a devastating blow to GAR firepower, we seem to have misplaced a box of Z-6 coolant canisters. We have a box of canisters without cooling cells; you should have a box of cooling cells without the canisters. Please locate and bring the box to the Negotiator for exchange at your earliest convenience. The freedom of the Republic depends on you, and so on.
Regards,
Cmdr. Cody
PS: The box is probably just mislabeled. I trust you can find appropriate personnel for this vital task.
He closes the message. Somehow, out of everyone, Cody is the one being the most normal about his goose, and that’s just typical, and—fine, so Rex is smiling; fine, so Cody is kind of a bastard; fine, so he’s “into it,” whatever that means—the sharp and angular edge of his personality. It’s perceptive and it’s mean and it’s so, so certain. Rife with preferences and judgments, a fierce insistence that it matters; that they all matter.
It’s also very funny. Who wouldn’t like that?
He bites his lip and responds to let Cody know he’s on it. Then he comms Echo and Fives. He has an important mission for them.