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Anaxes was unrelenting, undoubtedly one of the most trying campaigns Obi-Wan had been through so far. It compared only to Umbara in length and loss, drawing out until every minute spent standing instead of collapsed from exhaustion was a miracle unto itself. As another restless night mostly spent poring over datapads and diagrams of the previous battles neared its end, Obi-Wan found himself dearly hoping that Cody and Rex’s stealth mission at the Cyber Center was successful.
Their brief absence was certainly already taking its toll. He could feel it as he made his way to the corner of the base they were using as a briefing room: the deep fatigue in his bones from overseeing three battalions without their steadfast help, and that strange feeling at the back of his mind like an itch he couldn’t shake, a constant need to check over his shoulder for a presence that should be there. Though he was still away on Jedi missions just as often as not, he had grown very reliant on the two of them during actual campaigns when the front was all any of them would see for weeks or months on end.
He sighed as he looked up, squinting when the hard blue light that hadn’t been turned off in over ten rotations hit his eyes. Boil was already – still? – on the repurposed hangar platform, leaning over one of the consoles with most of his armor on. His shoulders were drawn tightly and his head hung low, exhaustion clinging to his presence like a dark miasma.
His hands were shaking slightly, Obi-Wan noticed – and the caf machine they had managed to scrounge up from one of the starships and installed out of necessity after a mere three rotations looked completely empty. He had bags under his eyes, too.
“Sir,” Boil greeted wearily, barely looking up. He was studying a holomap of the next planned engagement, going over yesterday’s plan no doubt.
“Captain,” Obi-Wan greeted in return. He eyed the stained disposable cup tipped over on the small counter. Turning back to Boil, he gave him a halfhearted disapproving look. “Did you get any sleep?”
“About as much as you,” Boil snipped back, the twitch of his eyebrows suggesting he was barely suppressing an eyeroll.
His tone was just shy of insubordinate, but Obi-Wan let it slide. Then his gaze fell on the hypospray forgotten on the console, distorting the holomap where physical matter and blue light intersected.
“Is that—” Obi-Wan trailed off incredulously. “Captain! Is that a stim shot?”
Boil soundly ignored him, typing something on the screen he was leaning over. Obi-Wan snatched the empty hypo with the Force, shaking his head.
“You can’t mix those with caf,” he lectured, because he had to.
Unfortunately, what authority he might once have had that gave him control over his troops’ unhealthy habits was long gone, swept away by the war’s relentlessness, his own hypocrisy, and their impossibly strong sense of duty.
Throwing the hypo in the trash-compactor next to the caf machine, he grabbed the empty cup as well and threw it in next.
Boil didn’t move an inch, but his presence in the Force shifted, drawing inward. Obi-Wan immediately walked to him, worried. His captain was brimming with tension, so highly strung Obi-Wan had to blink to dispel an image of him physically lashing out when he inevitably snapped.
“Alright, no more of that,” he said softly, very gently resting a hand on the captain’s shoulder. Boil froze. “Get some rest,” Obi-Wan pressed, “or I’m having Nexu lead Ghost Company.”
Boil deflated ever so slightly, but his eyes did not leave the hovering landscape.
“You can’t do that,” he said, his voice dull. He wasn’t even trying to argue – just stating tired, cruel facts. “Akk Company can’t handle the rear alone, Punch needs Nexu.”
“You need some rest,” Obi-Wan sighed.
“We need more men,” Boil shot back, shrugging Obi-Wan’s hand off.
Then he tensed again, finally giving Obi-Wan a quick side look, bloodshot and vaguely guilty.
“It’s quite alright,” Obi-Wan soothed, moving to shut off the console.
He’d likely be turning it on again in just a few minutes, but it did shake Boil out of his frozen state. He rubbed his eyes with a heavy breath.
“Sorry, General,” the captain muttered. “It’s just one giant mess of a campaign.”
And it was, wasn’t it? They were constantly being overrun and cornered, facing not just superior (and ever increasing) numbers but data leaks and compromised intel, Rex’s brilliant strategy skills turned against them.
There was a discarded datapad on the smaller console near the edge of the platform. Obi-Wan called it to him and powered it on. It was the list of casualties, which had already significantly expanded since he’d checked it on his own pad not two hours ago. It was a long list of numbers, with far too many blanks in the column allotted to names.
Grief stabbed at Obi-Wan’s heart, painful as a lightsaber blade from a crystal made of sorrow and regret. It wasn’t just his pain, but the cumulative weight of his troops’ anguish as well. He put the pad down and stared at Boil long enough that the captain caved in and returned his gaze.
“Go rest, Captain,” Obi-Wan ordered firmly. Nothing else would help, at this point. “There’s a few hours before we head back to the front lines.”
Boil gave a little nod and walked away like the Galaxy hung from his shoulders. In a certain way, it really did – on all of theirs. Ordinarily, Obi-Wan would have sent one of the lieutenants after him or asked Cody to repeat the order, as Boil would be less likely to disobey them both. Only there wasn’t anyone to spare, and Cody wasn’t here. Obi-Wan found himself missing Waxer dearly. He let the feeling go before he could wallow in memories he had neither the time nor the energy to contend with.
Turning the console back on, he went to study his own maps and battle plans, eyes burning.
Mace found him there, stroking his beard, deep in thought and ignoring various blinking lights from the different screens.
“Skywalker is still holding the west flank,” he called as a greeting. “We’re clear to advance on the ridge, like we planned.”
“It probably won’t work,” Obi-Wan replied absently. He didn’t elaborate.
Mace could feel him drawing the Force in, looking for something deep within its currents. It was like waking meditation, so he let him be and made his way to the caf machine.
It was empty.
He threw Obi-Wan a suspicious look. It didn’t seem right – Obi-Wan was wearing slightly cleaner tunics than yesterday, and he didn’t feel that exhausted in the Force. Unsurprisingly, his staring was immediately noticed. Obi-Wan flicked a tired look in his direction and gave a jerking nod towards the machine.
“One of my captains drank that,” he said with a wince. “I’m going over his notes for today’s battle. We underestimated the losses of these last three rotations. As it is, we’d need two more companies to make it work.”
Mace shook his head. They didn’t have those. He turned away from the machine. The caf it made was a vile sludge anyway.
“You dismissed him?” he asked with a sigh, walking up to Obi-Wan and bracing himself against the console next to him.
Another nod. Obi-Wan was still rubbing his beard self-consciously.
“I think we might be able to make the old strategy work if the two of us go in first and clear the way, but then we won’t be able to reinforce the left flank like we planned,” he said at last.
“That will lead to heavy casualties for the companies we put there,” Mace remarked, though it wasn’t needed.
Obi-Wan shook his head. As always, the only way forward was unacceptable. They could always try splitting up, but the one leading the assault would have his work cut out for him trying to protect the troops there on his own. No matter what they decided, they were sacrificing men, and that never got any easier.
Opening up to the vastness of the Force, Mace grounded himself in the present moment – the feeling of his boots on the ground, the harsh blue light bouncing on the walls, his and Obi-Wan’s kybers at their sides – and after a few moments it helped wash away the bitter taste in his mouth.
Just then, Obi-Wan’s com gave a beep, and the both of them tensed up from battle-honed instincts and anticipation.
“General Kenobi?”
“What is it?”
“It’s Captain Nova, sir. Calling you to report that the away team has requested a medevac. Apparently they were shot down on their way to the Cyber Center and Commander Cody was injured in the crash.”
Obi-Wan’s jaw clicked.
“How severely injured?”
“Couldn’t tell you, sir, I’m sorry. We dispatched a ship, it should be back here in half a rotation.”
“Very well,” Obi-Wan answered in clipped words, “thank you for informing me.”
He ended the transmission and remained where he was, stone-faced. This didn’t feel quite like self-control, more like carefully contained shock. Mace frowned, and the Force rippled in response.
One, two, three.
Obi-Wan started, jolted awake from his daze, and the now rapidly rising waves of grief and fear were immediately smoothed over by the discipline and practiced serenity of a true Jedi Master. What remained was hard-earned steadiness. He looked at Mace with old eyes, closed them for a moment, and then nodded.
“Let’s go,” he said, quiet and determined.
Mace gave him a sympathetic look, and Obi-Wan responded with the barest of grateful nods.
All they could ever do was their duty.
The engagement lasted well over ten hours, and by the time the cleaning-up finished Obi-Wan was desperate to make it back to base. Huddled in one of his remaining gunships with Boil, Punch, Nexu and some of their rather dusty shinies, he prayed for just a few hours of quiet so he’d get a chance to slip into the medbay.
He had gotten a message saying that Cody was no longer critical, which had come as both an immense relief and a punch to the gut from the implication that he had been at some point. He’d relayed this to his captains, much to their own relief, but he had yet to see for himself. Unfortunately, the likelihood that he’d get pulled into a meeting within moments of arriving and that the next battle would come before he had managed to check on his commander was very high.
He let himself sag further against the wall, too tired to care about appearances.
“Doing okay, General?” Punch asked, the particular tilt of his helmet plainly broadcasting concern.
Obi-Wan smiled in reassurance, even as it pulled at the tightly drawn muscles of his face, and he patted the lieutenant’s arm briefly.
“Just fine, don’t worry.”
Punch was still a very young lieutenant, and far better behaved than the older Ghosts, so he accepted the answer easily and refrained from commenting further. Boil, who felt no such obligation to be polite around his commanding officers and was very likely concussed, gave a conspicuous snort. Obi-Wan rolled his eyes to maintain the slightly lightening mood.
“Yes, well,” he corrected, giving Boil a performative glare, “the battle was quite draining.”
The younger soldiers hummed in approval. They all had their armors scratched and dented, many of them missing their helmets, their faces bruised and their eyes bloodshot. They looked like death warmed over, the lot of them, and Obi-Wan stifled a desolate sigh. He forced himself to chuckle instead.
“It’s not so easy when we don’t have Commander Cody with us, is it?” he joked for the benefit of the troopers, who immediately perked up.
“No sir,” one of the brash ones said, shaking his head – Tee-Four, if Obi-Wan wasn’t mistaken.
“Not that the other officers don’t do a great job,” a soldier who had no paint and no name rushed to say, elbowing Tee-Four swiftly.
Nexu waved a hand dismissively.
“Don’t bother. The Commander’s the best, no secret there.”
“Indeed,” Obi-Wan smiled. “I’ll be sure to tell him you all said that once he’s back on his feet.”
“I’m sure he’ll love to hear it,” Boil deadpanned.
He most certainly would not – though there wasn’t a lot even Cody could do about the well-placed hero worship of the younger troops. There was a moment of contemplative silence, as levity was always hard to sustain in the exhausted state that followed any battle. They were all aching all over, reeling from new losses, and chilled to the bone by yet another close brush with death. The sensation was depressingly familiar.
“… He’ll be okay, right?” a trooper eventually piped up.
His need for reassurance was plain to sense, more pressing than his thirst or his hunger. Obi-Wan’s smile slid into place almost on its own, held there by the incessant pull in the Force that moved him to reach out and give comfort, always.
“Yes, of course,” he said softly.
Relief coursed through his men, the change so minute he doubted any of them had noticed. Guiltily, he wondered how much of that reaction had come from his words, and how much had been influenced by the intention behind those words bleeding into the Force. Right now he was just a tad too weary to really tell where he ended and things and people around him began.
The gunship finally landed, kicking up more of the fine gray dust of the planet Obi-Wan was rapidly coming to despise.
Coughing slightly, he draped Boil’s arm around his shoulders and dragged him to their medbay before the captain could protest or a well-intentioned aide-de-camp could show up with something urgent to take care of. Boil did try to protest, but wisely realized the futility of it. The blood from his head injury was still fresh, and his balance was obviously far gone.
The pace was slower than either of them would have liked, but they managed to get to the triage area without once tripping, thus sparing Boil the embarrassment of a stretcher, and sparing Obi-Wan the awkwardness of dealing with an embarrassed and highly cranky and concussed captain. He lowered Boil onto the first available crate and settled down on the ground next to him.
Stretching his neck with a sigh, he waited for an available medic. It would take a while, he imagined. Mace would want to go over the battle soon, and it had been a while since he’d seen Anakin.
He raked his hand through his hair. Being too far from his former Padawan during or after a battle always came with its own peculiar uneasiness.
If he concentrated, Obi-Wan thought that he could feel Anakin’s presence somewhere on the base, burning slightly too brightly for comfort right now. Nonetheless he drank in the feeling, thankful for the connection between them.
Boil broke his focus by clearing his throat pointedly. He had been leaning heavily against the wall, his eyes closed against the dampened light, but he cracked one eye open to give Obi-Wan a surprisingly sharp look. It could also just be that his pupil was constricted.
“You should go, General,” he said with only a light slur to his words. “I’m not high priority.”
He was right, obviously. Still, it felt wrong to leave him on his own, and the subdued anxiety that Obi-Wan had been battling with since he’d heard about Cody’s injuries was flaring up at the thought. A rebellious strand of hair kept falling in front of his eyes.
He forced himself to direct his focus outward, onto the warmth of the ground under his palms, the comforting weight of his lightsaber at his side, and the hum of activity all around them. The anxiety receded slowly. He could now tell that not too far, a medic was noticing them.
“Alright, I’ll be going,” he said ruefully, rubbing his beard.
Giving Boil a last pat on the knee, he hoisted himself to his feet and went for the small wing deeper into the base where they had installed the bacta tanks.
Mace commed him on the way there.
“I just talked to Captain Rex. He has new intel.”
“I’ll be right there,” Obi-Wan muttered.
New intel was good – as was the confirmation that Rex and presumably his men were alright. Still, he couldn’t muster much enthusiasm at the thought of more meetings. Mace paused at the other end.
“Did you get a chance to see your commander?”
“I was on my way just now.”
“You should go, then. They’re on their way back anyway. They’ll brief us in person.”
Mace likely intended to review the battle on his own, then. Obi-Wan had done similar things for him on plenty of occasions, so he ended the communication with a quick word of thanks without feeling too guilty for it.
He pushed his hair back once again.
The few bacta tanks they had on site cast the otherwise dimly-lit room in a pale blue glow, like he was walking into a holographic projection. As he made his way past the medical droid that was trying to ask how it could be of service, Obi-Wan was surprised to notice that the medic on shift in the corner wasn’t a clone but a fellow Jedi.
“Master Allie?” he called.
“Master Kenobi, hello!”
Stass had turned away from her work when she heard him, and she crossed the room and bowed deeply. He returned the greeting, delighted to see her. Close to his own age, she was the only member of the Council currently who was his junior, but she was an excellent Healer and a wise and dedicated Jedi Master. She was highly intelligent and kind as well, much like her cousin Adi had been.
He had rarely gotten to work with Stass, so he welcomed the opportunity.
“I didn’t even know you were on Anaxes,” he said. “Did we get a memo?”
She gave a little laugh, shaking her head.
“I imagine either you or Master Windu did,” she said. “I’ve been here for two rotations.”
Ah. He probably should have heard something about that. He probably had, in fact, but if the message had been classified as low priority then he had a lot of those backlogged. He ruefully chalked it up to the unavoidable communication problems of busy campaigns.
“I’m actually leaving tonight,” she continued, noticing his embarrassed look. “I was asked if I could briefly drop in on my way to Saleucami, I’m needed there on the new med station. That’s probably why there was no transfer notice.”
That was likely it. He still made it a mental note to catch up with the messages he’d been forced to ignore – well, as soon as he had any proper downtime on his hands.
“I’m sorry, I’d have tried to come see you earlier if I’d known,” he said, chagrined. “It’s a great comfort to know you’ve been taking care of my troops in the meantime, though.”
It really was. Cody and the others couldn’t be in better hands. She smiled, pointing him to a bacta tank, the occupant of which immediately felt familiar.
“If it’s your commander you’re here to see, he’s in tank D-7,” she said. “He arrived not too long ago. He’s very lucky to be here, but he’s doing rather well now, considering. The medic who stabilized him did a good job.”
The words themselves weren’t all that reassuring, but Obi-Wan was centered enough now to take the information in stride and accept things as they were. Jedi Healers had an especially soothing presence. Walking over to Cody’s tank, he felt that Master Allie was giving him another keen look, piercing through the layers of his battle-weary mind.
He gave her a nod to assuage her concerns, and he turned his attention to the one person he was actually there to see. After the long delay since getting the call that morning, he found that he wasn’t that eager to see the actual damage.
Breathing in deeply, he sucked it up.
He splayed his hand on the thick transparisteel and peered into the bacta.
Cast in pale blue light, Cody’s face was disturbingly slack under the oxygen mask – gone was that almost permanent crease between his eyebrows, the only outward sign of his heavy burdens.
He had been stripped to his synth-briefs, likely to maximize his exposure to the healing gel. His torso and abdomen were still displaying extensive purple bruising, the shades of it so deep it was all Obi-Wan could to not to cringe in sympathy. The internal damage had obviously been massive. There were also a few gashes here and there that had started to close, and evidence of burns on his legs and arms.
Although his injuries had been so severe, Cody looked more relaxed floating limply in the tank than he had in ages, his body gently rising and falling to the rhythm of his own slow breathing. He was without a harness, and he was curling ever so slightly into himself.
Obi-Wan was suddenly struck with the vivid recollection of the cloning chambers of Kamino. Once upon a time, in a not so distant past, Cody had been growing in a tube like the rest of his brothers, floating under the same kind of sterile glow. Was it because of some deeply ingrained memory of his first months of life that he was so oddly at peace now?
Obi-Wan hoped he was just very deeply sedated. The alternative felt sad.
He really looked much younger than he usually did, without his typical frown and battle-ready stance. Even the large scar on his face wasn’t so noticeable in the bacta. Stray curls were sticking out of his closely maintained regulation haircut, sticking to his forehead.
Cody, startlingly, looked his age. That is, his physical age, which was somewhere around Anakin’s. Somewhat older now, with the war dragging on and the accelerated aging taking its toll with each year – but still considerably younger than he acted.
And another realization struck Obi-Wan, just as painful as the first: for all that he was a grown man, Cody had seen fewer years of life than Ahsoka.
Obi-Wan never allowed himself to dwell on Ahsoka for too long – the hole left by her absence was gaping and every reminder of it ached, and Anakin closed up like a Alderaani crab-shell when she was mentioned anyway. Still, thinking about his shiny troops whose armors had already fully dulled just from this one campaign, thinking about Boil and Nexu and the other battle hardened officers who he had first known as fresh recruits, thinking about how Cody must have been a cadet once, he couldn’t help but picture the bright eyed girl who had come to him and Anakin so eager to fight and had left seemingly decades older.
And now he saw Cody, not as his dependable right hand man, but as Ahsoka had been when she walked away. As Anakin still was often. A grown mind in a young body, with a child’s soul so deeply hidden within that it took the Force itself to unearth it.
He rarely felt the weight of his failures like he did in this moment.
He was startled to feel Stass’ hand at his elbow. She was looking at him with deep indigo eyes, thoughtful and empathetic. She let her arm fall to her side.
“Are you alright?” she asked softly, looking over to Cody’s sleeping form.
He didn’t quite know how to answer that. He wasn’t the one injured right now. He wasn’t the one suffering the most from the war either – and whatever bitter feelings he was currently fighting to overcome, he wasn’t the victim of the injustice that tore at his heart, merely its witness. So he was alright. Bruised, battered, and aching in his soul, but able to go on and keep fighting.
He really was.
And whenever he wasn’t, he’d just have to keep working on it.
“You know he’ll pull through,” Stass said tentatively. “The clones are all quite resilient.”
The Force felt immensely sorrowful, blue and purple with pain and regrets. Obi-Wan wasn’t sure whether or not she’d guessed what really weighed at him.
“I want him to see the end of the war,” he murmured honestly. “They all deserve to.”
Stass didn’t answer. Heaving a deep sigh, Obi-Wan closed his eyes and rested his forehead on his arm, leaning against the tank. He heard his fellow Jedi shuffle away, either to give him some privacy or to tend to her own duties.
After a little while, he felt an unpleasant tingling in the Force. Opening his eyes, he noticed that Cody’s expression had hardened minutely. His jaw was locked and his eyebrows were drawing together ever so slightly. Obi-Wan gave Stass an inquisitive look over his shoulder.
“Is he waking up?”
Her expression was rueful, almost apologetic, but she made no move to come check.
“He’s not. The sedation might not be quite enough for the pain. I can’t give him anything else for a while yet, he’s maxed out.”
That gripped Obi-Wan’s heart more painfully than anything so far. Even though Cody’s discomfort was still very subdued, the mere fact of it felt like another failure – and what was worse, the commander now looked like himself again. What did it say about what they had all become, that Cody truly resting for just a short time had made him unrecognizable?
In a few days, his commander would stride into the hangar with his helmet under his arm, visibly irritated at himself for being out of commission during an important campaign. Obi-Wan could picture it clearly. Like every time, Cody would vent his frustration by diligently throwing himself into work, and he would never mention how much it bothered him that GAR resources had been used on him when so many of his brothers simply couldn’t be extended the same generosity that the army showed its valuable experienced officers. Things would go back the way they were – Cody two steps behind Obi-Wan, carrying out his orders with impeccable discipline, seemingly unchanged by his brush with death, secretly burdened with the guilt of being among the ones who’d made it. Acting like he always did, professional, unshakable, and old, there would never be a right time to discuss this vulnerable moment.
Unwilling to let it go just yet, Obi-Wan indulged his old habits as a Master and reached out within the bacta to gently brush aside a few of of Cody’s sticky curls with the Force. The clone visibly relaxed, and Obi-Wan smiled privately, once again reminded of Anakin, of Ahsoka, and of countless such little gestures of comfort over the years.
“Don’t ever tell him I did that,” he told Stass as he turned away from the tank.
“Both of your dignities are safe with me,” she said very seriously, bent over her datapads.
She quickly looked up before Obi-Wan could leave.
“Master Kenobi, wait.”
He waited. A touch of purple colored her cheeks. Setting aside her pads, she closed the distance between them.
“The guilt you felt,” she said, “I know some of it.” Her eyes shone earnestly. “I heal people and I send them back to their deaths. And when there’s nothing I can do for them, it feels even worse somehow.”
Obi-Wan knew she had been close to Adi and still missed her, and he did as well. He counted it as a personal victory that Stass was finally comfortable enough to open up to him as an equal, rather than still seeing him as her boss.
“It’s our job to see this through no matter how hard it gets,” she continued, “but whatever happens, we’re never alone.” She grabbed his hand. “We’re Jedi.”
“We are,” he smiled, touched. “Thank you.”
They bowed to one another.
“I should probably go,” he told her, feeling the tension lift. “I’ve been brooding long enough.”
More like moping, really. And there was a lot that needed doing around the base, that he could tend to thanks to Mace’s kindness instead of just standing around. Just then, he yawned. He almost rolled his eyes at the seemingly concerted efforts of the universe to keep him humbled.
“You might want to hit the fresher before your next briefing,” Stass pointed out with a healer’s bluntness. She eyed his clothes. “Getting rid of all that dust will help with the fatigue.”
“It’s a form of meditation,” he corrected wryly, uselessly brushing some of it off his tabards. “I’m keeping connected to the world around us.”
“I wish you had time to actually meditate, from the looks of you,” she quipped back, emboldened by his banter. “But it sounds like an impressively advanced technique. You’ll have to teach the rest of us.”
“I wish I had time to sleep,” he admitted with a resigned shrug. “But I can’t keep Mace waiting forever. Communion with the Living Force is the best I’m getting today.”
“Next time, do let me know if you want me to knock you out and dunk you into one of these,” she told, patting a tank before returning to her charts.
He left her to her patients with a final word of thanks and one last look in direction of row D. He’d have to find Kix at some point, and thank him – and give Rex time enough to come down here as well once the debriefs were over.
His comm was beeping again. Pausing to survey the base and its activity, he found himself relaxing, to his own surprise. They had survived one more day. Not all of them, but that anyone had made it all, that anyone could make it here, day after day, battle after battle— that alone was worth wondering at.
Maybe he’d go find Anakin, enjoy the company of his old Padawan – and perhaps see if any of the 501st had decent moonshine stashed somewhere that he could borrow to have a drink with his commander once Cody was out of the bacta.
He raked his hand through his hair, and the stubborn lock finally allowed itself to be disciplined.