Leave Your Rifle by the Door

by rochen

Summary:

“Cody’s hands were still strong. Only some of the stubble he shaved every morning grew back lighter than he was used to, and his body still did what he demanded, albeit with difficulty. He wasn't old. His human brain railed against the label.”

The 212th’s old Commander keeps a timeline in his head: Twelve years since the Supreme Chancellor’s death. Six years since the last batch of brothers left Kamino. Four since that injury tied him to Coruscant. With his future slipping through his fingers and war as his only constant, Cody cannot let go of what he used to be.

What luck, then, that the universe still has plans for him.

Chapter 1

“Good evening Coruscant, it is twenty-hundred hours Prime Meridian. I am Taric Banly and you are listening to Capital News: the latest from the Senate District and beyond!”

It was summer. Cody had wound the passenger window of his speeder all the way down, letting the dense city air make up for his broken AC. This far north, the sun didn’t set before midnight, instead crawling low between the skyscrapers for hours and vexing anyone trying to safely pilot their vehicle. 

“We begin with a public service announcement. Tonight will be an all-clear for districts within the fiftieth northern parallel. Lights may remain on in civilian structures. Industrial facilities are urged to darken down over the night hours. As always, remain vigilant of falling debris.”

The viscous traffic separated into smaller, faster streams after Cody pulled past the intersection station of 500 Republica. It still bore scorch marks from some orbital raid or another—had that been two or three years ago? He remembered how it used to belch smoke for days on end, every morning when he went to work, every evening when he returned home. They’d held bets on it at HQ.

“Bombings on ports and industrial quarters in the southern hemisphere resume as Republic control of the Nexus Route continues to be contested—”

Cody switched off the radio. If you heard one broadcast over the last decade, you had heard them all. Maneuvering down into one of the gaping portals to Coruscant's off-beat heart, he was greeted by a different kind of noise: the roar of engines multiplied by rounded walls, the ear-bleeding commotion of reconstruction work. The damages from last winter’s raids were still being undone. Cody closed the window. 

About ten levels further down, a speeder dock came into sight, adorned by bright signs luring potential customers. Cody parked his decrepit ride and hopped out into the evening air, stifling as a cloth gag, with his grocery bag slung over his shoulder. His lower back twinged—even more worthless than that damned vehicle. There was a cane under the passenger seat, stainless steel, barely a fingerprint on it. He slammed the door shut.

A group of people laughed among themselves. Familiar faces populated the dock, many of them looking exactly like his own. Cody steeled himself.

Walk it off, soldier.

Shoulders squared, he headed for the neon-lit hole in the wall right across the docking space. The door chime jangled when he entered the little shop, the outside’s ozone smell mixing with that of produce and cigarra smoke. Heavy. Homely. It made breathing even more laborious than the outside heat. 

“Half the planet’s a toaster oven and you’re still buttoned to the nines.” Boil, sporting a sweaty undershirt and suspenders that hung uselessly off his trousers, was fanning himself behind the counter. “Showing some neck won’t kill you, sir.”

Cody slotted a finger between his throat and his uniform collar. It was damp in there. “You don’t know that.” 

“Sure I don’t. So, what can I get for you?”

“The usual, Lieutenant.” He slid his grocery list across the counter. Boil barely glanced at it before he put down his fan and turned to the shelves he was guarding. The fan, in all its bright red-ornamented glory, left Cody feeling sorely tempted. His uniform was cooking him alive, but he’d rather keel over right there instead of giving in. He wiped his face when Boil wasn’t looking. 

“—ongoing discussions about the Senate bill to regulate the sale of fabrics in a certain shade of blue—”

The Capital News announcer’s sleep-inducing baritone plodded from the radio in the shop’s back room, just clear enough to be hard to tune out. 

“Don’t you ever get tired of that voice?”

“Can’t say I do, sir.” Boil took the container Cody fished out of his bag and began ladling milk into it from a large pail. His graying mustache glinted in the lamplight. “Why?”

Cody leaned on the counter. “We used to fight a real war, for objectives that meant something."

"There's plenty of people doing that right now."

"But now, we do nothing, and while we’re at it we get to listen to politicians trying to ban pantone two-eight-nine." An aggravated gesture in the radio's general direction before he let his hand thump onto the countertop. "A complete waste of time and resources.”

Metal clinked against metal.

“Please don’t tell me you’re turning into one of those Seppie-kissers, boss.”

“I’m not about to hang confederate blue bedsheets out of my window, if that’s what you mean,” he huffed, watching Boil finish up the milk—light blue, not that loathed dark navy—and move on to the condiments. “I just don’t think that’s our biggest problem right now.”

“Just ‘cause their color’s not as bad as their bombers doesn’t mean it’s right. All I want is to tear those rags down whenever I see them.”

Police already do that, Cody thought, and his aches and the heat demanded that he distract himself with an argument. 

“Eh.” He gestured dismissively. “So, how’s your day been?” he asked instead. Far be it from him to give in to cadet-like belligerence. Boil laughed.

“Don’t ask about mine and I won’t ask about yours, sir. You said it. Nothing’s going on.”

Life away from the front was strangely akin to sitting in a trench. An awfully nice trench, to be sure, but the tedium of the wait for something to happen—new orders, the next meal, a bomb dropping on your head, anything— was just as agonizing.

“Actually, not nothing, now that I think about it.”

Ah, hells. Cody pretended to be very interested in the packet of flour Boil fetched from the shelf. 

“C’mon, sir, don’t think I’d forget your decantation day!”

Nobody ever forgot about that. Wilting a little where he stood, Cody dropped his face into his hands. “It stops being fun past a certain point,” he groused, peeking through his fingers at Boil’s grin and the garish cards he proffered. 

“It’s always fun. I couldn’t decide on one, by the way, so I got you two.” 

Cody begrudgingly took them. The cards were not designed for clone consumption: one for a twenty-fifth hatch-day (“Happy quarter-life crisis!”), and another electronic one for a fiftieth birthday (the card caterwauled at him in Shyriiwook when he opened it.) Despite himself, he smiled. 

“What’s this?” He picked up the wad of coupons that had fallen from the singing card. 

“You’ll be eating well for a while,” Boil said with glee, placing the final item of Cody’s grocery order on the countertop. “Old men should get to indulge, right?”

Cody shot him a glare that lacked any sort of malice. He closed the card—he did not need its wails providing a soundtrack to Taric Banly’s news segment. And in truth, the coupons were much appreciated. 

“Thank you.”

“Hey, it’s nothing. Check the other one!”

Out of the hatch-day card slid another piece of flimsi, this one embossed with golden letters advertising an upscale hot spring. A ticket for two. All-inclusive. 

“Are you serious? How’d you even get this?” Cody held up the ticket and Boil held up his hands. 

“The lady who runs that joint is sweet on me! You’re welcome, by the way.”

“You think you’re slick.”

“I just think you should get to relax in the beautiful Coruscant hot springs with someone near and dear,” Boil said, all innocence betrayed by the mischievous wrinkles around his eyes. Infuriating. 

“Who knows, maybe I will.” Cody tucked the gifts into his pocket, fully intending to take a solo trip to those springs in the future. Maybe he could get through his surplus paperwork more painlessly with a lot of warm water and free Chandrila Red. “But really, you didn’t have to.”

“It’s not everyday you get to turn twenty-five-going-on-fifty, sir. You’re one of the first.”

“And it’s your turn in what, half a year? No need to be smug.” He started loading the groceries from the counter into his bag while Boil laughed some more. 

The milk container, meant to last him for a ten-day, weighed next to nothing in his grasp, aches and pains aside. Cody’s hands were still strong. Only some of the stubble he shaved every morning grew back lighter than he was used to, and his body still did what he demanded, albeit with difficulty. He wasn't old. His human brain railed against the label. 

“I suppose I’ll still have to pay?”

“You’re not getting around that.” Boil took Cody’s ration chip, inserting it into his cash register and marking down the ration tickets that had been used up for the purchase. “Damn. No more eggs for you this month. Good thing you got those new coupons, huh?”

“Yeah, yeah.” 

Cody paid. Cody left. Carrying the bag put a strain on his faults, persistent and sure to bother him deep into the night. He climbed back into his speeder more gingerly than he had climbed out, the radio crackling to life on its own as soon as he started the engine. 

“And some good news! This just in from High Command!”

His finger hovered over the off-switch, itching just like it used to before he pulled the trigger. 

“To anyone with friends or family in the 7th Sky Corps: after one and a half years of deployment, the star destroyer Vigilance is due to arrive on Coruscant tomorrow! Be sure to give our heroes the warm welcome they deserve!”

Cody hit the switch hard, rattling the dashboard. He pulled away from the dock into one of the ascension lanes, still choked with traffic, gripping the yoke tight. 

Had it been more than a year already? He had lost track. Time on Coruscant passed like the whole planet was in a hurry; days bleeding into weeks, months into quarters, semesters into almost half a decade since he had last washed off the dust of a battlefield. And he missed it. Stars, he missed it more dearly than anything—even the blood, the burns, the stink. 

His speeder trundled along the lane Cody took every day. The Cy-Zoom M3 was older than him, so much worse than anything he had ever steered in battle, and there had been a lot: bikes, tanks, swoops, walkers. He’d been good at it, too. In contrast, Coruscant was nothing but a conglomerate of tasks designed to slow him down, to keep him busy until he kicked the bucket sooner rather than later. His speeder, his job, his meds, his bills. One could barely call it living.

Stopping at an intersection, Cody took in the bright advertisements adorning the billboards above and below. 

Not built for a helmet? One of them proclaimed. A group of young twi’leks, togruta, trandoshans and similar species unfit for human-standard armor were shown moping as a star destroyer took off in the background. BUILD for your NAVY! Enlist! Engineers, machinists, electricians wanted. For information apply to your nearest recruiting station.

And there: flashes in chrome, red, and white. Pristine armor shining as some blond supermodel suited up and jumped from the side of a gunship, countless of his comrades raining down into battle.

Don’t READ Republic history. MAKE it! Join the Sky Corps!

Cody stared—familiar emblems, weapons he knew more intimately than anything, peeks of golden paint that made his eyes grow hot. 

Family.

They’d be back tomorrow, bearing that piece of himself he had given to the Vigilance so long ago. 

 

---

 

A hospital room flooded by sunlight.

“Thank you for your advice,” the fresh-faced officer said, stepping closer to Cody’s chair. Tall, thin, green-eyed. Brought into this world with a name instead of a number. Born, not decanted. His words hurt. “I will be a worthy successor, I swear it.”

He held out his hand, bending ever so slightly at the hip to make it easier to reach. It wasn’t his smile that maddened Cody so much as his own inability to lean forward in his seat; the tremble of effort with which he had to raise his arm. 

“The 212th is the most demanding force in the galaxy, Captain.” He let his hand drop after the limp handshake, pretending to be unashamed, not bothering to like the man even a little bit. “Do not disappoint. I'd hate to find my troops in disarray under your command."

The Captain’s mouth twitched. “Are you so optimistic about your return?” 

Maybe a stray shard of shrapnel would rip that smile from his lips when he set foot on the battlefield. That’s what tended to happen to ambitious youngsters fresh from the academy, anyway, shoved into positions they had no business holding. It should be Wooley or Nova or Wyler stepping into Cody’s place—not this. 

Oversized and overconfident, or undersized and ill-prepared. There was no real in-between with nat-born soldiers. Always sticking out. Always demanding special treatment. 

“You seem to be optimistic about yours,” Cody said, blinking past the Captain’s arm at the stark white sheets of his hospital bed. Dust particles danced in the illumination. “We’ll see how that goes.”

"The Academy prepared me more than well. I partook in the grand field exercises on Alderaan and Corellia."

"Alderaan and Corellia?" Feeble. Worthless. Fleeting weeks of boot camp and rubber projectiles—for what? "Oh, yes. Tough environments, those."

Pique entered the young man's features. He was trying to hide it, but he was just a boy, so proud of his rehearsed little tricks. “I am ready for anything!”

“Then you best be ready to die, Captain.” Or worse, Cody thought; be ready to end up like this. “Now go. The 212th does not tolerate delays.”

"I am their new acting commander—"

"And do you know who your right hand man will be?"

“I—”

"The one who double-checks your plans, your time tables and all your bullshit, who files your performance review after every debrief?"

"Of course I know who he is and what he does! I'm not stupid!"

If he were able to at all, Cody would have slammed his fist down at this point. “So do you want your Jedi to take your head off?”

The young man’s mouth did something fish-like. “He can’t do that."

"Once you've thrown off his planning by, hm," Cody glanced at the chrono on the wall, departure inching closer by the minute,"at least half an hour, he'll be taking it into serious consideration."

"The Jedi aren’t generals anymore—and you’re no longer a Commander. You lot won't intimidate me.”

“He’ll have your head, Captain, if you disrupt our schedule,” he snapped from his chair, finding solace in the soft target that was the Captain's ego, hoping that Lieutenant Kenobi would follow through. Yelling was cathartic. “And for the last time: get out, or I’ll call the staff!”

At last, the young man stalked out of the room. His thrice-damned successor. Cody couldn’t move. The needle in the crook of his arm was like a nail keeping him down, his body too heavy to be made of anything less than granite. A sigh escaped him.

He did not want that boy to die. Not really. He did not deserve Obi-Wan's professional disapproval, at least not yet. Cody did not want him in his former unit at all; a weak link, a liability, a hit to the reputation they had worked to maintain for over a decade. 

“Alright, you’ve had your way,” the nurse said upon entering his room. “Let’s get you back where you belong.” 

She pushed his chair over to the bedside, mechanically raising the seat until she could transfer him onto the mattress. Cody grunted. There was nothing he could do except to let her adjust his legs, pull the blanket up to his chest, wipe the sweat he hadn’t even noticed from his brow. 

He had barely moved. Still, he was out of breath. 

"I told you to not exert yourself too much."

"It's nothing."

She offered him a practiced smile.“Don’t worry about it, sweetheart, you’ll be walking again soon enough. Isn’t that exciting?”

It would have been unthinkable one week ago. And he was supposed to be grateful—that was what all the missives had told him so far, that he was lucky, that he was of use despite everything. 

As she picked at his bandages and infusions, his attention slipped from the room: through the window’s glass, past Coruscant’s bustling traffic, to the ship that hung in the sky far away. 

His home. 

He watched it ascend, off to the next mission. Cody was an afterthought on this pit stop. Not a second to waste, no pity taken on the wheels that needed changing, no goodbye.

Selfishly, his heart bled.

 

---

 

The advert looped on the billboard by the intersection. Someone behind him honked aggressively. 

Cody shook the moment off, weaving into a less busy lane. The 212th was still as fearsome as ever, the Republic’s golden spear unbroken in its fifteenth year. Only its faces were being replaced. The thought stung at his eyes.

Forget that.

He took a left, then a right, finally turning into a narrow city-canyon removed from the bustling life of the Senate District. He maneuvered through the alley dotted with backdoors and loading bays for seedy stores—not a good place to be on foot after dark, and this route was steeped in the shadow of behemoth towers at all times. 

The alley opened up into the vast garage complex containing Cody's own little lot. In the eyes of someone raised on sterile Kamino, the place was remarkably ugly: unkempt, flaking, dark. Even the smallest rental one could possibly find here took too much money out of his monthly funds. Cody rummaged for his garage gate’s remote in his glovebox, pressing the button five times before the gate deigned to stutter open. 

Standing next to his parked speeder in the garage’s dim confines, he took a moment to breathe. It smelled of fuel, rubber, and the ever-present dust he never had time to deal with. Mercifully, the ventilation in here worked, cooling his skin wherever his uniform wasn't in the way. 

Smog particles formed a thin coat on his speeder. As much as he hated that half-dead machine, he still couldn’t help but fill a bucket with the tap on the wall, wiping it down until its wine-red exterior shone brightly again. He had to catch his breath when he was done, splashing water onto his face, letting it run beneath his collar. His right thigh trembled under the strain of standing up straight. 

That was normal. Getting better, in fact—simple tasks such as this had taken much more out of him in the past. 

Taking one more steadying breath, Cody hefted his grocery bag from the passenger seat. He didn’t even wince. A door with multiple locks led him into a street just as untrustworthy as the one winding up to the garage complex; littered with trash, foul-smelling, dark. 

Over the years, he had cultivated a sneering sort of appreciation for the fifteen-minute walk that separated his garage from his apartment. Its winding path and uneven stairs were nothing but exercise, something that kept him running beyond his sedentary work. A short walk, a bag of groceries—none of this would have come close to a workout four years ago, but Cody relished it. Each month, he could carry more, climb the stairs faster. Only the aches stayed the same. 

Blue fabric fluttered in the breeze that got lost among the gridwork of concrete. Frayed and rain-washed, it told of the people whose window it hung from. Blue: the banner of the Confederacy, and now, within the Republic, the color of those who wanted it to stop. By any means necessary. 

Cody understood Boil’s resentment. What red-blooded trooper wouldn’t want to toss those traitor-scrubs in the gutter? Didn’t anyone know what his brethren had been dying for? He trudged up the stairs, and it would have been easy to grab the damned thing, to wipe his boots with it. He didn’t. 

A small child looked down from that open window, arms crossed on the windowsill. Cody slowed, found it in himself to smile past the blue fabric, but the child only had eyes for the insignia on his epaulet. Distrust spilled from the opening in the wall, cold, wordlessly pushing him away.

The building’s facade was disturbed by vicious cracks. Scaffolding had been erected here and there along the deepest fissures, and out of sight, just on the other side of the block, Cody knew there was an old impact site. He dropped the smile, kept walking. Never a hero, always a herald—the more his brothers diffused into Coruscant’s population, the less welcome they seemed to become. 

Taking two steps at once, something he had trained himself to do again, he climbed past more windows. Some were cracked. Some had insults smeared across them in runny graffiti pen. Many bore blue just like the child’s; present all over in strings tied around street lights and handkerchiefs wedged between door hinges. 

In the middle of this, of all places on Coruscant: his new home. Cody preferred to call it his hovel, both thanks to its condition and the shoddy reprieve it had offered in his first year of living there, when the fifteen-minute walk had still been a one-hour limp. His neighbors, for the most part, were peaceful. To his left lived a young couple too down on their luck to treat him with suspicion, to his right some washed-up spice-head who did not seem to know what a clone even looked like. 

Still, Cody checked over his shoulder while he unlocked his apartment door. Some people were agitated, misinformed, plain stupid, or a mix of all three: blaming his brothers for the war and each loss, calling them animals, picking fights just to see if they could knock a cog from the war machine. Hitting them back was ill-advised. 

Quietly, Cody hoped for a drunkard’s challenge nonetheless. He was spoiling for a fight like a boy fresh off Kamino, hadn’t tasted blood in years, and his shame about feeling such things diminished week by week. 

The lock clicked open. Nobody had stalked him home. Nobody was even trying to steal his rations. Mildly disappointed, he stepped inside and rid himself of the grocery bag, setting it down by the door. He had to lean against the wall for a second. 

Breathe in. Breathe out. 

Sluggishly, he drifted from the small corridor into the space that made up his kitchen and bedroom, to the closet by the sink, the pills stored therein. A swig of water—straight from the faucet into his cupped hands—washed down the prescription drugs. 

It was still bright outside. In a galaxy without traffic, the floor-to-ceiling window offering an expansive view of the lower levels may have been the one redeeming quality of his hovel. As it was, though, a descending lane routed right past it, filling his apartment with intermittent noise and the red glare of tail lights as speeders trundled down into the streets beneath.

Cody closed the curtains, drenching the room in darkness. 

He’d feel better soon. And when he did, he’d go to sleep. He’d dream of pristine spaceships and dirty armor, of a heavy rifle in his arms as he lay awake in a foxhole, of trenches and triumph and kyber blades. 

The Vigilance could not arrive soon enough.

 

---

 

Cody pushed through the masses that convened outside the dockyard’s confines. Parents, spouses, friends, children, all waiting to see their loved ones again. 

Just like him. 

Almost. 

Unlike them, he was let into the dockyard proper with a mere flash of his ID chip, striding across the sun-baked pavement where the air wavered and distorted the Vigilance’s tower-like landing gears. White shells poured from the boarding ramp, shells that had become more varied in size over the years. Cody knew to pick out the ones that were just right. A familiar golden decal made him want to drag his body into a jog, but he minded himself, maintained a steady gait. 

“Commander!” 

A voice like millions of others, but Cody matched it to a man with no trouble. To the people who mattered, he was still who he used to be, even if it was only in name. His heart swelled. The helmet with the decal was removed, revealing a tousled mohawk and a smiling face.

“Is this the sort of weather you bring home from Scarif?” Cody grasped Wooley’s forearm with light reproach in his voice, bare palm smacking against hot plastoid. 

“I wish, sir,” Wooley said, squeezing back happily. “Scarif was worse than Kamino. What’s a beach even for if all you get is rain and hurricanes?”

“What use is this heat without any beach at all?” 

Letting go of each other, they laughed. 

“You look good.” Mischief quirked Wooley’s mouth. He had more wrinkles now, which only reinforced the expression. “For a man of your age, I mean.”

“So I’ve been told,” Cody said easily, flicking his finger at Wooley’s pitch-black hair. “Did you dye that yourself?”

“It’s natural!”

“Is it?”

“It absolutely is. Anyway,” unoffended, Wooley went on, “did you celebrate yesterday?”

“Work got in the way. Went to Boil’s, though.” Affection crawled into Cody’s voice. Fuck, this felt good. “Do you know what that idiot got me in the middle of summer?”

A laugh. “Did he knit you another sweater?”

“Close.”

“Pocket warmers?”

“A ticket to the hot springs, Wooley.”

The man gaped. “You’re serious. Man, that’s a nat-born kinda gift.”

It was. At least the warranty extended to winter. 

“Good to know Boil’s still a show-off,” Wooley said then, lifting his hand to his mouth. “But we’ve got something for you, too.”

He whistled through his fingers. Loudly. Multiple heads whipped around as one, then drew closer, familiar faces appearing one after another. Cody shifted. Hell, he wasn’t ready. 

“Wooley, there’s no need to—”

“Yes, there is!”

Cody was dragged into the cool shadow of the Vigilance, clones and nat-born soldiers alike flocking around him. Noisy, cheery, getting absolutely everywhere—just like the good old times. Fuck. There were Wyler, Crys, Trapper: grinning at him, shaking his hand, patting his uniform, cooing at the shiny buttons. At the back of the crowd stood a half-armored figure, her joy more contained than that of the others, but shaking with suppressed laughter anyway as he was swarmed by his comrades. 

Cody himself burst out laughing. They had to look ridiculous to outsiders; a bunch of too-old soldiers congregated around the one that was oldest by a few sparse months, crowing like a flock of birds. 

“Nova,” Wooley called over the commotion, “you better have that thing on you!”

“Yes, sir!” 

Nova hobbled closer, kit bag hanging off his shoulder—Cody remembered how heavy those things were, wondered if he could lift one again—and unzipped it ceremoniously. The crowd quieted down. Nova looked right, then left, taking a bulky package from the bag. 

“For you, Commander Cody. From all of us.”

Blinking, Cody took the package. Its weight alone was pleasant in his hands, and he hadn’t even opened it yet, but here was, already fighting tears. He swallowed, wiped sweat from his face, and if he brushed along the corner of his eye in the same motion, nobody commented on it. 

“From all of you? Now you’re making me curious,” he said with a smile, unraveling the strings that held the packaging together. His tone was a learned one, a cheerful aside, useful in negotiation. Something shaped like a pocket knife tumbled into his palm. “What’s this?” 

“That’s only part of it!” Crys said next to him, leaning on his shoulder. 

“For your old man eyes,” Wooley added. Cody flicked the object’s handle—instead of a knife, out snapped a magnifying glass. Of course. 

“You clowns should start a circus,” he grumbled without malice, handing the tool off to Crys. 

“Only if you’re the ringmaster, sir!” 

Laughing, Cody decided, was nice. He hadn’t done it in a while, not sincerely, not surrounded by such warmth. He missed that, too. The waves of cheer that erupted despite the war and loss. The people who smiled through hardship alongside him. 

The rest of the packaging fell away. What Cody held in his hands was a conch; curled beautifully, horns and salt crystals spearing outward, sunset-orange and glittering golden like the sea where the light hit its ribbed shell. He stared at it for a while, marveling. When he tried to find words of thanks, Crys waved the magnifying glass in front of his face. 

Cody took it, puzzled, only now noticing the irregularities: indents catching the light differently than its natural pattern, geometric, man-made. Holding up the magnifier, he started reading—yes, reading, as there were letters engraved into the shell, so small that the naked eye could not see them. 

Names. 

Names covering its entire surface; its inside as far as engraving tools reached. 

Nova, Crys. Wyler, Wooley. Trapper, Gearshift. 

Fuck. 

Gregor, Longshot, Waxer. 

He couldn’t wipe his face now. 

Reva, Obi-Wan.

Looking up to the woman looming at the edge of the circle, he smiled. He feared it looked rather watery. 

“I—” he choked a little, overplayed it by clearing his throat. “This is…” 

“Amazing, right?” Wooley freed him from the torture of having to speak like this. “We knew you’d appreciate it.”

“You— I do. I really, really do,” Cody said, looking at the conch with wonder. He blinked some more, rapidly, to chase away the moisture. His cheeks hurt. “This will take pride of place in my bunk, boys.” 

“It better!” Crys elbowed him gently, and there was that brotherly noise again, filling Cody’s ears and heart. Fuck. Hell. He let himself be pushed around and congratulated, gradually regaining his composure. 

They almost got him. Almost. His entire body felt brittle. 

“We’re drinking to you tonight, Commander,” Trapper said. “And to ourselves! 79’s, the Boonta, CorCoaster, all that. You’re coming, right?”

It wasn’t a question. 

“A pub crawl?” he drawled. “I have work in the morning.”

“We all do!”

“Everyone’s coming, sir!”

Cody checked his chrono—his lunch break was almost over. So was everyone else’s, and a nat-born officer he did not recognize called for them to vacate the docks as another star destroyer entered the atmosphere.

Their marching rhythm was second nature to Cody. Hup, two, three, four. Holding pace with his men made his spine tingle with something that wasn’t pain for once, the conch pleasantly cool in his grip. 

“I’ll think about it.”

“Ooh, that’s a yes.”

“There’s no ‘no’ option, anyway.” Crys gave his arm a friendly clap. “And bossman’s gonna show, too, just so you know.” 

The smile Cody couldn’t remember putting on faltered. He usually learned in a timely manner if someone dear to him fell, so he hadn’t been too worried when Reva had come alone earlier. Jedi tended to be busy. Still…

Like she had read his thoughts, the young woman appeared by his side. 

“He’s fine, mostly,” she said in that impenetrably enigmatic way she had inherited from her Master. Infuriating.

“Mostly?” 

Reva waved her hand, pushing her Padawan braid behind her ear flippantly. “You’ll see. He had to rush to the Temple before we could dock.” 

Way to make a man nervous, kid, Cody thought. “I’ll take that as another decant day surprise.”

She laughed at that. He wasn't sure if it was a good sign.

Maybe it would all be fine, just this once. The sun was high in the sky, high as his spirits hadn't been in so long. He found himself looking forward to the drinks.

Notes:

Well, here it is. The first fanfic I've actually gone on to publish in years :'D

This AU is my baby and a major testing ground for a longfic I'm writing, so I'm having a blast with this! What do you think? Is this setting coherent? Are you ready for some disastrous sweaty Codywan? I'd love to read your thoughts!

Up next: Cody's decantation day pub crawl, Obi-Wan, and more dingy alleys. Thank you for reading!

Chapter 2

The only thing Cody liked about HQ these days was its ventilation. Galactic gold standard, powerful, but not enough to give anyone a cold. It made work a lot easier.

His office didn’t have any windows, only a screen wall that played footage of the Coruscant skyline at dusk. It had to have been filmed over a decade ago—so many of those buildings had lost their pristine grace by now, pock-marked by war or torn down altogether. Remnants of more peaceful days.

The recording looped every thirty minutes, and at this point, he knew the outdated speeders passing by like characters in the dreariest play ever devised. It made people insane. The nat-borns, especially. Everyone he shared this office with had some sort of volatile peculiarity about them; a twitch, a hair-trigger stashed away underneath their professional exteriors. Cody had seen through the last of them by the end of his first year on the job. 

He wondered if his colleagues had made similar observations about him. It wouldn't come as a surprise. The chrono on the wall read two hours past his usual checkout—he was ravenous, stewing, and not entirely sure if he could get up from his chair. Tall orders had been coming in by the shipload as the entire logistics department worked overtime, processing materiel forms in numbers that seemed strange even in the throes of war. Like High Command was churning them out solely to torture him. 

That, or someone was trying to build a planet from scratch. 

So when Cody finally clipped his stylus back to his work pad and pushed himself to his feet, he could not get out of the building fast enough. He forbade his mood from plummeting further as the two hours of overtime crept up from his back into the base of his skull. A thrum. A warning. His sign to lie down, but like hell he would. 

On his way out, he stopped by his locker and the restroom, exchanging his uniform grays for a breezy maroon shirt that he tucked into the nicest pair of pants he owned. Civvies never stopped feeling odd against his skin—too light, too flimsy. Not nearly enough pockets. Upon entering the outside heat, he was glad for them nonetheless. 

“I’m coming over, Boil,” he said into his comlink, hurrying across the speeder dock. “Has the party started already?”

Boil’s voice crackled over countless others. “Not without you! Please get a move on, though, or these dimwits are gonna raid my store.”

Cody grinned, and not even his speeder’s scorching-hot seats could dim the moment. “Be right there.”

Coruscant flitted past klick by klick; the Republica intersection, the billboards, the descending lanes. He paid them little mind. Even the radio had ceased its obsessive newscasting in favor of the mellow tunes that now permeated the air.

Tap-tap-tap. Cody drummed along to the beat on the yoke’s casing, letting his hair be ruffled by the wind. Rex’s favorite band. Not too much to his own liking, but the association alone made him smile, filled him with a wistful little ache. It was an old song, so old he had not been alive when it was written, which perhaps was not very old at all. 

What a thought. Change gears, switch to hover-mode—Cody guided his speeder safely to the dock by Boil’s corner store. Music blared from its entrance all the way to the edge of the platform and through the speeder’s closed door, loud, with much more drive than the song on the radio. Bustle, clinking glass, raucous laughter. 

His back caught up to him. 

Glancing over at the passenger seat, he contemplated the cane hidden beneath. He should, shouldn't he? Swallow his pride, clip the thing to his belt, be done with it. 

It was basically just a lightsaber hilt. 

Someone hooted, multiple figures leaping up from the shop's front steps, coming right at him. 

Yeah, right.

Cody swung the speeder door open with practiced vigor, pulling himself out like he would have done ten years ago. Nothing about his movements had changed besides the effort that went into keeping a straight face. Didn't matter. He still had it in him. 

The brothers bounding his way were the youngest ones they had; men who looked to be in their early thirties, smooth-faced and bright. Good soldiers. Strong. An urge rose up from Cody's gut all the way to the space between his ears and filled it out entirely. He let it settle there, puffing out his chest. There was reassurance to be found in the way his shoulders strained the shirt on his back. 

“Hey, hey!”

“There you are, sir!” 

The boys slammed into him like a Kamino wave, beer sloshing over his bare forearms and down onto his boots. He would have expected no less of them. Roughhousing was part of the game and he embraced it, bending the rowdiest one—Zinger—into a headlock.

“Is that how you greet someone you call ‘sir’?” 

“Sir, yes, sir!” Zinger laughed into his arm. The scar along the side of his face crinkled with joy. His strength was palpable even when bent—Cody had no doubt the boy could escape from his grip with ease if he wasn’t so busy trying not to spill the rest of his drink. Chaperoned by a flock of excited youngsters, Cody marched him over to the storefront. Hollers, big smiles, hands on his shoulders: his men welcomed him like he was coming home from war. 

“Finally, Cody. I thought you’d never show,” Boil was saying as he climbed down the front steps, pressing something blessedly cool into his free hand.

“You know I’m everyone’s favorite akk-mule at HQ, Lieutenant. Don’t act surprised.” 

“Nah, wouldn’t have expected anything else. It’s just like them to keep you working on a special day.”

Good thing I’m fast, then, Cody thought to himself. Smiling, he twisted Zinger’s bottle from his fingers. The trooper freed himself with a distressed shout.

“Hey!”

Dodging Zinger’s half-baked attempts at swiping it back, Cody used the stolen bottle to pop the cap off his own.

“Whoa there! Picking fights already, Commander?” 

“Just having some good old-fashioned fun, Boil.” It felt nice. He elbowed Boil lightly before returning the bottle to Zinger’s waiting palm, clinking his own against it. “Cheers, men!”

They raised their drinks as one. Cody eagerly tipped his head back, letting the liquid trail cold relief down his throat and all the way into his stomach. Its taste lay somewhere between dismal and sweet, typical for beer brewed under wartime restrictions, perfect in its own way. He wanted that buzz, that forget-about-tomorrow aftertaste. 

Someone spluttered. 

“I can’t do the whole thing at once.”

“Really, Wooley? You’ve lost your touch.”

Wooley was wiping his mouth while Crys patted his back with enthusiasm. Cody looked down—his bottle was empty. Off to a good start. The youngsters hollered some more, proudly holding up the drinks they’d chugged. He laughed with them. 

There was a hand on his arm, then, pulling him into the shop. 

“Is something the matter?” he asked Boil once they were inside, brushing the door chime away from his face. The room smelled of pet food. “You’re not drinking.”

“Nope. Still can’t.” Boil took Cody’s bottle and wedged it into the beer case behind the counter. “Besides, someone ought to watch what you geniuses get up to when you’re shit-faced.” 

Ah. 

“Very responsible of you, Lieutenant.” 

“Yup.”

Boil went off to the back room, rooting around for something or another. Metal scraped against aluminum. Cody’s eyes snapped to a figure in the corner: it was Reva, draped over a chair, eating bantha spam from a field meal container. She waved at him with her spoon.

“Do you happen to have any more of those?” he asked upon stepping closer, gesturing at the food. Hell, he was hungry, and the taste of alcohol only served to whet his appetite. 

“Boil is getting one for you right now.”

Humming approvingly, Cody deliberated sitting down on the supply crate next to her, but his spine would rather he didn’t. He braced his hands on his hips instead. 

“So. Scarif, hm? Tell me about that.”

“Aren’t you on a need-to-know basis?”

“That hasn’t stopped me in the last four years, Sergeant.”

“Fine.” She scraped the last bits of gristle from the container before setting it down. “Well, I’m sure you’ve caught that it wasn’t exactly a cakewalk.”

“But you secured the objective.”

“The signal tower? Of course we did. Undamaged, so on and so forth.”

Pride swelled in Cody’s chest. Too many Republic attempts at capturing Scarif back from the Separatists had gone horribly, horribly wrong—naturally, his people would be the ones to set those mistakes right. 

“We got washed, though,” Reva continued, “literally. Our position on that archipelago just sank, but we couldn’t go anywhere or have the Vigilance come down, so we ended up camping in the walkers for weeks while the sandbank got flushed away from under us.” She crossed her arms. “So, screw Scarif.” 

“Nova told me earlier that they’re still trying to get all that salt out of the walkers’ joints. Sometimes I’m glad I’m not on active duty anymore,” Boil said with a sympathetic grin as he emerged from the back room, steaming ration pack in hand. 

Thoughts of frigid seawater and the constant spray of rain swirled in Cody’s head, comforting echoes of the early days when all he had to worry about was passing tests and growing taller. He dug into the food. Ground and canned meat; almost a luxury for people like him.

“I wouldn’t have minded.”

Boil guffawed. “Sure, you wouldn’t.”

“We did miss you out there. It’s a good thing you showed Master Obi-Wan how to run a tight ship—he did say you would’ve liked that mission,” Reva said, smirking a little. The expression was infectious. 

“Where is he, anyway? I thought I was the only one running late.” Cody glanced over his shoulder and out of the store window. An undefinable emotion crossed Reva’s face when he looked back, something quickly wiped away. It came free with a sinking feeling deep in his gut. “There’s a problem.”

Boil had returned to his place behind the counter, fetching more drinks for the boys outside, but his silence was full of intent. 

“Well…” she drew out the words. “No. According to him, there isn’t one. He’s just busy on top of that.”

“On top of what?” 

“Cody, trust me. He’ll find us, and he’ll drink enough to kill a rancor, and we’ll all be having the time of our lives. He’s only had—how did he put it? ‘A slight change of routine.’ So don’t worry.”

Cody exchanged a long, doubtful stare with Boil before he shrugged, returning to his meal. 

“If you say so.”

 

---

 

Rex looked out of place in the dormitory’s recreation area. 

“Awfully nice of them to let you live here,” he said, shuffling his feet. 

“Only for the time being. They’ll kick me out as soon as I can hold down a job.”

They were alone this late at night. A wintery chill clawed its way through the building’s walls, pebbling Cody’s skin beneath his blacks. 

“And what job will that be?”

The question made his mind feel empty and his fists clench around nothing. Nobody had told him yet. He wasn’t sure he wanted to hear. Biting down on those thoughts, he limped onto the wrestling mat. Rex followed suit, hands ever-close, face creased with concern. 

“Whatever it is, I’ll have to be ready for it.” Cody dug his toes into the soft material and breathed in. “And I cannot be ready if all I do is lie in bed.”

“Of course. I’m not sure you should be doing this, though,” Rex said cautiously, still hovering like Cody was a toddler taking his first steps. Well-meaning, but insufferable. Cody gently batted away his hands. 

“I don’t need you to help me sit down, old boy, I need a training partner. You’re the only man for the job. Now come on.” 

“Cody—”

“Do you expect me to do any work like this?” He waved his arm in front of Rex’s face like it was evidence. Cody had watched it grow sallow and sinewy over the endless weeks away from exercise and sunlight. His legs were much worse. “My men have high expectations. Stars, I know you expect things from me, Rex, so stop wasting time.”

“...Right.” His brother stepped away, subdued. “So, what do you want to start with?” 

Squats. Lunges. Push-ups. Anything. Cody cast a yearning glance over at the weight machines, the benches and the racks, the plates and barbells. Nothing he could handle at the moment. 

“The cadet calisthenics routine,” he decided, rolling his shoulders. 

“You’re serious.” 

“Do you think I’m joking?” His tone would have made a lesser man flinch. He knew Rex, yes—well enough to trust that he would never be intimidated by him, no matter their respective ranks—but the disquiet in his eyes gave Cody pause. 

He looked away. 

“Sorry.”

Rex sighed. “No, Cody, it’s fine. I just don’t get why you’re in such a hurry.”

“We both know what happens if I don’t get back into shape.”

“Yes, but—”

“Cadet calisthenics. Module one. Watch my form for me.”

Without further ado, Cody dropped down into a plank. Blackness lapped at the fringes of his vision as he propped himself up on his fists. “I’ll do three sets of twenty. Keep count,” he pressed out.

“If you’re sure.”

One, two, three.

Push-ups were supposed to be easy. Cody was built to carry double his weight with ease. Some days he felt that his arms could move mountains. He was used to this strength being his steady companion, pulling him any way he wanted, caving in droid heads like they were made of cardboard. 

Eight, nine, ten.

Now, it just hurt. His core would not tighten, making every push upward a trembling fight against breakdown. His shoulders burned. 

Eleven, twelve—

“Form’s looking a little rough, Cody.”

Rex’s voice sounded like he had spoken through a wad of cotton. Blood pounded in Cody’s ears. He was stuck with his chest against the ground and he couldn’t, not even in the deepest depths of himself, find the strength to wrest himself back up.

He pushed.

“Cody—”

His elbow buckled. He crashed into the mat, unable to do anything but roll onto his back. The fluorescent tube lights glared down at him from the ceiling, painful, merciless, until they were blocked by a blond-stubbled head. 

“Hey.” Rex reached out, jostling his shoulder. “You okay?”

No. 

“Want a hand up?”

No, Cody wanted to say, because he hated the alternative. He took the proffered hand anyway, letting himself be pulled to his feet. A grunt stuck in his throat—his back made him see stars for a moment.

“This was a bad idea,” Rex said, holding him steady. Cody could practically hear the I-told-you-so. 

“I’m fine.”

“I shouldn’t have let you push that far.” Shaking his head, Rex took to rubbing his biceps as though looking for an injury. It hurt. Everything did. 

“It’s nothing.” Cody braced himself on his brother’s shoulder, wincing, shifting his weight onto his left foot. It brought no relief. 

“Stars, you can barely stand!”

Together, they shuffled off the mat. The edges of the room blurred in Cody’s mind, his focus snapping from a bruise on the wall to a dent in Rex’s vambrace.

“There’s an alert on your comlink,” he said, nodding down. Rex cursed. 

“Looks like I’ll have to go. That’s the chief.”

“I thought you were on leave.”

“Well, you know how General Skywalker is.”

Cody scoffed, gathering the shards of his dignity up from where they had been scattered. “Again? Shore leave is shore leave. You should tell him that sometime.”

“Easy for you to say.” Both of them tensed. A beat of deadly silence: Rex realized his mistake. “I mean—with your Jedi not being a General anymore, and all that. You know.”

“I don’t see how anyone’s rank is a factor here, Rex. But if Skywalker were still a Jedi, you wouldn’t be calling him General, either.” A demotion might have done that boy some good down the line. The Hero Without Fear. The Republic’s scourge. To think they had been friends once upon a time… “How do you keep putting up with him? Honestly.”

“Like you haven’t earned some ungainly titles yourself?”

Cody heard his own pulse like a war drum. Pushing himself away from his brother’s helping hands, he limped over to where his cane leaned abandoned against the wall, swaying, nauseous. Rex went after him.

“It’s war, Cody! You know that better than anyone.” 

Not like that. Not like him. He stood in front of his cane, this innocuous object. The tendons in his elbows blazed along with every muscle in his upper body, burning a trail of misery down his spine. Skywalker, the war, that look on Rex’s face, this useless body. It threatened to burst from his hands in an unbridled discharge of built-up steam. 

“...Cody?”

He was still staring at the damned cane. An idea formed.

“Let’s have a spar.” 

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“Why?”

It would make the pain better. Cody could feel it. All he needed was a hit of adrenaline and a fist in his face—pain that he was used to, aches he could process better than the slug eating his bones from the inside. His veins burned.

“It’ll help.”

Rex looked at him, eyes big and so full of care. “I think you’re going to bed. Come on, take the cane.”

It was cool against Cody’s palm when he wrapped his fingers around it. “I could use it to hit you.” 

“Cody. Please.”

“I’m only asking for one round.” He lifted the cane, watched its tip waver in the air. “Don’t tell me you’re scared.”

“Of what, man? That won’t do anything.” Rex moved closer, sure and strong. He spread his arms. “Why not? Go ahead! Hit me right in the face, if you want. I won’t even feel it tomorrow.” 

Cody blinked. The cane was made of metal alloy; light but sturdy, telescopic, with a solid pommel that could act as a mace in any fight. A good weapon. There was Rex’s bare head, right in front of him—an easy knockout. And yet…

Weakness weighed down his arms. 

That won’t do anything. 

Ineffectual. Worthless. He had been reduced to this: his grip on the pommel like that of a child, arms that could not carry him through the most basic of exercises, his vision clouding over at the slightest strain.

He could not harm his brother if he tried. 

“I’m not fighting you—we’re not taking that risk now. You’re lucky they decided to keep you alive at all.” Rex squeezed his wrist. Warm. Falling short of comfort.

“There’s no such thing as luck,” Cody said faintly. 

“Yeah, that’s why we’re not sparring right now, okay? I don’t want to get you killed.”

The burning sensation didn’t go away. It was his pride, Cody realized; sizzling and smoking, being put out on the floor like a piece of flimsi caught on fire. Rex’s eyes flashed with hope.

“Let’s get you back to your bunk. We can try again in a few days—maybe with something lighter?”

It wasn’t condescension, Cody told himself. Rex would never do that to him. It was only concern, common sense, the judgment of a mind not addled by pain or medicine. His shoulders sagged.

“Fine.”

 

---

 

Three drinks in, the world began taking on an ephemeral glow. A pleasant blur, a layer of plastoid wrap between dreams and reality. 

Dim light. People on the dance floor. Colors bleeding into each other, voices mingling with music, shouted conversations. There was no pain in this world, all discomfort banished behind that see-through wrapping. Cody traced the condensation on his empty glass, and it was as though the touchpoint warded off the gnawing creature in his marrow. It made him feel like himself. 

His forearms adhered to the table. A sheen of sweat snaked from his wrists to his elbows, his shirt sticking to his shoulders where he was wedged between Crys and Wooley. 

“And then,” Nova gestured with his bottle, almost hitting Wyler’s chin in the overcrowded booth, “and then—the water, yes, it went all over, and we closed the hatches, and we marched our walkers all the way across the seafloor. You should’ve seen the looks on those Seppies’ faces when we pulled up on that beach, sir! I won’t ever forget that.”

“I can imagine,” Cody said. His insides churned joyfully. 

“I hated it!” Wooley tapped his glass on the table twice, shaking with mirth. “Really didn’t appreciate the way the hull was creaking when we got stuck in that reef.”

“What I could've done without the most was the nat-borns, man. Freaking out like a bunch of tookas in a cage.” 

“Wet tookas in a cage, Zinger,” Crys cut in. “Even worse.”

Leaning back against the ceramic tiling of the booth divider, Cody fixed his men with a quizzical stare. “All these years and they still squeak under pressure?” 

A cause for concern. When he had dropped out of frontline duty, the 212th had not yet been taken over by nat-born troops as other forces had. One of the last units with a clone majority. Crys patted the back of his hand. 

“Oh, no, some of them are alright. We whip them into shape pretty good, don’t we, boys?” 

“You bet!”

“Almost too good.” Reva slumped in her corner of the booth, a long-suffering look on her face, prompting proclamations of insincere pity.

It was comforting, in a way, knowing that not too much had changed. Ease spread through Cody’s body, buzzing in his brain. 

“I’d drink to this,” he said, flicking the rim of his glass. Its chime went unheard in the noise of the bar. “But I seem to be out of juice.”

“Damn, me too.” Wooley twisted in his seat. “Didn’t we order a new round a while ago?”

The ceramic at Cody’s back had been warmed up by countless bodies. Crys and Wooley acted like space heaters by his side, a sweaty tingle creeping into his system, notching his back. The sort of sensation that not yet felt uncomfortable, but soon enough would make him yearn to jump up from this bench and do something he could not foresee. He gripped his glass a little tighter. It, too, became unbearably warm.

“Looks like the waiter’s been waylaid,” Reva remarked, eyes glinting with amusement. She had the best vantage point over the rest of the bar, looking out across the dance floor. The men craned their necks to follow her line of sight. 

Over there, amidst the busy back and forth of staff and customers, two people stood embroiled in discussion: one a Rodian waiter clearly struggling under the weight of their overloaded serving tray, the other a man Cody would recognize anywhere. 

“The hell’s he doing?” Nova asked. Whatever Obi-Wan had been saying to the waiter seemed to work. The Rodian—looking relieved and bewildered at once—hefted their tray onto his open palm and he turned to their booth victoriously, balancing the weight like it was nothing. “Ohh!”

“Drinks for table nine!” Obi-Wan announced as he set his charge down in front of them, rapping his knuckles against the table’s wooden surface in greeting. 

“About time!”

“Where have you been?” 

“So that’s why the service is so slow!”

Cody raised his voice over the general excitement, waving at Nova and Wyler to move. “Scoot over, boys, let him sit down.”

“Oh, that’s alright, take your time,” Obi-Wan said. He looked like he’d already had a drink or two somewhere; a sight Cody had become familiar with over the years. It was then that his eyes found him in the half-light. “Commander!” The old title rolled off Obi-Wan’s tongue with ease. His left hand hovered over the tray and its colorful selection of beverages. “Which one of these is yours?”

“The takodana, there.” Cody pointed at the turquoise drink that was swiftly deposited in his grasp, nice and cool, with a brush of callused fingers. “We were just about to make a toast.”

“To you?”

“To a job well done!” Crys interjected, swiping his cocktail from the tray. “And to Mr. Twenty-Five over here, of course!”

“Oh, thank you, Mr. Twenty-Four-And-A-Half.” The coolness of the drink seeped from Cody’s palms into his head, a stream of soothing water. A smile etched itself onto his face when the others burst out laughing.

Even though Nova and Wyler had made room, Obi-Wan remained standing at the table’s head, the skin around his eyes crinkled by good humor. He raised his glass. “Well, then. A toast to all of us.” Everyone at the table stood, and Cody could only follow along. “And, naturally, to our dear Commander on this very special day!”

The group’s attention shifted onto him. He took it gladly along with the curiosity of strangers as their raised voices turned heads around the neighboring booths. He could carry it. Perhaps he was beginning to feel a little giddy.

“Technically, that very special day was yesterday, but I’ll forgive the late start,” he said lightly, directing a pointed look at Obi-Wan on the last word. Next to him, Crys chuckled. “Not to get too sappy, but I’m grateful to be here with all of you. Really. I can only be proud of what you continue to achieve, to stand here with the best the Republic has to offer. And—don’t coo at me, Boil, you’re not a porg.”

“Sorry, sorry,” Boil said unapologetically from his corner.

“Thank you.” Cody affected a sigh. “I know there’s not much sense in holding grand speeches for the lot of you, so I’ll just say this: bottoms up, boys!”

“Hell yeah!”

“To you, sir!”

Glass clinked against glass. Cody knocked back half of his takodana, some of it spilling into his collar when everyone, predictably, felt the need to reach out and jostle him some more. He couldn’t complain. This was the best time he’d had in the past four years, and he didn’t want it to end. Ever.

He took another large swig to rid himself of the inevitabilities. 

It was only when Obi-Wan finally decided to slide into the space freed across from him that Cody got his first good look at the man’s right hand. He nearly sputtered. At the end of that long sleeve, he saw not flesh but shining metal—crude, almost skeletal in appearance. Incredulous, Cody sought Reva’s gaze. 

‘Slight change of routine’, my ass.

She only shrugged back at him with innocent eyes. 

“Is something the matter?” Obi-Wan was nursing his drink, giving him that same stupid look.

“I don’t know. Should I ask?”

Obi-Wan’s bright blue spotchka only served to highlight the creases that appeared around his mouth. “I’m sure there are much better tales I could regale you with, Cody. We were away for over a year, after all.”

None of his brothers had mentioned the damned hand and even the usually-blunt Reva had been dancing around it—Cody concluded it was a sore topic. 

“We already told him about the seafloor walkers,” Wyler chimed in. 

Alright. Okay. He'd play their game.

“I still want to hear more about those, actually. I didn’t know something like that was possible.” Sub-surface tension melted into comfortable attentiveness as Cody spoke. He knew his old Jedi’s tells like the back of his hand. “How did you get them across that reef? And what did you do to keep the vitals from flooding?”

Obi-Wan brightened, leaning forward in his seat along with half of the table’s other occupants, all talking over each other in their eagerness to share the full brilliance of their maneuver with him. 

 

---

 

Everyone loved sports bars. They were a bit much when sober, but now, he was far from that. The sky outside began to tint orange, the same color as his drink. Midnight came and went, and an orange beverage became a relay of rich browns in much smaller glasses, soaking his flesh. 

The Boonta broadcasted many events on even more screens. Podracing, gravball, repulsor puck, shockboxing, Z-Slam. Tonight's highlight was a derby match, its prominence filling the bar to the brim with a wide assortment of knuckleheads.

Did Cody care about Coruscanti limmie teams? Not particularly. But stars, it was hard not to in this atmosphere, half-crowded onto the unused pool table, inhaling sweat and fumes and pure energy with his eyes glued to the screen overhead. An uproar went through the room when team blue took the lead over team red. The burly man next to him threw his head back so aggressively that Cody was nearly sent sprawling across the table, catching himself on its green baize surface. On all sides, he was surrounded by people in red sports uniforms, ruffling their hair and gesturing at the screen in exasperation. He found himself glad his shirt was close enough in color to theirs. 

Zinger, who had been wearing a blue tank top all evening, now stood shirtless by the bar. Smart. Hard to tell if it was just too hot or if the young soldier was actually avoiding confrontation. Perhaps Cody should ask him to swap shirts, just to see how easy it would be to pick a fight with the overwhelming number of reds in here. They were aggravated. Pent-up. 

He took another swig of his Aldhanian whisky. It was a winning type of night, and as the liquid seared down his throat, he felt he could take on anyone. Just like the old times. Easy.

His voice of reason managed to stick its head out from the pool of booze it had been steeping in, lilting in the back of his skull. 

Do you want to lose your teeth so badly?

It had a point. His insurance didn’t cover that. None of this would be a problem if he had his helmet, but then again, beating a sloshed limmie fan in full gear wasn’t good form, either. 

They’d hunt you all the way to your apartment, too.

His next sip didn't go down well. The pool table at his back increasingly irritated him. He didn’t like being crowded into it by people who looked far too young to be the same age as him, or the way only half of his ass was parked on the table’s edge and what that was doing to his spine. 

Spotting Boil in a booth on the sidelines, Cody elbowed his way over to him. Some of his brothers were scattered throughout the bar; by the screens, in the smokers’ corner, queueing for more drinks. Others had returned to base or disappeared into the night with someone on their arm. Understandable, after such a long time away from private bunks and the attention of beautiful strangers. 

Boil wasn’t alone in his booth. Across him sat a trandoshan—red shirt—intently listening to whatever he was saying. Something related to the operation of big cannons, Cody surmised from the jagged gestures Boil performed while unsubtly flexing his arms at his reptilian company. All black scales and horns highlighted by some sort of glittery, crimson adhesive. Majestic. As he drew closer, Cody caught a snippet of Boil’s monologue:

“—rule number one of artillery operation: never handle the charges alone. They’re heavier than you think.”

Ah, artillery etiquette. Ingrained into every shiny who ever ventured close to an SPHA-T, and then some. Not even Cody had been safe from those lectures. Neither had their Jedi been spared after the mass demotions, much to everyone’s delight.

“Initiating limmies into the army now, are we, Boil?” 

Shit, his tongue was heavy. Cody still managed to conduct himself in a lordly manner, or at least so he hoped, when he wandered up the two steps to the bar’s booth section. 

“Y’know, Commander, when you spend your whole life in there, you kinda just find yourself circling back to it,” Boil yelled over the noise. “Wanna suggest anything else I could tell my new friend here about?”

The trandoshan looked at Cody like he had just interrupted something important. Maybe he had. Tapping the tip of his index finger against his glass, he tried to find a witty retort to Boil’s question. The basics of trench construction—he still knew those by heart. Or the protocol for messengers in case all communications failed. Words like construction and communications felt daunting in his mouth.

Before Cody could make up his mind, the crowd behind him erupted. He spun around to a roaring sea of red, countless arms stretched triumphantly in the air: team red had scored an equalizer. Zinger still stood by the bar, utterly drenched in sweat, and Cody had to bear witness as he chucked his half-empty drink across the room like it was a cylinder grenade. The plastic cup spun in the air, showering everyone in range with third-rate beer. 

Great. 

Boil, burdened with sobriety, looked just about ready to drag Zinger outside. Cody held up his hand. 

“I’ll get him. You stay with your sweetheart,” he called over his shoulder. Perhaps it was a trick of the light, but Boil went a little red in the booth’s shadow. 

“If you’re sure, Commander.”

Of course he was. He marched over, slung an arm around Zinger’s midriff (it felt like holding a fish), and dragged him along for the second time that day, all the way out into the street. 

It was still hot outside. If it were just slightly less so, steam would be rising from both their scalps, as Cody himself was shining with sweat. He let go of Zinger, rubbing his now-free hand dry on his pant leg. 

“You’ve got to get your shit together, soldier.”

Zinger looked dazed, like he was just now realizing where they were. “...Sir?”

Cody leaned against the wall, feeling dizzy himself. It had to be the night air getting to his brain. “I don’t—” he swallowed a wave of gas rising from his stomach, “I don’t want you behaving like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like a stars-forsaken monkey-lizard, Corporal!” Zinger flinched at his use of the old Commander’s bark, and if the people on the street hadn’t already been staring at the half-naked clone, they certainly were now. “Some of us gotta live here, Zinger, and fuck knows people can’t tell the difference between any of us—so, behave.”

Whisky glass in hand, he swayed. His own voice echoed back to him from the surrounding buildings. Too loud. He didn’t care. 

“Sorry, sir.”

“What’s that?”

Zinger looked ridiculous as he drunkenly clicked his heels together in the light of the bar's neon sign. “I apologize, sir!”

“Mh-hm.” Cody shifted against the stone at his back, taking a slow sip of his drink. “What for, again?”

The corporal, bless him and his bravery, didn’t hesitate this time. “For throwing my beer across the bar, sir!”

Someone chuckled in the darkness of the street. Another pair of passersby sneered. Cody stared them down, them and their trail of rare perfume, their expensive clothes and luminescent entry armbands for the private club down the street. 

Come on. Try me. 

They didn’t, no matter how much he itched for it. He watched them saunter off for a few long seconds. Zinger still stood at attention in front of him, leaning awkwardly as though he could fall over any moment. 

“At ease, Corporal.”

Zinger heaved a sigh of relief, trudging closer. Cody held him back before he could re-enter the bar, softly, with no real force in his fingers. 

“You know you’re not under my command anymore, right?

He wasn't sure why he had asked. The boy seemed confused, too.

“Huh? You’re my Commander, sir.” 

“I’m just an office clerk. You know that, boy. You don’t have to listen to me,” Cody said, holding his gaze, squeezing his forearm where he had gripped it. “S’good that you do, though.” 

Discomfort passed through Zinger’s expression. He pulled himself loose, taking a step back. “I—what’re you talking about?”

“Me being an office clerk, Corporal.” 

That got him a peal of laughter. “Nah, sir. No way you are. Not really.” 

Puzzling. 

“So what am I?” 

“Easy, sir. You're the big man. Always were. Fuck the office, you're better than that.” Zinger pumped his bare chest. “I know it in here!” 

Better than that, Cody's thoughts echoed dully. He stared into the night. Why the hell was he stuck on Coruscant, then? 

“Sir?”

“Go back inside,” he said, clapping Zinger’s shoulder. The world was spinning. He needed a moment. 

Better than that.

It was just the alcohol. Too much, or not enough? It was always so hard to tell. As soon as Zinger was gone, he downed the rest of his glass in one go, felt it settle in his stomach like sharpened flint. It nearly made him retch. Then, it made him calm.

Sure, he was better in their minds. They didn’t see him go to work each morning just to sit on his ass and count speeders on a screen. They didn’t see him struggle to rise from his high-backed chair. They didn’t see him sagging against the inside of his apartment door after a day of barely lifting a finger. 

Red light shone from above. Cody raised his eyes to the familiar billboard, to the polished armor and brandished rifles.

Join the Sky Corps!

Zinger was right. He was better. He was the big man who did not wallow. Staring down, he saw that a small drop of whisky remained at the bottom of his glass. He let it slide onto his tongue, savored it, embracing the vertigo and softened lines of the vortex-world around him. 

The bar’s climate hit him like a brick. Less oxygen, more pressure. After depositing the empty glass on the first table he came across, Cody stalked off into the darkened side corridors. Most of the strip lights along the ceiling edge weren’t working, with dead insects gathered inside the ones that did give off a faint glow. The restroom had to be somewhere around here. He somewhat desperately needed to use it.

Shouts floated in from the main floor, exasperated—a near goal, Cody assumed as he ventured further along the hallway. 

One fun thing about Coruscant’s architecture was that the ground, technically speaking, did not exist. Just buildings upon buildings upon artificial platforms. Hence, it wasn't uncommon for plumbing to be located in the most unlikely corners of the floor plan. Case in point: the seemingly endless staircase he was descending right now, framed on all sides by transparisteel, overlooking nothing but the ugly gap between two skyscrapers. 

He saw the wet stain on the steps too late. Slipping in his form-over-function office boots, he caught the railing before his head could slam into it, but his legs were already far out from under him. His body stretched along the stairs. Pain shot from his pelvis into his ribs. Biting down a curse, he used the momentum to yank himself back up along the railing, stumbling down the remaining steps. 

A whistle resounded from the top of the flight. 

“Very athletic, Commander.”

He resisted the urge to rub at his back as Obi-Wan ambled down the stairs after him,  two more men passing by from downstairs, cackling. 

“This is a sports bar,” Cody groused. “Watch the wet spot.”

Obi-Wan’s shoulders were loose, as was his gait. His prosthetic remained limp by his side—he wouldn’t be able to catch himself if he fell, but he appeared unconcerned about taking a tumble. Instead, he chose to skip most of the stairs in a leap that looked too effortless to span the distance it ended up covering, landing next to Cody with a dull thud that made his back twinge in sympathy. Obi-Wan overbalanced, floundered. His prosthetic hit Cody’s shoulder, unable to grip it.

“Ouch,” Cody said, reaching out to steady his old friend. “Had enough to drink yet?”

“I’m doing alright.” Obi-Wan straightened, flesh hand moving as though to sweep his hair out of his face, an ancient gesture made pointless by how short he kept it these days. He went on to tug his shirt—deep blue and wet in places—back into shape. “Seems like Zinger did, though. He's always had a good arm, hasn't he?”

“What, did he get you?”

“Oh, yes. Very refreshing.” 

That explained the stains. Cody huffed out a laugh. “Yeah. I chewed him right out just now.”

“Poor thing,” Obi-Wan drawled, grinning into his beard. It wasn’t by much, but it, too, had been trimmed shorter. Cody thought it made him look a little younger, a little meaner—befitting of their unit. 

They made their way down the last flight of stairs towards the restroom. One could hear it from all the way down the hall, packed as it was, and smell it from almost the same distance. It was odd: Cody could handle field latrines. He had no problem pissing in empty ammo cans while lying flat in a foxhole. He’d waded through sewers. He’d been punished with cleaning duty on Kamino and crawled through viscera on more planets than he could count—but he could not for the life of him get used to venue toilets. 

The stench, once they had stepped through the door, was beastly. People standing too close together, talking at high volume as they waited, smoking shamelessly. A herbal fog lay over the room and gathered under the ceiling, forming a hellish bouquet with the smell of limmie fans and their excretions. The lights were too bright. Liquid crept along between the floor tiles. 

“I’m not using those,” Cody yelled over the din, pointing at the urinals. The walls and the floor around them were vile—he didn’t want any of that sticking to the soles of his shoes. Multiple others tried to stay as far away from the urinals as possible, opting for the stalls instead. 

“I’d rather find some alley corner.” Obi-Wan wrinkled his nose, shuffling closer to Cody when a group of particularly stewed red-shirts started a chant. Their voices reverberated in the tiled space uncomfortably.

“You can, if I get to write you up for public indecency after.”

“You can’t do that.” A dubious frown. “Can you?”

No, Cody couldn’t, but the thought brought him joy. “I can and I will. Law and order, boss.”

“Oh, dear. Look what’s become of our democracy,” Obi-Wan said in turn, deeply unserious. It was an old saying by now, repeated all too often. The baying limmie fans around them only made it more comedic. Cody chuckled.

A man lumbered from the stall closest to them. As the door swung behind him, Cody stole a look inside—nothing good to be seen there, but at least the floor was cleaner than that by the urinals. 

All he wanted was to get out of this place. Obi-Wan seemed to follow the same line of thinking. The glimmer in his eye told of his intent. 

They darted for the stall at once, elbows out, squeezing through the door and almost jostling it from its hinges. The scuffle didn't last more than a second: Obi-Wan, ever slippery, nearly managed to get ahead, too close to tripping Cody on his way in. Cody held on to his shirt to keep himself from falling—a foul in traditional wrestling rules, but this wasn't exactly the ring of honor. 

When the door fell shut again, he saw that the lock had been torn clean off. 

“That wasn’t us,” he said. 

“Must’ve been someone else,” Obi-Wan agreed. People had barely noticed the scuffle over the all-consuming noise.

There was an unspoken truce in the air between them as they went about their business. Nothing they hadn’t done before—sanitation aboard spaceships and in the field had occasionally been just as cramped as this. Cody, wobbling only a little, extended one foot behind himself to keep the door shut. 

Obi-Wan heard the thud, ceased fiddling with his buttons, looked over his shoulder. Snorted. 

“Something funny?”

“You look—” He swayed, leaning ever so slightly into Cody’s side. “You look like a rejected concept for a Naboo fountain, Cody.” 

Huh? 

Oh. 

Cody tried not to shake with repressed laughter as he continued to stand over the toilet bowl on one leg. “Shut up."

Obi-Wan was still struggling to open his fly. The prosthetic didn’t help, stiff and inanimate, clumsy. Painful to watch. With his mind happily marinating in its coat of alcohol, Cody almost offered to lend a hand. He curbed the thought. Letting something like that slip would haunt him forever.

Around them, the walls were decked out in scribbles and stickers of all sorts. Some political, some nonsensical, some lewd. Ass, tits, and calls for anarchy—a familiar sight. In the first years of war, he had made the troopers behind any such ‘redecorations’ of their star destroyer remove them in the most tedious ways possible. In the more recent ones, he'd just let them be. Who cared if people stuck pornographic images to the insides of stall doors? It wasn't like there was anywhere else on the ship where a rank-and-file soldier could have a moment of peace. 

When they made it back out, Boil was standing in line. His attention settled on them within a second along with that stupid grin. 

“Too old to do it on your own now, Mr. Twenty-Five?” he predictably shouted. Cody didn’t feel like playing defense. He may not formally be the 212th’s Commander anymore, but that did not keep him from putting his former underling in his place.

“You know how it is,” he yelled back, “rule number one of heavy artillery, Boil!”

The phrase lit a spark in Obi-Wan’s eye. Always up for a bout of mischief, especially when wasted, he flung his arm over Cody’s shoulder. “Never handle the charges alone!”

Fucking glorious. 

Cody’s good senses reclined in their bath of whisky as they cheered themselves on, pressing past a speechless Boil and out of the stinkhole. 

 

---

 

From that point forward, his memory became spotty. He didn’t recall leaving The Boonta, but he was sure he’d gone for spotchka shots with Obi-Wan beforehand. He had no recollection of the trek to 79’s, either, and even less of an idea about how that had panned out. 

The alcohol was supposed to soothe the creature. Instead it writhed down his back, eating all that was good in his flesh and shitting out a trail of misery. Teeth sunk deep into the dips above his hip, tail dragging wetly across his skull, squirming against his bowels. 

Coruscant’s metro flashed by. Faces, hands, voices. He was certain he spoke with them, briefly, if his tongue was producing intelligible Basic at all. The creature wouldn’t stop. Sitting on the repulsor train’s seats worsened its efforts—he needed to pace, but there were too many people, and the ride was too bumpy, and he did not trust his feet. 

Darkness cradled the city in its brief summer embrace when the group of them stumbled out of the station. His vision blurred. He couldn’t quite read the time or place displayed on the destination board, had never used public transport enough to recognize this station and its surroundings. The skyline remained unidentifiable as its largest buildings had cut their lights. Even the billboards had gone black. Only vague giants of concrete and glass loomed over him, fuzzy in the night and smog. 

Why did everything have to hurt so much? Cody eyed the pavement, aching for somewhere to rest. His bed was so far away and the duracrete was beginning to look comfortable…

Right. His apartment. That’s where they were going. No street lights to guide them, not even a homely glow from the windows framing the run-down streets because it was simply that late. Obi-Wan stumbled along by his side. He squinted into the darkness, down the alleys they passed. Suspicious. Primed for attack like a well-trained dog, graying, but sharp as ever. It felt a little like the old times: them, together, creeping up on their mission objective. 

Objective: reach apartment.

Potential obstacle: light beam around the corner. Running speeder engine. Aggressive music.

Cody exchanged a wobbly glance with Obi-Wan, hoping the look on his face was sufficiently grim. People were talking, their slurred words reaching his ears—three in total, all drunk.  They had better not stand in between him and his hovel. Energy poured from his shoulders to his fingertips, itching, distracting the creature. It felt good. This could be what he had been waiting for. He hastened his steps, striding around the corner and into the light.

Three people as expected, hanging around an open-top speeder, blocking the alley. Cans and bottles littered the pavement, rattled by the bass emanating from the speeder’s speakers. It slipped into Cody’s nerves, made the creature undulate, made him want to jump out of his skin.

Red limmie uniforms. What team had ended up winning the game? Who would be looking for a fight tonight? Cody braced himself, pretending not to be blinded by the headlights.

Obi-Wan seemed to have no plans to let himself be hindered, walking confidently into the overbearing brightness, his tunic turning ultramarine in the glow. His right hand flashed; its metallic glint somewhere between eye-piercing and beautiful. 

“Oi, blue-shirt!” 

Here we go.

Tensing, Cody watched one of the men push himself off the speeder and walk toward Obi-Wan, glass bottle in hand.

“Pack up that hand of yours, won’t ya?” The wiry young man lifted a finger to pull at the skin under his left eye, swaying in the breeze. “I don’t like seeing it.”

“Don’t like that color you’re wearing, either!” Another one called, still perched on the speeder’s hood. The third man in the driver’s seat booed as though Obi-Wan was the blue team’s best striker himself. But he slid past the youngster like he hadn’t even heard him, something Cody struggled to understand, something that chased thrills through his every muscle.

Don’t turn your back, his reasoning called, he’s got a weapon, don’t you see, he’s got a bottle right there, he’s going to use it, he’s going to get you—

“Hey!” The wiry one grabbed Obi-Wan by the shoulder, rough, crumpling the fabric of his shirt. “Didn’t you hear? Are you deaf? Did they knock out your brains in the war, huh?”

Cody had crossed the distance before his brain registered the fact that he had moved. His fingers closed around the youngster’s wrist—the one with the bottle—and latched on tight. 

“The hell d’you want, pops—” Recognition flashed across the kid’s face. He laughed. “Shit, guys, look! Look at him! You see that?”

“Ohh!”

“No way, man!”

That young mouth bared its teeth. “You. Tell your guy that we don’t like him. Do it in your army hand signs, yeah?” He jostled Obi-Wan rudely while trying to free his wrist. Cody met his friend’s eyes, his friend who was just standing there, who might as well put his hands in his pockets for all the good he didn't bother doing. 

“Back off,” Cody told the kid. 

Last chance, boy.  

“You deaf, too? Tell your buddy to fuck off, man!”

The kid tried to yank himself free again, more erratically this time, and keeping him fixed made the creature bite down harder on the flesh of Cody’s back. The driver sneered.

“You gonna let that meat droid geezer treat you like that?” 

The tingle in Cody’s arms turned into a throb. Could he crush the kid’s wrist if he only tried hard enough? He used to be able to manage that with much sturdier opponents, years ago. 

“Let go of me! Fuck, let go!”

Finally, the kid untangled his fingers from Obi-Wan’s tunic. A series of stupid decisions followed.

One: the kid shoved Obi-Wan. Half-assed and harmless, perhaps, but that didn’t stop the rush from building in Cody’s blood. Two: the second young man stepped closer, too close, too fast, too far in Cody’s blind spot. Claxons blared in his head. Three: the kid raised his newly free hand.

The music pounded as one with his pulse, with the gnawing of the beast. There was only one way this could play out—he’d always had a reputation for dishing out gnarly left hooks, and tonight was no exception.

He struck the kid’s liver. Fast. Hard. The bottle shattered at their feet, the kid hitting the floor along with the splaying shards. 

Elation bubbled in Cody’s abdomen, fist tingling, thoughts chanting yes, yes, finally even as the second man grabbed him from behind. Brute strength locked around his torso. Good. They didn’t know he worked in an office, they couldn’t pity him for what he’d lost, going at him like he’d never been injured at all. Liberating. 

His assailant’s arms moved, trying to pull him into a chokehold. Instinct took over. Cody thrust himself back, locking the man’s leg with his own, turning out and throwing him to the ground. Like unloading a sandbag. Like tossing his kit down after a day of marching. Just the sound was different now—less of a thump, more of a crack. 

The adrenaline caressed him. There was no pain, the fight was all that mattered. He still had it in him, he could still do it, he was better.

A scream carried over the music. The kid had gathered himself up, holding what remained of the broken bottle by the neck, countless sharp edges dripping with clear liquid. Cody readied himself. Finally a challenge, someone charging at him with true intent. His world of soft lines and vertigo zeroed in on the kid, on the glass blade, muffling everything else—

Metal flashed before him. Shards flew, and he turned his face from them just in time to see the driver hurtling at him. A fist in his stomach. His vision went black for a second. People were shouting, his back pressing into stone, and the driver was on him, snarling and wild-eyed. Past the driver’s shoulder, he could see Obi-Wan deal with the kid in swift motions. 

The driver wouldn’t let up. Numbness blossomed across Cody’s face where he’d been hit. He bucked, but it didn’t help; not until a boot connected to the driver’s ribs, sending him sprawling. 

Cody struggled to his feet. Almost fell down. Steadied himself on the wall. Everything was wobbly. There was Obi-Wan, all blue cloth in Cody’s adjusting vision, hunched over the kid. 

“Here’s what you’re going to do,” he heard him hiss, “you’re going to take your friend there, and you’ll bring him to the hospital, and you won’t remember who hurt him, yes?”

“You f—”

“You won’t remember who hurt him.”

Was the fight over? Cody looked around, from the driver who lay curled on his side to the young man who had gone glassy-eyed on the pavement, blood trickling out from the back of his head. 

“...I won’t remember who hurt him.” 

The scrawny one went to sit in the speeder, dazed, while Obi-Wan stalked over to drag the driver upright. He did it with one hand. The other dangled from his stump, broken off at the wrist, riddled with glass shards. 

“You’re sober?”

“Y-yes."

“You’ll find a hospital?”

“Yes.”

“And you won’t remember who did that to him.”

“And I won’t remember who did that to him.”

Obi-Wan helped the driver load his unconscious friend into the vehicle. And just like that, the whole lot of them were off, loud music dissolving into the night. Cody stared after them in the silence that followed.

“Was that necessary?” Obi-Wan spat after a moment, slurring the last word. He staggered, and he didn’t mean to make Cody’s pulse spike again, but the tone of his voice, the way his feet were still positioned for combat—it put him on edge. 

“He had it coming.” 

A guffaw, dismissive, full of that old haughtiness that was so familiar. “They were just some idiots.”

“He was gonna hit you with that bottle!”

And what had Obi-Wan been doing, anyway? Almost getting glass into his eyes? Not even letting him deal with the driver on his own?

“D’you think I can’t handle myself, too?” Cody stepped closer. He could smell the Jedi’s spotchka breath. “Do you?”

“You were about to get minced.” 

“I wasn’t. I had that. I’m not an invalid.”

“I never said that.”

“Everyone thinks it!”

Now Obi-Wan bristled as well, raising his chin. “Are you listening to me, or do you just want to fight?”

The hand still dangled. Cody’s face stung, and the words rattled through his head.

Yes, fuck, that was all he wanted. 

Perhaps Obi-Wan could read it in his expression, in the lines of his body. He sniffed. Plucked the prosthetic from its barebones fixture. Dropped it carelessly. Then, he dove, grappling Cody’s leg hard and fast. 

They were down on the floor in an instant. Wrestling: a crowd-favorite aboard the Vigilance, not only entertaining to the participants, but to the onlookers as well. Mean. Taxing. A fantastic exercise overall, and one Cody exceeded at. 

Wrestling a Jedi was different from bouts with his brothers. Like wrangling a nexu without claws, bending in ways his own joints balked at, quick and smooth and not entirely human. Oddly electrifying. He had managed to best Obi-Wan numerous times, and each win had sent shivers down his spine. 

It was too hot for a fight—Obi-Wan slipped out of Cody’s attempt at an arm bar by virtue of their sweaty skin, palms sliding, blunt nails scratching in their scrabble for purchase. The motions did not agree with Cody. Something in his stomach lurched, a terrible spinning sensation taking over, enough for Obi-Wan to wrench him onto his back. Cody gasped for air, anticipating the next move that his arms were too sluggish to block.

A swift straddle. Obi-Wan’s wrists crossing at his throat. His left hand’s fingers slipping beneath his collar, digging into the linen. But his right hand… had he forgotten it was gone? Cody caught that oversight, clutched Obi-Wan’s right forearm, pressing up hard. The Jedi made a pained noise, using the weight of his torso to power downward, trembling with effort, heavy on Cody’s midsection. 

His stomach roiled again, audibly this time. Obi-Wan had to feel it where he straddled him. 

Oh, no. 

Cody tried to swallow, but couldn’t against the chokehold. His abdomen convulsed. It hurt. It surged.

He threw Obi-Wan off—stars knew with what strength—and choked on himself. Rolled onto his side. Spasmed. Voided his stomach. The mixture of bile and too many different drinks burned his throat and his nose; left him heaving, coughing, spitting. 

“Fuck.” 

He spat again. Groaned. Tried to get up, but couldn’t, like all his adrenaline had been flushed out with the vomit, leaving the creature in charge. It hadn’t stopped feeding on him during the rush. It had grown fat. Its bite crushed his thoughts. He slumped on the pavement next to his shameful puddle. 

A force pulled at him, lifted him up until he sagged against a sturdy chest. Arms around him. Obi-Wan staggered under his weight, but held steady. It would be nice if Cody could feel anything besides the wailing ache that stretched from his ribcage to his hip. If it wasn’t so hot. If things weren’t miserable. He felt Obi-Wan’s beard scratch the side of his forehead, that one remaining hand rubbing patterns into his back. 

“Let’s get out of here.”

 

 

Notes:

Welp, here's Obi-Wan, almost in mint condition :D

The wip title for this chapter was “just guys being dudes (derogatory)”. A round of applause for property damage, pathetic worm behavior and possible manslaughter! Also, don’t get drunk on too many different beverages. That shit fucking GETS you.

I really like the idea of Cody being a chill guy when backed up by his family/rank/ability, but once all that is taken from him he’s prone to filling that hole in harmful ways. It’s kinda hard to write him in-character when blackout drunk since alcohol is notoriously OOC juice, so I hope this checks out!

Next up: hangovers, sober activities, and a reminder that there’s a war on. Thank you for reading! I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Chapter 3

Notes:

Formatting announcement: flashbacks from now on will be written in italics for more intuitive orientation. The previous chapters’ flashbacks have been italicized, too. Feel free to tell me if this does or doesn’t work for you, I’ve just been reading back on this fic and deemed it better to change the formatting :)

He woke to the thrum of a ceiling fan. That of a fridge, too. Little disturbances in the air, faint vibrations, particles moving and bouncing off his eardrums. A mechanical choir that greeted him every morning, inviting him to swing his legs out of bed.

Careful, now, his subsconscience warned. Don’t fall for it. 

‘It’ being the spinning sensation gaining momentum in his brain, the light diffusing through closed eyelids, his pain receptors rousing from their induced coma—trappings of a bad time if he moved too quickly. Or at all. 

In the end, his body did the work by itself. He rolled over on the mattress, and it was as though all organs barring his stomach had been cleared from his abdominal cavity, leaving only that acid-sloshing meat sack to flop against its walls. Indescribable malaise washed over him, one neuron misfiring after another.

He buried his nose in the pillow. Too warm. Soaked with olfactory information his brain was struggling to process. First, he smelled grime and tabac—then, he smelled someone else. Still frames of the night flashed by, either too bright or too dark, but all of them leading here, into this bed. To this smell. Familiar as whole, but foreign on his pillowcase; grease and sweat and exhaustion and a whiff of hard liquor. 

The smell of good times. Hard times. Of places that were anywhere but here. For a moment, he allowed himself to drift: nights spent in cramped dugouts, falling asleep the way a gun slipped from a soldier’s hand, picking himself up come morning, shaking off the cold. There had always been someone next to him. Close enough to radiate warmth, for puffs of breath to brush skin. 

Just that. Nothing more. A rifle on a rack, stashed next to his brethren, resting among plasma fumes.

The brain-carousel did not accelerate further. A chance to open his eyes just a little, regretfully, as the glow filtering in suggested the beginning of a new day. Mentally, he counted down from three to two to one, gathering resolve. 

Needles pierced his pupils. His vision swam, pinwheeling until it zeroed in on his alarm—there, in bright blue letters that stung from his eyeballs all the way into the back of his brain: 0559.

One minute until the wake-up call. He surged to shut it off in fear of the nail it would drive through his skull, a movement his brain quickly categorized as too fast, soldier, way too fast. The acid in his stomach bubbled. A miserable sound escaped him as he sagged off the mattress, kneeling on the floor with his face in the sheets. 

Nausea like a cadet’s first bout of space-sickness overcame him. His hand crept to the side of his face, from his scar to his cheek, feeling the smooth material of the bacta patch there. Poorly applied. Beneath it, more pain. 

How…?

He rose, staggering away from his sleeping nook into the hovel’s living space. Rumpled garments hung over the kitchen chair's backrest, maroon and aquamarine flung away without the slightest care for tidiness. It irked him. When he went to untangle the clothes he owned from the ones he didn’t, another burst of vertigo rendered him breathless. Bent over the back of the chair much like the stinking shirts, flickers of the way home danced before his eyes: a darkened skyline, glass shards, blood at his feet. 

Something reeked of death. Maybe it was the memory. More likely, it was him. The way to the bathroom, only a few steps removed in this cramped apartment, took an effort usually reserved for long marches. He was panting quietly by the time the door slid aside. 

More smells: mouthwash, wet cloth, butyric acid. As though someone had vomited not too long ago and already flushed it down. The lights had been off before, now flickering on as though the act of projecting light pained them. They even seemed to groan. On the rug in front of the sonic sat Obi-Wan, legs folded tight to fit in the small space, leaning back against the cabinet beneath the sink. He was wearing nothing but a pair of Cody’s shorts, a sopping towel draped across his shoulders. 

“What’s the time?” he asked without opening his eyes. 

“Six,” Cody said in reflex, his voice digging through gravel. He had to brace himself on the doorframe. Tried to think of something to say. Or form any thought in general.

Good morning—I need to use the sonic—how long have you been awake, you could’ve made caf—

—A dark alley, headlights, young voices. How young? He couldn’t remember. Not who had struck him, not what they looked like, not where, not when. Nothing came to mind except for scorching contact, the violent rush, the taste of salt and iron. The smell that lingered on his bed. 

Residue heat crept up his neck along with a sluggish kind of horror. He should remember. He really fucking should. 

“Did I kill someone last night, Obi-Wan?” 

That’s all his mouth was capable of letting loose, precariously, like a first-time waiter setting down an over-loaded tray. 

“Eleven years of war, but today marks the first time you’ve ever asked me this.” Obi-Wan remained as he was. Droplets of water ran down his bare sides, soaked up by the waistband of his—Cody’s—pants at the end of their journey. 

Maybe it was a funny thing to ask after all this time. Cody looked down at his hands, at the scars that caged his knuckles, and did not feel like laughing. 

“If I killed him…”

Eleven years of war and too many dead at those hands to even begin notching his rifle. But they had all been red marks on a map, tools of the enemy to be destroyed. Squared away in the business part of his brain, nice and neat. 

This, however…

“Did you see their speeder?”

The remark threw him. Obi-Wan's face was turned to the ceiling, bizarrely tranquil. The sink’s edge couldn’t be a comfortable support for his neck like this. His eyes were open, though, finally, and full of weary calm as they flitted to him. 

The speeder. Hell. Between booze and adrenaline, Cody had been too far gone to take in the details. He was supposed to like speeders. 

You’re out of order, you utter waste of space, an unhelpful thought supplied in the tenor of a Kamino drill sergeant.

“It was a JPP-99 Balra, the convertible version.” Obi-Wan was still looking at him, and there was water running from his hairline into his beard, too, jostled by the movement of his jaw. “It went out of production before your time, but it should ring a bell.”

It did, because the speeder-liking part of Cody’s brain at last revved its engine. The JPP-192 limousine was the current senatorial transport: sleek, luxurious, and the herd of guarlara in its twelve cylinders galloped fast. Balra Motors had been supplying the Senate with fine rides for centuries—and the JPP-99 may have gone out of service, but certainly not out of fashion. 

He remembered now, of all things, its opulent purr as it had taken off down the street. The type of sound only a well-maintained machine could produce.

“Rich kids,” Cody concluded. He could feel his headache worsen.

“Precisely. So, if our unfortunate friend should pass…” Obi-Wan rolled his shoulders. “Then we will hear about it, one way or another.” 

How reassuring. Anxious worry rolled down Cody’s neck in waves, offset by the guilty-warm knowledge that Obi-Wan would not rat him out, no matter what happened.

This was no longer the man who, for some moral reason, hesitated in the face of a cornered enemy. Cody had seen him change since that night on the Coronet, over the course of so many worse encounters. Had been genuinely glad when, three and a half years into the war, this Jedi had blown the next bomb switch-wielding maniac’s brains out at point-blank range. No hesitation. Only a blast and a thud. 

A feeling stretched in his gut, a little like faith, a little like finding himself lost without a map. 

“I should turn myself in if he dies,” Cody said without conviction, just for the sake of it. Obi-Wan hummed. 

“You should, good almost-citizen that you are. I, for one, would love to see those headlines. Violent Clone Kills Defenseless Teenager. Or maybe, How Jedi Use Mind Control to Get Away with Murder." He was getting up from his seat on the floor now, body unfolding in the room that barely fit one man, let alone two. “I wonder what they’d do about it. Ban us all from alcohol of any kind? Curfew after eight?”

Sardonic to the gills, as usual. There were many worse possibilities he didn’t mention.  

“Local sellers may protest,” Cody simply said, putting on a wry face to keep up with the act. Best not to think about it.

“Oh, yes, they’d hate to see their best customers go.”

Best not to look too hard at the prosthetic, either, dangling from Obi-Wan’s left hand like a broken toy. On the other side, nothing but a naked stump remained. Scarred flesh. Some fresh scratches. The wound made his wrist look too slender. 

As naturally as one would do with a wallet or a datastick, Obi-Wan tucked the detached limb into his pocket, its fingers sticking out eerily between the fabric’s black folds. He didn't bother drying himself off. 

Droplets. Droplets everywhere. Cody watched another one draw a trail down a toughened arm, across old hurts and through the cover of hair until it faltered, confused among the whorls of flesh that formed a new dead-end. A short stop. Then, a near-inaudible splat on the bathroom tiles. 

Cody’s mind slid off that stump much like the water. His own wrist twinged, some sort of empathetic reaction that made his skin crawl and his thoughts wander: that right there was a soldier half-able, a master of his craft bereft of his finest implement. 

It wasn’t right. 

“So, when’s your appointment with the surgeon?” 

Obi-Wan turned, his right mercifully hidden as his left hand opened the cabinet above the sink. Cody’s only mirror was affixed to the cabinet doors, and as Obi-Wan’s face disappeared behind their cover, Cody now beheld himself in their reflective surface. 

Turgid. Pasty. Unshaven. Dried-up and greasy at the same time, somehow. Lack of sleep, bruises and alcohol all did their part to make him look close to death. Worse; he looked fucking old. 

“Ugh.” The noise escaped him without his permission. Another sound, decidedly more amused, answered him from behind the mirror-door.

“You’ve looked worse, Commander.” Obi-Wan rooted around in the cabinet until Cody heard the tell-tale scrape of a razor. “A sonic and a wet rag and you’ll be good as new.”

“What’s got you so cheerful?”

More scraping. If Cody focused just enough, he could see small hairs fall down into the sink. He remembered that same hair scratching his cheek in that darkened street.

“Last night was good, all things considered. Though I understand why that last encounter might have put a damper on your mood.”

A voice in his ear, reassuring, intimately rough in the night. 

“The murder part, you mean,” Cody said, rubbing away the ghost-breath on his neck.

Scrape-scrape-scrape. Obi-Wan remained quiet. Didn’t he want to throw up? Didn't he feel like keeling over? Cody peered past the body blocking the way to the toilet in the narrow room, wary of the unrest in his stomach. 

“You’ve got nothing more to say to that?” he pressed.

No response, just the scratch of layered blades against hair, and then a sigh: “I believe we both have other things to worry about.”

He was right. Probably. It was hard to tell through the fog and the pain. Swallowing bile, Cody ducked under the cabinet door, nudging Obi-Wan aside so they both could fit in front of the sink—barely. The damp skin of his shoulder was cool against Cody's own. 

A slip, and the razor tumbled into the basin with a metallic clatter. Obi-Wan muttered something into his beard, mild but aggravated, his right arm twitching on instinct to catch the object. He only ended up banging his stump against the ceramic. That had to hurt.

Cody observed the display with well-kept horror. He picked up the razor—his razor—and pressed it back into Obi-Wan’s left hand. 

“You didn’t answer my question."

"About what?" 

Oh, come on. 

"About the surgeon.”

Obi-Wan shrugged, back to trimming the parts of his beard that had crawled too high up his cheeks and too low down his throat. Neat lines formed along his jaw. Nothing had happened at all.

“I do have an appointment.” 

“With the surgeon?” 

“Yes, Cody, with the surgeon. Who else?” 

He wanted to sound unbothered, but he was betrayed by his own face in the mirror, both of them watching as he went just a little bit pale despite the blood-pumping temperature. 

Cody peeled the bandage off his bruised cheek and splashed himself with cold water, mulling over the snide defensiveness in Obi-Wan’s tone. Perhaps a change of topic was in order, just like last night, for whatever reason. 

“Nevermind, then,” he said, just on the right side of gruff. He couldn't think of anything else to say. Even if he could, he grew weary of speaking with the way it made his esophagus clench.

Obi-Wan hummed again, perhaps grateful, checking his reflection—sharpened by war and age, sunken from little rest and plenty of poison. He seemed to deem himself decent after a moment of critical evaluation, passing the razor into Cody’s grasp. 

“I’ll leave you to it.”

Cody just grunted in response, setting about ridding his jaw of stubble while Obi-Wan squeezed past him. The door slid shut with a thunk. 

After a shave and a wash, Cody looked slightly more alive, and the bruises less criminal. They were everywhere: his face, his arms, his knees, his ribs. The room  spun gently, like the end of a carnival ride. None of the good hormones from the drinks and the fights remained, their absence manifest in a chemical imbalance that leaked misery into every inch of him. 

It folded him like cardboard. 

“Fuck.”

It was barely a whisper. He swayed over the sink, pulled toward the drain by the useless spasms of his stomach. Hunger, bruises, ethanol—he wanted to spit them all out, shrug off the vertigo and the cold-heat between his temples. A heave. Nothing. Not even his finger deep in his throat could elicit more than a couple of dry, painful retches. 

Nothing left to hack up. Nothing left for his body to give. 

Amidst the cravings, an itch languished in his nervous system. A gluttonous arch from the tips of his toes all the way into the crown of his skull, straining, unbearable where it crossed the dense web of receptors between his legs. It wanted. It wanted so, so bad.

Another drink to while him over. A quick hit from a cold glass. There was a bottle of liquor in the kitchen, just waiting to give him a good morning kiss. Or the uppers they used at the front, surreptitiously distributed among the troops behind closed doors, now stashed in his first aid kit. 

Or…

He dug the heel of his hand into his groin, trembling at the edge of the sink.

Or he could do none of the sort. Like an adult. Like a Commander of over three hundred thousand men.

Stepping out of his boxers and into the sonic, he grit his teeth against the seductive thoughts, the lure of easy dopamine hits. He could get himself together without any of that. 

Especially when he had a guest. 

 

---

 

“Good morning Coruscant, it is oh-six-thirty hours Prime Meridian. This is Taric Banly for Capital News, ready to get you started into a new day!”

Scratchy audio carried through the room from the shortwave on the kitchen table. The curtains were drawn, casting the hovel in a dim half-light.

“It’s always night somewhere on Coruscant, but we are happy to report that nothing has gone bump in this one—isn’t that right, Mataila?”

“It is, Taric! Last night was peaceful both in the northern and southern hemisphere, with no hostile activity in or around orbit—”

The patchy signal was drowned out by the sound of water boiling. Behind the wall to the left, the next-door couple was having an even louder argument. 

“So, what are your plans for the day? Aside from your appointment,” Cody called over the ruckus, one hand on his rattling caf brewer like a lifeline. Obi-Wan just held up a finger, listening. 

“—perhaps a sign of the enemy losing ground, though High Command is sparing with information as ever. Either way, regaining control of the hyperlane entry points would turn the war in our favor.”

“Yes, and these quiet nights certainly point in that direction, don’t they?”

Something thunked in the neighboring apartment. Cody was reasonably sure he heard a woman’s voice yell the Huttese word for moron. 

“Don’t listen to that stuff,” he said past another surge of nausea, holding on to his kitchen appliance a little tighter. “You've got to have better information than those people.”

Their chatter was making him queasy.

“Believe it or not, I barely heard any news from Coruscant over the past… what was it? Seventeen months, I believe. I’ll take what I can get.” Obi-Wan was perched on the hovel’s only chair, fingers tirelessly messing with the shortwave’s frequency dial to improve the signal. It didn't seem to be working. “Besides, I am curious whether or not our little stunt has made it to local news.”

Cody scowled at the brewer. The machine gurgled, finally dispensing its brown liquid into his cup, all watered-down and steaming. 

“They already said it—nothing went ‘bump in the night’, Obi-Wan.”

It was so unbearably stupid. 

“Let’s hope you’re right.”

More gurgling before the last drops of caf landed in the cup. Cody replaced it with an empty one, starting the process anew. 

“And now to sports—last night’s match between LC CoCo 44 and RM Fortuna Manarai ended in a nail-biting victory for CoCo after the penalty shoot-out. Crowd disturbances were mostly concentrated around Manarai Stadium where the game took place. Police report little to no violent escalation.”

“Of course, such a close loss for Manarai on their home turf leads to frustration. Rowdy fans are expected to shake things up over the coming nights.” 

He let out a breath that brought no relief. 

“It could be worse,” Obi-Wan said, accepting the cup Cody now offered him. For a moment, it looked as though he wanted to wrap both hands around it. “Ah, and about today! I’m actually quite looking forward to it.”

“Must be something good, then.”

“Old friends, yes. I’ve been invited to dinner over at the Amidala residence.” Contemplation creased Obi-Wan’s face for a moment. “Senators Organa and Mothma will be there, too, if I heard that correctly.” 

Huh. He had weighed those names on his tongue before he spoke them. His inflections made old instincts spark in Cody’s brain, though he couldn’t fathom why. 

“Ah, good for you. All of you, I mean,” he said into his cup. 

Amidala, Mothma, Organa. An illustrious little gathering. Cody didn’t need to imagine Obi-Wan mingling with the upper crust—he’d seen him do it plenty of times; picking out just the right utensils for extravagant dishes, making delicate conversation, dancing without stepping on any well-heeled toes. He wrinkled his nose. His caf smelled cheap, and it burned his lips.

“It's been a while. Every time I return here, I’m having more trouble keeping up.” Obi-Wan one-handedly nursed his cup, letting something pass over his face, eyes far away. “Especially with the twins. They grow up so fast…” 

A man standing at a grave, thinking himself alone. 

“Ask Senator Amidala to invite me next time,” Cody said to break the odd melancholy that had overcome his friend. “I haven’t had a nice meal for ages.”

That got him the rough chuckle he had desired. “Careful. She’s quite likely to take you up on that.”

“I’m looking forward to it, then.”

Whenever he cursed the life he still had, he cursed Senator Amidala—she was the reason the likes of him didn't live on the streets, or hadn't been dealt a swift end once their youth had run its course. Organa was a politician of similar caliber. An old friend, from what Cody understood. Mothma, on the other hand, he had never paid much attention to. A moderate, he presumed, full of goodwill, of quiet nostalgia for democracy. 

And all of them under the same roof… 

Perhaps his withdrawal-plagued mind was playing tricks on him. Perhaps Obi-Wan’s deliberate diction meant nothing. But the uncomfortable twist in Cody’s gut was real, and not just caused by the hangover.

“You know,” he said after another scalding sip, “you should watch who you tell about plans like that.”

No beating around the bush. They were friends—they could be straightforward about this matter.

“Plans like what, Cody? Dinner parties with old friends? That’s hardly a matter of caution.”

…But this was Obi-Wan he was dealing with. Slippery bastard. The Jedi was sharp below his fatigue-softened veneer, a front so convincing that Cody almost let it go.

Almost. 

“Dinner parties with radicals, Obi-Wan.” 

“Really, Cody. It’s just a friendly get-together. Nothing more, nothing less.”

“A friendly get-together where you will make small-talk about nothing political at all with this group of prolific politicians. Sure.”

“Nothing anyone upstairs would want to know about, I assure you.” 

“Oh yeah? I think at least two of these people are under observation as of now.”

Obi-Wan crossed his arms. “As if being a Jedi wasn't already a free ticket to five different monitoring programs. Let them put me on all the watch lists they want—I will not be turning down that invitation.” 

They stared each other down. Tired, bloodshot, ashen, the both of them. Worn faces that knew each other so well. They knew the reality they lived in, too; deeply familiar with its injustices, big and small. Cody could swear a gust of cold breath grazed his neck for a second. 

“I was just saying, be careful who you talk to. In general, I mean,” he said lamely. 

Obi-Wan eyed him for another second or two. “Right.” He smiled, then, just enough to reach his eyes. “Please don't worry. You know I'm quite terrified of politics, anyway.”

Bullshit. 

“Yeah. You've mentioned that.”

They sipped their caf wordlessly, their silence bridged only by the voices from the radio and the noise from next-door. More yelling. More time for the state of Cody’s body to make itself known in full as the caffeine hit his system: withdrawal jitters, fatigue on his shoulders, dull pressure behind his eyes, his spine like a tree with an axe stuck in its trunk. 

On the shelf above his bed, the conch his men had gifted him. Still beautiful. Just a bit dull in the dark. He padded over to the window, to the small gap between the curtains, their worn fabric coarse against his hand. Light trickled through. Could he risk it?

“And the forecast for today—tell us, what level of safety can we expect tonight, Mataila?”

“As always, it is hard to say. High Command have made no moves to loosen the standard safety measures. So it’s the same old: you should stay on guard, but you do not have to stay at home. The weather will be lovely!”

He pulled the curtains open. The expected string of events followed immediately: behind him, despite not facing the window, Obi-Wan made a pained noise. Morning light seared Cody’s retinas. He couldn’t see the sky from where he stood, but far away, across the descension hole’s diameter, plentiful metal surfaces reflected the sun’s glare right back at him. 

The light drove daggers into his eyes, so bad he almost dropped his cup. Which was not happening. He steadied himself against the window, but could not un-twist his face from the pained grimace now vaguely reflected in the glass. 

It was fine. He’d dealt with this many times before. The queasiness, the nausea, the oversensitivity—they’d all go away soon enough. Below him, the downward highway yawned deep and endless, so wide that its farthest points were veiled in sunlit smog. Coruscant had already sprung to life, vehicles moving up and down in colorful throngs. Their turbulence disturbed the spiderweb in the low corner of Cody’s window. It jostled the little arachnid outside, its glassy legs and metallic blue body blending into the outer wall.

A chrome weaver. Male. Adapted to the open-air streets and highrises of Coruscant where insects could breed in rainwater puddles and fly into the weaver’s black silk trap. But that wouldn’t happen down here. Any rain would drop straight through into the underworld, forming no habitats on its way, dooming this pretty little spider to starvation and loneliness. 

“Too bad this window doesn’t open,” Cody said, tasting low-quality grounds and pity. 

“What?” Obi-Wan had stepped up next to him, taking note of the spider. “Oh. Poor thing.” He crouched down close to the window’s corner. “What are you doing down here, hm? You won’t live a good life in this sinkhole.”

Little to no sympathy for a possibly dead and very much sentient civilian, but so much warmth in his voice when talking to a lost arthropod. The spider wobbled in its web. Cody would shake his head if he weren’t also feeling such sorrow for the animal.

He could save it. Let it eat the moths and fruit flies that occasionally plagued his hovel. It may even look good next to the conch above his bed—blue and orange had always made for a pleasing combination. 

“Shame. It’s such a brilliant color, too,” Obi-Wan said as though reading his mind, “the ones we have around the Temple tend to be gray or black. And much bigger.”

“Well, nothing we can do about it.”

“No.” A sigh. Down where was crouching, Obi-Wan leaned just a little against Cody’s bare shin. He had stolen a long-sleeve shirt from the closet, too tight to fit either of them properly these days. The fabric was smooth. “The wind must have carried it down here."

“Hrm.”

A stroke of very bad luck. Cody didn’t want to be feeling this much kinship with a spider, so he drained the last drops of caf remaining in his cup before stepping away from the window and the warm point of contact. 

With residual alcohol in his system, his speeder still parked at Boil’s and his hip trying to lock after every step he took, he dragged himself over to the closet. The sonic’s effects hadn’t lasted long—as he stared at the layers of clothing he was about to slip into, an unpleasant odor rose up from his body. 

Still sweating out the drinks. Great. 

“Commander,” Obi-Wan piped up while Cody pulled on his pristine undershirt, “would you happen to have any spare trousers in there?”

After the undershirt came the pale green blouse. A pointless article of clothing that would disappear entirely under the uniform jacket, but mandatory anyway, just because. 

“Why are you asking?”

“Oh, no reason.”

Pulling on his breeches, Cody peered over his shoulder. He might have snorted if he had been in a better mood. There Obi-Wan stood, last night’s clothes bundled up under his right arm, still wearing Cody’s shirt and shorts. His left hand clutched a pair of tall boots, despondent. The Jedi was looking at him expectantly. 

“You’ll look a bit odd on your way home.” 

“Well-observed, sire,” Obi-Wan drawled, far too jaunty for someone who smelled like a spotchka distillery. “Hence my inquiry: do you have trousers to spare in that big closet of yours?”

Maybe, Cody mused as he took his uniform jacket off its hanger, he could lift his own spirits with some good old chicanery. That never hurt anyone. He shouldered into the too-stiff garment with a flourish of fabric, eyes catching on the civilian pants that hung right in front of him.  

“Yes, there’s a pair right here.”

“Very good. May I borrow it?"

“Why?” While doing up his buttons, Cody’s gaze fell down to the closet floor where his first aid kit rested, all neat in its own little space. “You already have the shorts. It’s hot out and you’re on leave, so why bother?”

“Why—” A clack as Obi-Wan pointedly set his boots down. “I’d rather not be seen like that. I’ll bring that pair back, washed and ironed. I promise.”

There was a genuine scratch of desperation in his voice. Vanity supposedly had no place in the Temple, but that didn’t seem to stop one Master Kenobi from harboring it every now and then. The mental image alone made the corners of Cody’s mouth twitch: boots that reached the knees combined with shorts that very much didn’t. Not something you saw every day. 

“Just wear the pants from last night.” He lashed his belt tight around his waist. 

“I can’t, see? They’re torn. There’s a hole right here, look."

Cody didn’t look. For all the amusement it brought him, all this back-and-forth made the vertigo return with a vengeance. Slowly, to make it look deliberate and not like he was actually unable to stand, he sank to one knee in front of the first aid kit. Just doing up his cufflinks, of course. Pulling down the tight calf fabric of his breeches. Not at all sneaking a stick of pills up his sleeve. 

“Tough luck,” he said upon standing up again, giving his sleeves and the skirt of his jacket each a sharp tug to straighten them out. Before shutting the closet, he forced an easy expression onto his face, repeating Obi-Wan’s hardly comforting words from earlier: “You’ve looked worse, Lieutenant.”

Obi-Wan took a moment to reply, eyes darting from his cufflinks to his belt to his rigid collar. Only when their gazes met did his mien turn sour in that familiar, unserious way—he had seen. Of course he had. And like a good comrade, he didn’t comment. 

“You know, this fits nicely into a theory of mine,” he said instead, kicking at his boots with his bare foot. 

“Oh?” Cody surreptitiously leaned against the closet. “What’s that?” 

“That it’s a major miracle you made it off Kamino named Cody and not, oh, I don’t know, Royal Cunt,” Obi-Wan grunted as he forcefully pulled on his left boot, “or Cock-End.” He pulled on the other, then shot him a pointed glare rendered beautifully impotent by his outfit. 

Cody choked on a laugh that surprised his own throat. 

“They didn’t teach us those words there.” 

“Maybe they should have.”

“How long have you been sitting on those, anyway?” He had to hide his amusement behind his fist and a cough, both at the insults and at the way Obi-Wan tapped his feet like an unhappy orbak.

“I'll have you know I use them in my head quite frequently,” he said, tugging at the hem of his shorts. “I've decided to save them for you, though.” 

“What an honor." 

“Indeed. I hope you’re happy now.” The Jedi crossed his arms around the rags he was holding. His prosthetic still stuck out of his pocket awkwardly. “Unless you’ve got anything to make me look more ridiculous. A cape, maybe? Or a high-vis? Both?”

“You look plenty ridiculous already. And either way, Commander Cock-End’s got to get going now.”

It seemed that Obi-Wan couldn’t help but grin at that, even if he hid it by turning his face. 

 

---

 

HQ’s cafeteria had a tranquilizing quality to it. Hundreds of voices melding with each other, the jingle of tableware, the occasional announcement over the speakers—all those sounds formed a blanket of static that swaddled Cody’s brain in a trance-like state. 

He’d barely touched his food. His stomach still behaved like it was allergic to digestion, growling at anything he tried to introduce to its walls. Shame. Officers were afforded food prepared by sentient cooks instead of the dispenser slop everyone else had to suffer through, and he couldn’t even enjoy it.

The kitchen thrummed with activity. He could watch the cooks hurry about from where he was seated alongside the other occupants of office 517, all nat-born humans, talking with their widely ranged voices into each other's too-different faces. Cody was the only clone in this section of the cafeteria. In front of him, black beans blurred into gruel. He closed his eyes. 

At this point, he could no longer make out if it was his back, his empty stomach, or last night’s excess causing him so much trouble. He teetered on that horrid edge between throwing up and not, caught in the desperate balancing act that forbade you from forgetting your own misery. Whispers from his tablemates reached his ears, unclear at first, but sharpening when he made himself listen. 

“—worse than last time.”

“Yeah.”

“You owe me fifty if he actually passes out.”

“You think he will?”

“He’s gonna. Look at him, he’s about to tip over.”

What? No. Never. Cody blinked his eyes open just as someone shoved his shoulder. 

“I’m fine,” he said mechanically. His hand found his spoon, dipped it into the gruel on his plate, and guided it into his mouth. All on autopilot. He made sure his eye contact with the other officer was firm, ignoring how much his diaphragm wanted to prevent him from swallowing that bite. 

Bad idea. Phenomenally unpleasant. 

“You know, this morning I thought you just had a bad night, but you’re properly busted,” the officer—Captain Lenko, sharp-faced and gray-eyed—said with a crooked smile. His plate sat polished in front of him. “You’ve overdone it, haven't you?”

“I’m fine.” 

Cody winced. He’d just repeated himself, hadn't he? Not good. He wanted to say something more eloquent, but nothing would come out, or even come to mind.

“You’ve talked even less than usual today,” Officer Hragy remarked across from him, scooping a last spoonful of beans into her mouth. 

“Want me to talk more?”

“I don’t know.” She let her spoon clatter down onto her tray. “We hear enough of your voice every day, to be honest.”

“Oh, don’t be mean,” Lenko admonished, but he was grinning. 

What a bunch of idiots, Cody had thought when he’d first entered office 517 four years ago. But of course they weren’t stupid—if they were, they wouldn’t be working this job. So he just took his lumps how he’d always taken them, how every clone working with these kinds of nat-borns did: with dignity. No use in getting upset. 

He realized at that moment that he wanted to escape. From them, from this table, preferably from his own body, too. At least until it calmed down again. Without further comment, he gathered up his lunch tray and his half-eaten meal.

Hragy’s eyebrows shot up her forehead. “Leaving already?”

“You weren’t supposed to take that to heart, you know,” Lenko followed up. 

“I didn’t.” 

After racking his tray, Cody fled to the nearest restroom. Not as fast as he’d like—the way was full of people he couldn’t afford to shove, too many eyes that would see him limp. No, whenever Cody took his leave, he ambled. Strolled. Moseyed, even, right up until the refresher booth’s door locked behind him and he could double over in peace.

Stars bless the officers’ amenities, but that had been too close. He nearly stumbled. With his hands braced on his thighs as he stared into yet another drain hole, he felt that life after the battlefield was just a collage of low points strewn across places where people went to shit. He retched. Again, nothing. Like his body was telling him that this was the bed he had made for himself, no matter how much he didn’t want to lie in it. 

He’d never drink again. Ever. 

The drugs he had snuck from his first aid kit weighed heavy in his sleeve. Officially, they were known under a chemical formula too long to memorize, an endless string of letters that made the packaging look scary. Among the troops, they were just called launch. The name said it all: fast-acting, invigorating as they took effect, and when they eventually wore off… Well, that’s why they came in sticks of twenty. 

Cody spat into the toilet. Remembered that look Obi-Wan had given him in the morning. He’d noticed. And he’d said fucking nothing, of course, had just accepted Cody’s pill-shaped admission of weakness.

Pills for soldiers. For the front lines. For people who would lose their objective if they fell asleep at their post, if they couldn’t make that sprint, if they let themselves be distracted by trivial injuries. Not for pencil-pushers who nodded off at lunch. 

Get a hold of yourself. 

He wanted to sit down on the toilet lid, but the thought of those bacteria sticking to his uniform disgusted him almost as much as the sight he must have been at that moment. What kind of guy needed launch to get through a day at the office? What if his men ever saw him like this?

Embarrassment deeper than any physical pain rippled through him. This right here—this hunched, retching wreck—that wasn’t him. He had to move. He’d been drilled for this on Kamino. 

If you meet your body’s limits, power through. Here’s how you do it.  

Those were lessons he hadn’t just learned, but lived. They sat in his flesh and bones, and so he kept breathing, hard and deep until the overflow of oxygen made him dizzy. All the times he had fought on with fractured bones, with lips cracked from dehydration, with sickness from inhaled jungle spores drifted past him. Compared to that, this was nothing. He just needed to wash his hands, walk to the office, and do his damned work. 

Captain Eif didn’t look up from his terminal when Cody stalked into the otherwise deserted confines of 517 with a cup of caf in hand. He was the most tolerable of Cody’s colleagues, or maybe it was just that he had a blond buzzcut and earnest brown eyes. 

“How was lunch?”

“Edible,” Cody said, making a bee-line for his chair, still feeling like he’d been run over. At least small talk could be a good distraction. “You should’ve tried it.”

“No, thanks.”

“Didn’t feel like it?”

“Nah. Got saddled with more work before I could go on break. Check your files.”

Unlocking his own terminal, Cody frowned at the new directive in his inbox, one that definitely hadn’t been there an hour ago. He sifted through the files. None of the requests therein made sense. 

“I thought the Narkina 5 project was one and done.”

Eif sighed. “Wouldn’t that be nice? Now we’re gonna bust our asses over it again—something about their electrical supply."

How odd, Cody would have said if he didn't harbor some suspicions about the project. The facilities on that backwater planet had been finished a couple of years ago with help from their department. Supposedly, they were hydropower plants. While he didn’t doubt that power was being generated on Narkina 5, he had personally overseen some of the acquisitions made for the project from this very terminal, and their nature had ranged from reasonable to dubious. Not the amusing kind of dubious, but rather the sort that made you worry what exactly you were associating yourself with.  

Three years ago, Hragy had looked over the requisitions list and joked that someone had to be building a lightning machine over there. Cody, with a sinking feeling in his gut, had pointed out the sheer number of third-rate mattresses on another list, suggesting it might also become the Republic’s worst hotel. 

They’d laughed, then. Laughing was safe. He didn’t enjoy reminding himself that he’d most likely aided the construction of some monstrous penitentiary, and nobody in 517 had ever connected those dots out loud. That would be stupid. You never could be certain which one of your colleagues worked with the RSB, after all. 

“I don’t know if anyone under my admin has time for this.” Cody scratched the back of his head, bleary, taking a large swig from his cup. “We’re still busy with those space stations.” 

“Make time, old man, because I’m on that as well,” Eif said without inflection, clearly unenthused. “The Narkina business is important for the stations, for some reason.”

And wasn’t that exactly what Cody wanted to hear? He didn’t give in to the growing urge to groan and slump over his terminal, but the sore temptation never went away. This was going to be a long, long day, and his cup was already empty.

 

---

 

General Skywalker’s office was cold. 

Cody didn’t know what was worse: that Skywalker of all people had an entire complex to himself, or that the cold was creeping up his leg and turning that entire side of his body stiff. 

“Why did you call me, sir?” he finally asked. His fingers ached on the freezing pommel of his cane. 

“Take a guess.” Skywalker smiled at him from behind his desk, cluttered with mechanical trinkets and the contents of a small toolbox that had been hastily pushed aside. Frown lines too deep for a man of thirty-three carved his forehead and the corners of his mouth. 

It was second nature for Cody to take note of potential escape routes in every room he entered, so ingrained in his process he didn’t even need to focus to do it. Doing so in a superior's office, however, was not entirely normal. 

“It’s my first day of work,” he ended up saying. “Overseeing cargo bay 65, as intended. I do not know why I’m here, sir, and I’d appreciate an answer.”

“You got a job in logistics, yes. You’ve always been good at that, Commander—no, wait, it’s Warrant Officer now, isn’t it?” 

No need to say it to my face like that, Cody thought. “Yes, sir,” he ground out anyway.

Skywalker briefly frowned at his datapad, scrolling through some document or another. 

“Right, Warrant Officer. Congratulations! You’re being promoted.”

Huh?

“Rex told me you were gonna work at HQ,” Skywalker went on, “and we can’t just have someone like you gathering dust in some cargo bay. I’ve talked to Grand Admiral Tarkin. He’s had a look at your qualifications, and agreed to transfer you to his offices.”

Again, that expectant look. If it weren’t for the tension in Cody’s jaw, it would have gone slack.

“I’m afraid I don’t understand, sir.” 

A crooked smile. “It’s a very good position. You’ll see—they need men like you.”

Cody took a moment to compose himself, just breathing, looking out of the window past the General’s shoulder. In the distance, the lavish residences of 500 Republica were blurred by rain. 

“May I ask why, sir? I thought those positions were reserved for nat-borns.”

The mere notion that his resumé had somehow caught Tarkin’s attention was ludicrous. This reeked of favoritism at best, and schemes beyond his own comprehension at worst. Skywalker sighed. 

“Not anymore. Some of them are difficult to vet, or disloyal, or sloppy. But luckily for us, you are none of these things! Fresh from the battlefield, reliable, a familiar face—don’t forget you helped save the Admiral from the Citadel, too.”

“That was long ago,” Cody said, trying to comprehend what was going on. 

“But you haven’t changed.” Skywalker glanced at his pad again. “Your handling of that Separatist Open Arms hoax was commendable. Tarkin has said so himself. You’ve been of great service to the Republic again and again.”

Discomfort squirmed in Cody’s stomach. Containing those rumors had not been clean, or good, or pretty. 

“I just did what needed to be done, sir. I couldn’t tolerate the enemy’s attempts to lure away my men.”

“And that’s exactly why you’re the man for this job, Cody.”

His name on Skywalker’s tongue felt odd after so many years. He looked around, scanning  the office for possible surprises—he still wasn’t convinced this was real. 

“What, exactly, will I be doing?”

“You won’t be out of your depth,” Skywalker said. He probably sensed his anxiety, and the thought made Cody even more uncomfortable. “You’ll still be doing logistics work, but in a much nicer chair.” His prosthetic index finger tapped on the desk loudly; once, twice. “And with a higher security clearance, on top of that. Something you should be familiar with.” 

Cody tried to stand up straighter as he processed this, hip cramping, his grip painfully tight on the cane. 

“I take it that there won’t be any field work involved.”

“That depends on how you improve.” Skywalker gestured in his general direction. “But your combat experience isn’t what got you this job. It’s your mind and your loyalty. So do you accept?”

Far away, traffic bustled in the mid-day haze. The frenzy belied the chill that crusted over every surface outside, crawling into the confines of HQ. Cody shivered. This wasn’t a real question, or a matter of his own preference—he had no choice but to take this job. He could see it in Skywalker’s eyes, in his posture, and smelled it in the air. 

Refuse this, and you’ll never move beyond dirty old cargo bay 65 for the rest of your life, it seemed to whisper to him. 

Well. 

At least this was interesting. 

“Yes, sir. I accept.” 

He felt like he had just agreed to something illegal. Skywalker smiled again, mildly this time. 

“Great.” He got up from his chair, rounded the table and plucked the rank insignia from Cody’s chest, replacing it with another. Familiar colors. Impressive, but not as much as the rank of Commander. “There you go, Captain. You’ll receive your new briefing first thing tomorrow. You understand you have to keep your mouth shut?” 

 

---

 

Clouds streaked the sky in patterns that defied natural beauty. Scars on the summer evening; converging in a vortex summoned by Weather Control, too orderly to turn into the hurricanes that may have scourged Coruscant before its surface had been covered in artifice. It looked odd through the window of a repulsor train, more like a whirling octopus than a proper storm. Far away, strong winds were whipping rain against skyscrapers, but the train’s route remained untouched, kissed by the barely sinking sun. 

Nodding off in his seat, Cody’s mind drifted to Kamino’s piling thunderheads. Great jellyfish tumbling about each other on the horizon, tumultuous, dragging their tentacles across the ocean toward Tipoca City. The air always shifted on their approach. As a young cadet, he had loved tasting the lightning on his tongue as he watched the storms draw near, salt and algae being pushed aside by something sweeter, something electric. 

The ocean was pulling him under now. Away from the surface, steady into the darkness below. It wasn’t a bad thing. Cody let himself sink, enveloped by the cold, the quiet, the calming pressure. 

Dark. The bottom of the sea. Nothing to see here. Nothing to feel, to hear, to say. Pure blackout bliss, soft silt against his back and the gentle drift of a current that washed oxygen through his gills.

Nice. But what else was dark? 

The silt turned to stone beneath him. His gills turned to lungs with well-known limits, gasping for air in a too-hot night. Chains locked his torso in place. He breathed up into a familiar face next to spilled blood, liquor and glass shards, and the chains weren’t steel at all—no, they were a pair of legs straining around him, strong, immovable. Obi-Wan’s collar had been torn, hanging in blue tatters from his chest and spilling onto Cody’s. He could see past the tear all the way down Obi-Wan’s shirt to where the edges of his belt buckle cut into his heaving abdomen. Sweat-slicked skin reflected the shirt’s brilliant color. 

Bizarrely, Cody seemed to be in his three-layered uniform. He didn't remember this. Last night was an inky blur, not sharp and saturated as he saw it now. 

“What is this?” he asked. As soon as the words had left his mouth, the situation changed: the place remained the same, but he and Obi-Wan were standing now, boots crunching on glass. Cody missed the closeness. 

“A fight,” Obi-Wan answered simply, fists raised in a boxing position. Fists, plural. His hands were fine. 

“Why?”

The Jedi laughed; a warm sound that made Cody’s insides wobble. 

“ Why? Why do you exist, Cody?” 

Ah. Yeah. 

A right hook knocked Cody back to the ground like a bomb blast, numbing his skull, leaving him breathless. Maybe his gills hadn’t become lungs after all. He writhed onto his side, watching his own hand drop powerlessly to the pavement, unfocused in his reeling vision. Following the immobile line of his arm—still inexplicably clad in uniform gray—he could do nothing but stare at the body that lay there with him. 

A nondescript face stared back, unblinking, bug-eyed, mouth agape. Young, blood-smeared features kept changing as he tried to recall their night-blurred shapes. 

“You really don’t remember him, do you?” 

“It’s—I need a second.”

Cody blinked. 

“Come on. Don't you think he deserves it?” 

“Just give me a moment!” No use. He hurt too much to crack this memory. “I—”

“Next stop: Lower Uscru,” Obi-Wan interrupted. 

What?

“Mind the gap. Do not disembark while airborne. Your connections from Lower Uscru station are lines one, five, six and twenty-four—”

Cody blinked again. Obi-Wan’s voice morphed into that of a female-programmed droid, droning from the train speakers as it slowed alongside the boarding platform. Sparse droplets of water clung to its windows. In the distance, the storm disintegrated into strips of fog, golden-gray in the light.

Okay. Just a dream. The bruise on the side of his face stung. Not from the dream, of course, though the impact had felt disconcertingly real. Curious eyes burned into him when he had to pull himself along by the rails installed for those who had trouble moving.  

Always gawking. 

Never seen a damn clone before? He bit his tongue, swallowing the anger. The group of teenagers staring from the adjacent platform deserved a piece of his mind, but a lecture from a half-dead, musty old office clerk wouldn’t exactly be doing his kind any favors. He’d only make a fool of himself.  

Running on nothing but fumes, Cody hurried from the station into the familiar streets that led to Boil’s store. No more rain deigned to drizzle, but a merciful wind blew through the concrete gorges, just the slightest bit cooling. He liked this part of town. Chock-full of color; of all sorts of sights and sounds one could imagine, flashing advertisements and competing buskers everywhere. One of the few places where life had not been compromised by the gray reach of the apparatus. 

A pleasant aroma wafted into his path. Off to the side in a stand of rickety wood and chipping paint, a street vendor made do with what she could in this bottleneck, stoically forging the dog food that passed for ingredients these days into something that made Cody’s mouth water. Maybe he could stand to have a bite by now. His wallet would survive the indulgence. Determined, he purchased two stuffed flatbread rolls, piping hot and dripping with grease—a dish originally from Kalee and now widespread on Coruscant, though its usual filling was substituted by whatever was available at the time. Wrapping foil crinkled under his fingers as he carried off his prize. 

At this point, he couldn’t hide his limp anymore. Power through, he chanted in his head, lips imperceptibly forming the words of the 212th’s favorite marching song. A rhythm like artillery fire, great thunks in a neat line. Nothing to dance to. Everything a soldier needed to keep putting one foot in front of the other. 

His speeder was still parked soundly in the docking bay outside when he reached the store, out of breath like he'd run there in full gear. The door jingle may as well have been the applause on the final stretch of a marathon. 

“We’re closed!” 

“Shut up,” Cody wheezed at the empty till. The lights in the sales room had gone out, but a warm glow crept underneath the door behind the counter alongside the faint hum of the radio. 

“Get out, man, business hours are—oh.” Boil stopped in the back room’s doorframe. “Working late again?” 

Grunting an affirmation, Cody dragged himself to the counter, planting his palms there to take weight off his legs. “Yes. And hungry.” He let himself regain his breath before reaching into his brief bag. “Mind sitting down?” 

The rich smell of the stuffed rolls filled the store in an instant. Boil grinned, picking up the wrapped meals with reverence, but something in his eyes seemed wary.

“Damn, can’t say no to that. Come in, come in! I’ve got a nice chair for you.” 

The chair in question was exactly the same as the other one, it turned out, with the only difference being that Boil hastily threw a pillow on its seat. 

“Boil.”

“Yeah?”

Cody stood in front of the chair, ever-so slightly piqued. 

“What’s with the pillow?” 

“Hospitality, chief. I’ve really been getting into that lately.” Demonstratively, Boil dropped down onto his pillow-less seat, sprawling like he owned the place. Which he did. “Sit on it, please, I'm trying my best here.”

Completely innocuous. A bunch of synth-fluff wrapped in red cloth, threadbare in some parts and caf-stained in others, soft, but not too much. It made Cody’s hackles rise. 

“Would I insult your hospitality if I removed it?”

Boil gave him a long, hard look over the rim of a mug, again with that wary edge Cody didn’t like. “I don’t know if I’d ever let you back into this store.”

Fine. 

The pillow was as soft as it looked. Cody let himself sink into it, stretching his legs out next to the little table. He almost let out a relieved sigh, and the indignity of it made him open his mouth again. 

“I would’ve been fine without it, you know.”

“And I would’ve been fine without the grub, but here we are…” Boil patted his stomach. It growled for emphasis, even over the sounds of both of them tearing the tinfoil off their food. “You gotta let people be nice to you, man. And either way, you like the pillow.” 

What was that supposed to mean? 

“Only because you’re forcing me to.”

“It’s. A pillow.” 

“Yeah.” Cody took a bite out of his roll. “The only one in the room.”

For a second, Boil looked incredulous. “And am I supposed to plant my ass on it while my generous guest gets nothing? Come on.”

He didn’t understand. 

“Did you give it to me because you think I need it?”

“Hells, maybe I wouldn’t have if I’d known you were gonna be a hardass about it.” Boil chewed, brows drawn together, until he made an appreciative noise. “You have great taste in street food, though. I haven’t had one of these in ages.” 

“You’re welcome,” Cody said, mellowing slowly. This cramped back room had that effect on people. Its interior, as many visitors liked to tease, could have very well been a little old lady’s place—the glossy tablecloth held town by fruit-shaped clamps, the porthole-like window with its crochet curtains, the buzz of an old fridge, the cupboard displaying painted plates and trinkets—quaint and cozy. The singular lamp hanging from the ceiling painted everything orange-gold. A maudlin song floated from the radio. In the high corner, a black web trapped unsuspecting bugs, forming a sumptuous throne for the chrome weaver at its heart. It feasted just like the two humans below. 

“So,” Boil said between bites, eyes on Cody’s bruise, “had a proper brawl last evening, huh?”

Normally, Cody would smile at that. But now, any retorts along the lines of you should’ve seen the other guy stuck bitter in his throat, tainted by guilt. 

“No. Fell down the stairs.” He repeated the half-truth he had used on his colleagues so many times today, shrugging like he didn’t care. The Boonta likely did have a security recording of him taking a tumble. Technically not a lie. Boil raised an eyebrow at him, anyway. “You know you’d have to be an idiot to pick a fight with me,” Cody added with well-practiced confidence. 

“Plenty of idiots to go around on Coruscant, to be honest.” 

“And none of them were up to it.” Change of topic. Quick. “Is that glitter on your face?” 

Sheepishly, Boil rubbed at his cheek. “Ah, yup. That stuff gets everywhere.” 

Now that Cody looked closer, traces of red glitter were all over him, dispersed across his forearm, his shirt, his beard. Sluggishly, another memory returned: bad jokes about heavy artillery. A booth off to the side at The Boonta, containing a red-glinting Trandoshan and a certain old trooper. A grin stretched Cody’s lips. 

“Boil, you sly dog.” 

“Heh.”

“Congratulations!”

“Ha! Thanks,” Boil scratched the back of his neck, flushing dark under the lamplight. “They stayed for breakfast and everything. I really lucked out. I mean, you know you can’t be that bad when they don’t ditch you first thing in the morning, right?” 

“I’d say that’s a good sign.” Cody pointedly did not dwell on his own morning. “You think you’d want to see them again?”

“I hope so! I got their comlink code. We’re talking.” 

Stars, the man looked happy. Cody finished his roll, feeling both better and distinctly terrible. He could leave now and feel that same horrible gnawing guilt on top of everything else—or he could stay for a little while longer, swapping stories and good cheer with Boil. The radio’s program wasn't terrible for once. And Boil was an excellent host, offering cup after cup of bootleg tea that didn’t taste bad at all, always talking and gesturing like it was his job to keep Cody entertained. 

The choice was easy. 

In the hours that passed, he could almost forget about the past twenty-four, the sky outside darkening as they talked. Eventually, Boil offered him a spare mattress in his apartment upstairs, and at that point, Cody was too weak to say no. He fell asleep like a sack of bricks. 

Embarrassing, maybe, but unconsciousness wrapped gently around him this time, not at all the great ocean waves that pulled him under during the day. Peaceful. Quiet. 

Until the sirens started blaring.

 

Notes:

After a hot minute, here's chapter three! Ngl, scaly Boil was not on my bingo card for this fic, it sort of just happened but it’s kinda cute??

I thought a lot about Cody and Obi-Wan waking up together and making it a whole thing, but then I remembered they’re both soldiers and have probably been in many “there was only one bed” situations before. So I hope you like the offscreen normalized bed sharing! They have much gayer shit going on outside of that, anyhow >:D

Also, I reckon they both know their way about speeders. For Obi-Wan it’s collateral damage from reading Anakin’s holo magazines, and for Cody it’s an interest in civilian vehicles in general. The street food he bought is inspired by arayes—I saw a recipe on YouTube earlier and got REALLY hungry and REALLY mad at the same time because I wanted to make some, but pita and the required spices are SO fucking expensive I almost cried checking the price tags at the supermarket. So Cody and Boil get to eat it in my stead. I guess. LOUD SIGH.

This chapter is a lot of Cody processing, being semi-conscious, barely hanging on, feeling insecure about sitting on a pillow, etcetera, but things are gonna speed up! Also, we’re growing some plot. I hope we’re all excited for that, because I sure as hell am!

Next up: The Horrors — now coming to a city near you!

Chapter 4

Public Information Notice No. 1

***

AIR RAID PRECAUTIONS

[Issued by Sector 5 Civilian Defense Council]

I. What to Know IN ADVANCE

1. The signal for an air raid alarm will be recognized by a series of rising and falling blasts from sirens installed throughout the city. It will last for two minutes. When the danger has passed, the “all-clear” will be signaled by one long blast from these same sirens. 

2. Air raid alarms are sounded only by order of the military. There are to be no drills or test blackouts.

3. An air raid alarm does not necessarily mean we are to be raided or bombed. All persons are to seek shelter within ten minutes of the alarm being sounded.

 

---

 

Unrest in the surrounding apartments. Thumping feet. Cupboards being slammed open and shut again in nervous haste, percussion beneath utterings of do you have everything, get the kids, close the door.  

Utter darkness. The wails of the siren and the heat, different from the weeks before—humid, violent, bearing down like tropical depression. 

In this thick air, Cody found it difficult to breathe. His hands, though steady, failed to button up the jacket of his uniform or fasten its cuffs. Blinking was painful. His pills clattered from their hiding spot in his sleeve—yes, right, he’d put those there just this morning—and at the same time a yelp resounded in the hallway, followed by thuds on vinyleum. A flashlight flickered on, outlining an open cabinet and Boil in his sleepwear, various emergency equipment strewn across the floor. 

Cody blinked into the light. “All good?”

He was answered by a grumble.

“You’d think they’d stop letting this happen at some point.” Boil knelt down effortlessly, clearing the mess that had fallen from his over-stuffed cabinet. “If the Navy lost the Nexus Route again, I swear…”

Cody bent to swipe the fallen package of pills into his pocket while Boil wasn’t looking. 

“Could be the Trade Spine, too. Or the Hydian.” His hip blocked the movement for a white-hot second. He just about managed to draw himself up again, losing his balance, then pretending he didn’t by following his momentum with a large step toward the hallway. It was awkward. It also hurt. Naturally. “Or maybe it’s a surprise backdoor nobody’s ever used before,” he said, leaning on the doorframe.

“That would at least be interesting.” Boil handed him a gas mask. “You think it’s the blue or the green Seps this time?”

Irritation bubbled from the pain below onto Cody’s tongue. The mask sat cool in his hands, known to his fingertips as he searched its mass-produced shape for faults. “I don't know. I’m kind of hoping for purple.” 

“Ha! Well, I hope it’s both.” Flashlight tucked between his ear and shoulder, Boil checked over his equipment. “About time certain idiots stopped pretending that only the greeners want us dead.”

Outside, the sirens swelled and ebbed, holding pitch for about twenty seconds at a time. At least one of them had to be mounted on a building nearby, from the way it shook the ground and made Cody’s brain vibrate in his skull. His anger quickly faded.

“We can discuss who’s dropping bombs on us as soon as we’re in a bunker pod, Boil,” he said.

“Or we can do it while we’re getting there. To kill some time, you know?”

“You’ll have all night to find someone else to bother about politics.”

The old lieutenant’s eye roll wasn’t visible as he made for the stairs, but Cody knew it was there. 

“Yes, sir.”

Two minutes had passed. No more sirens. Their absence left a slight ring in his ear, almost pleasant. 

The stairs leading to Boil’s shop, forced to fit inside this cramped building, were dangerously steep. Cody grit his teeth, glad for the dim in the wake of Boil’s flashlight. Nothing save for sound passed through the blackout curtains. Yelling in the street. Controlled noise, the thrum of conversation. 

By the time he reached the bottom of the stairs, that stick of launch was burning a hole in his pocket. 

Just take one, Cody thought as he stumbled into the shop’s little back room. A single hit to live through the night, a couple of hours of how things used to be when his body was younger, less crumpled, less eaten. That would be nice. 

In the dark, he sat on that stupid cushioned chair, fruit-shaped tablecloth clamps brushing his thigh. The fridge was still humming. Every piece of pottery in the cupboard had its place as usual, ceramic plates propped up to display colorful designs. Hand-painted. Cody remembered how carefully Boil had applied the pigment just a few years ago, handing out a set to every member of the 212th stranded on Coruscant. He had one in his hovel, too. 

The radio, though—that was just static. A grating pitch, a Geonosian earwig digging through the hard tissue between his temples. 

“Hold this for a second.”

Reflexively, Cody took the flashlight thrust under his nose. 

Boil unlocked a drawer below his ceramics display, squinting, and Cody adjusted the angle of the light beam to illuminate its contents. Glass glinted. Vials upon vials, all neatly lined up in a box, filled with amber liquid. The empty crackle of the radio made them look ominous, somehow.

“And this is…?”

“So I don’t get the jitters and piss myself in public,” Boil said without inflection, picking out two of the vials.

“Wait, you still—”

 “Yeah, I still. It’s that bad. Saleucami was a shit show the second time around, wasn’t it?”

Cody avoided the memory. Boil had been good, strong, steadfast. Reliable. Until…

“Right,” he hedged, and his mouth ran on against his will. “Of course. That was—well. Not your fault.” Where was he even going with this? He’d been there. Boil didn’t need his platitudes. “I’ve never actually seen you take your...”

“My what?”

Be quick or be quiet, soldier, the trainers used to say when a cadet was waffling.

“Your drugs.”

Boil closed the drawer. Perhaps Cody was over-tired, but there seemed to be unnecessary force behind it. 

Should’ve picked quiet.

“Medication,” Boil corrected. “And thank the gods for that. Nobody wants me giving a repeat performance,” he added in a lighter tone when the moment dragged on awkwardly. 

“Right,” Cody said again, lamely. 

To think that only years ago, back in those fields, he had nearly offered to put his brother-in-arms out of his misery. Before anyone else did. Someone higher up the chain, someone who would have done it without compassion. 

“Well, good thing you have it, then.” But what was he thinking? He couldn’t have pulled the trigger even if he promised. Shuddering off the memory, Cody hauled himself up along the table. “Time to go. They’ll be on our asses soon.”

The tension passed. Boil gave him an amused look.

“Pessimistic, are we?” 

“You never know.” 

“Scared of shockwaves from the South Pole?” 

“Ha-ha,” Cody deadpanned. He hid his limp as he made for the shop’s front door. “I’m more worried about the shelter. I could do without spending the night like a pickle in a jar.”

Marinating in summer heat, breathed-up air and armpit stink. His hip twinged at the mere thought. Boil chuckled, following along slowly. 

“You know, I’ve always hated the seasons here, Commander. Can’t have sunshine without heat stroke or a nice, cool breeze without bombs.”

“As opposed to Kamino, where you can always rely on the weather.”

Both of them managed some sort of grin at that.

In the end, what Coruscant’s Planetary Chief of Security had to contend with was this: an enemy bomber could—unlikely as that may be—lap the equator in all but three hours. And so, whenever one factory in the winter-dark South became a target, the entire planet dove for cover. Business as usual.

That was why Cody had been expecting the crush of people on the street. There they went: not loud, not falling over each other in a stampede, but crowding. A murmur here, a brief shout there, feet shuffling and angry clusters only forming at the main intersection where the nearest shelter lay. Moonlight painted every face dark blue against the black. 

A sinking feeling crawled up on him. 

He chanced a glance at the sky, but could not tell the tips of the blacked-out towers from the starless expanse. Looking up came with the odd pseudo-sensation of having the ground pulled out from under his feet. Vaguely nauseated, he focused back on the jam-packed intersection.  

Four minutes.

“We’re lucky the Seps don’t care for this area.”

“That’s Sector Five crisis management for you,” Boil said, stepping elbow-first into the crowd. “People got used to it, so there’s no more running and screaming. Still sucks, though.”

Following at a pitiful pace—not even because of his hip this time—Cody surveyed the ocean of heads around him. A tense sort of calm permeated the air. It reminded him of how evacuations went at HQ or around his hovel: people sitting pretty until they were admitted into their shelters, not taking the situation very seriously at all. It’s how all sentient brains dealt with unfathomable danger. 

Still, one thing was different: “There should be at least a dozen wardens for a crowd this size.”

“Yes.”

“There aren’t any.”

“As I said: shit managament. Total embarassment for the local authorities every time.” Slowly, they neared the intersection. No traffic passed overhead. “Or at least it would be if anyone actually cared—hey, remember when some contractor idiots were camped out in my shop for days?”

“No.”

“Oh, right, that was before you got here.” Still ahead of Cody, Boil stretched to peer past the montrals of a Togruta family. “I can’t believe I never told you. It all felt like a big joke. Those guys said the civ-defs hired them to check if my basement would make for a good shelter, and I thought: hey, this is great! I’ll never have to queue anymore, I’ll just roll out of bed!” 

“So that didn’t work out.”

“Nope, never. They skinned the walls, exposed all the pipes and wires, left a damn mess for me to clean and then concluded they couldn’t install the protective casing down there, after all.”

“Corruption?” Cody asked, one hand now on Boil’s shoulder. Best not to lose each other in the crowd.

“Or incompetence. Or both!” Boil might have been grinning in the night. Not a happy grin, that, but Cody understood the sentiment. 

Six minutes. 

They reached the congestion of people at the intersection where, finally, a warden stood in an open-top speeder, waving his arms. It was louder here. The warden’s mouth was moving, but Cody could barely see him, and didn’t hear him at all. Move along, his flailing suggested, nothing for you here. The queue for the shelter entrance had dissolved entirely into the crowd, people pressing this way and that, and no-one would be going anywhere anytime soon.

Eight minutes. Within the last two, Cody hadn’t taken another step in any direction. It was getting very hot. 

The singular warden kept waving away. “Move it, we’re out of room here!” Cody heard him call eventually over a lull in the turmoil. 

Digging his fingers deep into his hip, Cody forced himself not to listen. He shifted his weight back and forth. Lifted his knee as far as it would go, until white sparks almost sent him toppling into the strangers around him. 

Ten minutes. Another glance at the sky, another bout of that falling sensation, and more of nothing. He pulled at Boil’s sleeve. 

“What shelter will they be re-routing us to?”

“Um.” They were still on the damn intersection. Not even two days ago, they’d come along here on their way to the bar, bottles in hand and cheerful. Now, everyone stood shoulder to shoulder with gas masks around their necks. Bizarre. Boil fumbled a folded piece of paper from his pocket, squinting at it. “Well, at this rate, we’re not gonna get in the next one, either. Maybe the one after that?”

Cody peered at the brochure. “That would be… The Boonta’s basement?”

“Yep. If we’re lucky.”

“We’re not exactly priority.”

“Yeah, no.”

Fifteen minutes. Shuffling along like this made Cody ache worse than any wide-stride run. 

The warden by The Boonta looked harangued, red in the face under the dim lamp at his post. About ready to burst from his uniform or melt right through its seams. A narrow staircase led past him into the bar’s catacombs, and he almost merged with the wall to make room for the people seeking entrance. Cody could hear his dismissal before he’d even spoken it. His eyes, at least, were somewhat apologetic: “We’re almost full.”

“Oh, come on, Linus,” Boil said. “That’s what I get for always giving you discounts?”

“Better luck next time. Terribly sorry.” The stocky man turned back to the long, long line of nat-borns behind them, waving them through. People—old and young, healthy and weak—streamed into the bar’s bowels. 

“Unbelievable,” Boil muttered, though he was already stepping away. “We’ll be spending all night in the street at this rate.” 

It was only natural to turn away two aging clones. And anyway, they could shelter themselves if push came to shove. Cody wanted to say so, but his tongue grew heavier, drier in his mouth by the second. 

Thirty minutes. Boil’s gaze rested on the side of his face.

“You still don’t wanna talk politics?” 

“No,” Cody rasped.

Maybe he needn’t have bothered.

 

---

 

II. Your EARLY MEASURES

1. CHECK IN WITH YOUR WARD STATION—if you require further information on precautions. Your wardens will guide you to shelter in case of a raid. 

2. READ THE OFFICIAL INSTRUCTIONS. Copies of all Public Information Notices are obtainable digitally from the Sector 5 Holo Desk. It is recommended to keep a print-out version on hand. 

3. LIGHT: Arrange for effective screening of all lights in your home. (See Public Information Notice No. 3)

4. FIRE: Take your precautions NOW. (See Public Information Notice No. 2; Fire Containment Measures Official Guide)

5. SHELTER: Know the location of YOUR closest shelter! Memorize the way to the second and third closest shelters in case of emergency! (In case of crowding, see Spontaneous Shelter Official Guide) 

6. YOUR GAS MASK: Make sure you are keeping your gas mask safely and in good condition for immediate use. 

 

---

 

Plaster fluttered from the ceiling, small chips that crumbled further once they landed on his chest. 

“Alright, let’s get to you.” 

To his left, a body. To his right, much the same. Were they breathing? Gods, he hoped so. He couldn’t reach up to brush the plaster from his undershirt, his arms pinned to his sides in this heat so penetrating it seemed like any movement would cause his heart to stop. 

“You, if you could just sit up a little—”

Small hands dug his arms out from where they rested. A tug. He followed. 

“There you go! Would you look at me, please?”

He flinched when he was met by blinding light. Fingers steadied the side of his face, deft for their size.

“... And that’s a concussion.”

“You really think?” He found his voice somewhere between his dried-out vocal chords, shoulders shifting against the grout of The Boonta’s restroom. His eyes wouldn’t focus. His nose itched, and he moved to scratch it. “Ow!” 

His fingers came back bloody. 

“Don’t touch that, it might be broken.”

It wasn’t. There was just a lot of blood, already crusting over, getting everywhere. Where had his mask gone? Nothing made sense. Blinking at the blurry shape of the woman—a nurse, or whoever it was taking care him—he felt himself growing tired of it all. 

“How long has it been?”

“... Since you came in?”

“Yes.”

“Ah. An hour, an hour and a half? Sorry, sir, it’s just that you’re not—”

Not the priority. “I know, I know.”

Thunk. 

The sound came from above, blunt and mundane: like a heavy cupboard falling over. More plaster snowed from the ceiling, dusting the people stretched out on the tiles between stalls and urinals. Bangs and clatters rumbled upstairs. 

An impact sounded so harmless from here. Out there, it had been…

Loud. An invisible whip retracting through the sky, jet engines in its wake. And then more and ever more; rolling thunder, ball lightning, sirens starting up anew. A bright flash around the street corner, like daylight. That terrible noise, surging out and pouring back in from all directions, breaking glass and bones. Over and over again. His fingers clamped around Boil’s arm, half dragged up from the ground before the masses could trample them both, half swept away by the searing gale from behind.

Thunk. Again. The support beams inside the walls creaked ominously.

The restroom stank. First there was the sweat and the vomit layered over the ambient stench inherent to the place. Then there was the carnage: clothing, hair, skin, flesh. All burnt. The smell scratched his throat. 

“Where’s Boil?”

He couldn’t make out any faces in the dim light. Blood had slid from his nose down his chin, staining his undershirt. 

“I’m sorry, who?”

His head hurt. “Clone around my age.”

The woman muttered something that drowned in the rush between his ears, but he could tell she couldn’t help him. And there she went, turning her attention to the other injured in the room—he was little but an afterthought. 

That was fine. He just needed to stand. Just needed to…

Nausea gripped him. The blood on his face was already drying, flaking, itching, stupid. 

Get up, get up, get up.

Now.

He propped himself up, elbow clipping the unconscious body to his left, and found it impossible to bring his feet underneath himself. Too cramped, for one. Not enough spoons, for two. His legs stretched awkwardly into a toilet stall. As his eyes traveled up to seek leverage, he saw that its lock had been torn off—the door wobbled on its hinges whenever someone bumped the stalls, producing a series of bothersome thumps every time. 

Something inside him wanted to laugh. Another wanted to deliver a vicious kick to the door, break it once and for all, but he was too weak to even raise his leg. 

“Hooligans,” the older woman to his right said. 

He turned. 

“Excuse me?”

“Hooligans,” she repeated, jerking her chin at the broken stall. “No respect for anyone’s property.”

He stilled his efforts. 

“Funny thing to say in the middle of an air raid.” 

“You believe so?” The woman stroked her thumb over the radio perched on her chest. It had to have been broadcasting static even before he’d come to, but only now did he hear it. “The descent from disrespecting property into complete disregard for the state can be swift.” She gestured to the ceiling, shaken by another impact.

“You’re saying all Separatists have wrecked a public restroom before?”

“That’s quite reductive.” She scoffed in that way educated, older people tended to do. “Staging sedition requires the mindset of a vandal. Hooliganism lays the groundwork for being led astray, for disobedience on a wider scale, for wishing harm upon the state and its safeguards. But I assume you know that.”

Ah, yes. It was a line from the New Handbook for Officers. He’d read it, of course, at the insistence of the 7th Sky Corps’ political supervisor. 

“You know your theory,” he said. 

“I certainly do. The full version, though—not the abridged one you undoubtedly were issued. I was involved in writing it.”

As if this night couldn’t have gotten any worse. He squirmed, once more trying and failing to get up. 

“There is— ah!” The pain overwhelmed him for a moment. Had he broken something? He couldn’t tell. The hurt dragged its tail across everything else. “I have a friend who’d love to talk to you about that. Have you seen him? He’s—”

“A clone your age? Not in this room, no.” He could feel her shift next to him. “I recommend you get up and look for him yourself. There are hundreds of people here.”

Easier said than fucking done. He swallowed a groan and a snide remark, riding out that swell of agony in silence. The woman’s interest rested heavily on him.

“Your friend is interested in the theory, then?”

“Yes,” he pressed out. Not really the truth, as Boil had never bothered to give the Handbook more than a cursory glance. He just liked to run his mouth and parade his opinions. “Says there’s no difference between blue and green seps.”

Black lapped at the fringes of his vision, like being submerged in a pool of water. Death had felt a little like this whenever it had brushed him on the battlefield. 

“This implies you see a difference between the two.”

No—he wasn’t dying. This was just a precarious discussion and he’d said something careless. 

“Not at all. They are one as our enemy, as the book says.” Vaguely, he saw her nod. There wasn't enough oxygen in the room for this conversation. “But they’re not the same, or at least I've never heard the ones we captured agree on much.”

“You interrogate them about policy?” 

“No,” he said, straining. “They just talk. The blue ones… they're rabid reformists. They have all those ideas in their heads, and the greens can't stand them.”

“Elaborate.”

So demanding. His intuition urged him to address this woman formally—the way she spoke was familiar, all the confidence of a decorated officer—but she was out of uniform, and he could afford to feign ignorance.

“Caught one greener, fairly high up the chain—she hated the other captive’s guts ‘cause he was with the blues.”

“Is that so?”

“The guy was one of Dooku's firebrands who replaced her in Raxulon, she said. Hated sharing a cell with him.” 

It had been amusing at the time.

“So that man you captured took her seat of power, and still they did not betray each other in the face of their common enemy.” The woman was genuinely invested, as though she couldn't just keep fiddling with her radio and leave him alone. 

“Separatism is the one thing they agree on.”  

“Yes. Their shared ideology is to destroy us. The rest hardly matters.”

His eyes fell shut. 

“When it became clear there was discord among their Executive Council, I was hoping those… green systems and sectors would return to their rightful place by our side.” She shook her head. “But they, too, are vandals. For if they deface the Republic, they must do the very same to their Confederacy. It is a logical consequence of their nature.” 

What an interesting way to put it, he thought, lacking the energy to say anything about it. 

“There is only one state, and that’s ours or theirs,” she went on as his mind grew heavy. “There cannot be two, and there certainly will never be three.”

“Maybe.” 

“What was that?”

Oh, wait. This was the part where he had to agree. “You’re right, sir.”

A hum, the click of the radio’s antenna being pulled out even further. It still didn’t pick up anything but static.

Crickle-crackle. A storm roared above. It put him on edge, made him want to break away, to break out. He shifted, but the beast eating his bones didn’t like the heat, the hard floor, the angle of his head against the wall, or the people caging him in. Its bite was ever-cruel. 

More noise from the radio. Nothing but disturbed aetherwaves. Defense jammers swallowed the signals, rendering blind both friend and foe. It hissed. For minutes or hours it went on—and the storm wouldn’t stop. 

That storm… it had come toward him. Rapid and greedy. It had tossed him down face-first, cracking his unfastened mask between his chest and the pavement. The corresponding ache above his ribs spoke to the memory. 

Boil. Dragging him. Pushing him. 

Maybe Boil was just fine. Hells, he was probably right around the corner, chatting happily away at someone while Cody, Cody— he couldn’t move an inch. 

Static, static, static. No droning voice reading the news. No songs. Not even an advertisement. His gaze drifted, following the radio antenna up, settling on its rounded tip. The woman’s fingers slid over the buttons and frequency dials. The relentless pounding from above had ceased. No more chips of paint and mortar were coming down, though it wasn’t quiet by a long shot. Pained moans, tense voices, and the stall door making that stupid, insufferable noise. 

Cody tuned it all out; only heard static and stillness, that eerie non-feeling permeating through The Boonta’s reinforced walls. 

He knew this. He didn’t like it one bit. 

If only the pain didn’t sap every bit of strength from his body…

The woman frowned at her device, fussing with its dials. Short-range—he recognized that. Slipping past the planet-wide jammers, such signals wouldn’t travel further than a few blocks. The whole capital’s communications reduced to a game of Whisper Down the Lane.

His hand slipped clumsily into his pocket, fingers catching on damaged packaging. 

“—encounter on the ground. Repeat, Sector 5 patrol team K speaking, hostile encounter on the ground in Sector 2, over.”

“Sector 5, team C speaking, message received. What hostiles? Over.”

"Unaffirmed. Probably droids. Pass it on, over.” 

“Shit. Acknowledged. What’s your location?” 

 

---

 

It was a quick mission. Plunge the Republic’s golden spear into the Confederacy’s heart, in and out within a matter of days. They had the route. They had a time frame. General Skywalker himself was holding the corridor for them, his 501st undefeated in extraterrestrial combat. 

Under such protection, the jump from their bridgehead in the Ison sector to Raxus Secundus was no longer a fantasy, delivering them swiftly to the edges of an enemy atmosphere. What the 501st could do in space, the 212th matched on land tenfold: blasting through orbital gates, bearing down, drawing blood. A thousand klicks taken when night fell again on Raxus, and a thousand more on the day to come. 

A hot knife through butter. 

Their Y-wings laid to waste the fortresses of their adversary, struck fear into constituents and sponsors—or so Cody had thought, holding his head high over the rubble. The whole planet teetered. Almost sad; how readily it yielded when cut off from its soulless armies, unable to rattle to their leaders’ aid. 

Three days in, they reached their goal. Raxulon, that gilded city, lay beneath an impenetrable shield. Besieged. Skywalker’s corridor held. 

In the third day’s dying light, the capital’s banners glared all the way into the hills Cody had chosen for camp, the chants of real armies taunting him to come closer. All that blue resolve gathered under the shield’s immovable presence, knowing he didn't have what they thought it would take: not enough time to starve them out, not enough ordnance to blast them into submission.

Didn’t matter. He only needed to get a few men inside. That night, it would happen. 

Cody wasn’t meant to be part of it. He stayed in camp, ever dutiful, seeing off his hand-picked heroes as they molded with the moonless dark. The Republic only had to hold—the corridor, this camp, its breath until the spear pierced the heart, spilling red onto blue. 

Stars passed overhead, creeping toward dawn, and Cody held fast. The hills were beautiful even in the wake of the death and the fighting, hiding his path of destruction behind their backs. 

Please, he had been thinking, then. Please let this go well.

The Raxians knew their home. He had anticipated their trickery, the inevitable desperation that came from having a weapon leveled straight at one’s chest. He expected them to fight like rancors if the shield came down, and to stalk like nexu if it didn’t. 

Heavy was the darkness that blanketed the land. No ship dared to fly, no searchlight flared. Probing, the Raxians sent out their hunters, picking at his forward positions, giving them away to the artillery stationed in Raxulon.

Be wary, always vigilant. Never stand still.

The night took its course, and as the plan moved forward, so did he. His troops left camp in accordance with the next step. Morning had not risen over the hilltops when he relocated to the nearest ridge, just a shadow on a speeder, part of a faceless convoy.

Be quick or be dead. 

But what if you were neither?

His last memory: a dark road, downhill, near a cliff. The low hum of electric engines, replacing the howling combustors for this trip. The echoes of cannonfire in the distance, yes, but surely not aiming for him. Not on purpose. His sensors never indicated anything amiss.

The rest, he would only come to know through the gritted teeth of his comrades, hunched by his bedside and hoping he was awake to hear their words. The spear had missed. 

It hadn’t even been his fault, they said. His presence would have changed nothing. 

Nothing. 

Raxulon’s glory stood tarnished but whole, its highest seat upheld, its flesh armies full of vengeful passion. What had been gained? The Confederacy didn't fall. No money changed sides. Thejwould live a little while longer. 

And, as it seemed, so would Cody. 

 

---

  

“Alright, I’m sure everyone has heard it by now!”

Cody pushed through the people standing shoulder to shoulder, wall to wall in The Boonta’s entrails. He’d buttoned up his uniform, peeled the blood off his face and swept the dust from his hair. Given the circumstances, he felt great. His skin buzzed. The lights lining the corridor seemed too bright, but that was fine.

“Coruscant is being invaded,” the commander of Sector 5’s patrol team C yelled over the alarmed chatter, ruffled and ash-smeared next to the warden, “and we are here to collect forces for action. Do we have anyone with frontline experience?” 

Raising his hand was the most logical thing to do. The attention of everyone in the room bore down on Cody at this moment, but it didn’t feel heavy. It felt right. He looked around, expecting another hand to shoot up—if Boil was here, he’d also make himself known.

Wouldn’t he? 

“What are your qualifications?”

“ARC training and eleven years in charge of the 7th Sky Corps,” he fired off without ceremony, still searching the crowd.

Where? Where?

He was ushered forward, coming to a stop at the patrol officer’s side. He still couldn’t see that head of greying hair, didn’t really listen as the man addressed the gathering again. Combat experience was the next query, and this time, more hands rose. No sign of Boil.

Images of his friend buried beneath stone and flame shot through his mind; eclipsed like Longshot, left behind like Waxer, eyes empty, mouth slack. Not even afforded the dignity of a helmet to die under.

Cody swallowed. 

The officer—a sergeant, if he read his blackened insignia right—barked more commands and he forced himself back into the present. A little voice whispered from the edge of his awareness: remember who you are. 

Coruscant under attack. Hostiles near the Senate District. He’d be damned if he couldn’t work with that. He cleared his mind, harmonized with the newfound energy singing in his bloodstream; artificial, but so tangibly there.  

Time to get to work.

A measly troupe congregated around him, the whole shelter yielding no more than fourteen fighters, himself and the sergeant excluded. Figured. Most people here were injured, too old, too young, or cowards. The ones who had stepped forward at least could be trusted to stand their ground. 

Cody had succeeded with worse odds. Had failed with better. 

His volunteers didn’t seem to know whether to regard him with respect or suspicion. As they moved to exit the shelter, the sergeant caught him by the arm, a clunky scanning device in hand. It gave a little beep, recognizing the code embedded under his skin. 

“You’re the real deal, huh?” The sergeant said upon letting him go. Cody, with his body full of music, squared his shoulders. For the first time in so long, they actually felt mighty. 

“I have no reason to lie.”

“Seems like it. Good to have you on board.”

Someone handed him a new mask, its fit on his face familiar, seeing the world again as he was meant to see it: an objective, framed by a darkened visor. He didn’t miss a single step as they trooped through the packed hallways to one of the bar’s many back entrances.

They were being firebombed and invaded, and here he was: warm, not stewing in his own shell. Devoid of fear, of pain. You're halfway in your own grave if your mind’s at a funeral, some troopers liked to say when they saw another weep into his bucket. They had a point. Something inside had been waiting for this, not so far below the surface, and it gasped for air. 

Soon enough, it would get a good mouthful. 

The door to the outside world was hot to the touch. Soot covered the walls and floor around it. 

“Listen up!” The sergeant called, voice metallic through his mask. “The Nine Corellian Hells are real and they’re just outside this door! But don’t worry—if I made it in here, we’ll make it back out again!” 

Some previously dormant part of Cody's mind cheered, beating its chest. 

“The Seps have made landfall right outside the Senate District and are trying to break the shield. We won't let that happen! Once we've reached our transport, we'll head for the fight! Understood?”

“Yes, sir!” the volunteers shouted in unison. Cody just nodded. 

Yes. His sinews crooned like the strings on the crude instruments his brothers built in sleepless nights. He picked out a familiar tune, practiced fingers on a well-worn fretboard, and let it wash over him as he stepped out into Hell.

Though, in all honesty, there were other, much more apt comparisons one could draw to what awaited him outside: the gust from an oven door, for example, or a blast furnace’s exhale.  

Immediately, the heat soaked his uniform. It stung his skin where it touched fabric; a nettling sensation at his elbows, knees and back. The air, consumed by the raging blaze, whipped up into a storm and spat light that devoured every shadow. While his mask protected him from the smoke, it did nothing to cool the breaths he drew. He dropped, sucking colder lungfuls from the cracks in the pavement as he crawled forward. Sweet life. The song in his bones was a jolly one. 

Everything shimmered. Nothing stood still. Wind ripped at the width of his body, looking to toss him around one moment and to hold him down in the next. Unpleasant, certainly. Hopeless, for some. But Cody’s path was clear: the transport would be waiting for their little team on top of a building not even half a block away, as the sergeant had said. Their only hurdle was a firestorm. 

Snagging one last breath from the ground, he sprung into action, dashing down the street after the sergeant. The wind pried at Cody as though it had physical hands to do so. Keeping balance in its clutches was an ordeal, but his body moved nimble and smooth, all muscle memory and sharp reflex. 

And his legs worked. 

Over debris and shrunken bodies they carried him, no aches, no buckling or trembling, no debasing weakness. Just power. Treading what was left of a stone-paved sidewalk, they let him slip around tar pools and fallen lamp posts. Like they'd never given up on him in his life, like he could keep on running forever—if he could spare the breath, he would have laughed with glee.

His lungs gave a warning twinge at that. Down he went again, gulping air from the gutter, glad for his visor as he watched yellow flames burst from a window above. Their crackling was loud enough to hurt his ears, their heat like a physical weight on his body. His hand slipped in grease. Seeping into the gutter from a smoldering pile of rubble, glistening in the firelight. Viscous. Foul.

Best not to linger. 

He let the sergeant take the lead again, following him up a fire escape along the charred side of a casino. Cody knew better than to touch the railing, every step burdened by his boots sticking to the metal grate, melting and miserable. Blistering wind made the edges of his uniform catch fire. He yearned for his armor and its protective bodysuit; flame-resistant, thermoregulating, space-going, reactive. But that was gone forever, strewn across a mountainside on a faraway planet. In the present, he had to swat at the embers on his sleeve, struggle through a cloud of black smoke, feel himself go dry in the merciless updraft.  

And then, when the smoke cleared, the heat wasn't so oppressive anymore. 

His uniform still nipped at his elbows and the storm blew in gusts he had to shoulder through, but he could breathe. The casino roof warded off the worst of it. Ahead hovered a K79 troop transport, its two pilots perking up at their arrival. 

Cody whipped around. The head-count took him only a second. 

“That's fourteen,” he called, just now noticing how loud the storm really roared. It had all been soothed by the pretty chords in his blood. “Where are the others?” 

“One behind me got stuck in the asphalt,” a young woman reported, made indifferent by her mask. “Another one tried to pull him out.” 

Next to him, the sergeant cursed. Two down. Another man whimpered, hands curled close to his sides, palms up. Burned. 

Three down, then, and no time to waste. 

The transport enclosed them safely, a reprieve from the chaos. Looking down through the view slits, a large chunk of Sector 5’s entertainment quarter crawled with flame, so bright one could clearly read the map of the Senate District decaled onto the crew cabin’s bulkhead. The vehicle bucked through the storm before floating steady. Someone let out a sigh of relief. For the first time in hours, Cody caught a glimpse of the chrono: four in the morning. 

Not long until sunrise. Not long at all.

Cody took a seat on the bench, wiping his greasy hand on it, and reached into the overhead storage without a second thought. 

When his fingers brushed the components of a DC rifle, it was as though a new instrument joined the one already playing over the fire and doom. Something light. Something simple. An improvised flute, maybe, carved from a branch on days where boredom ruled the trenches. 

He pulled the stock and barrel into his arms. The others were doing the same, but their touches seemed clumsy in comparison, perfunctory, unfeeling. Cody fitted the pieces together, the click-click-clack on-beat with the strings and the flute. Beautiful. Between his hands and the rifle’s grip coursed an energy he could only describe as the weapon becoming part of his body, as responsive to his whims as his every muscle cord. The others simply couldn’t create harmonies like this. 

Small impacts went tap-tap on the transport’s roof. Faint. Crisp. A tiny little tin drum. Tap-tap-tap-tap. 

So clear, so regular. Crystalline. 

“About damn time they turned the rain on,” the sergeant remarked from his seat. 

And how nice that was. How the sound alone cooled Cody’s burning skin. A song, ancient and well-loved, grew louder in his head as the rain fell more vehemently; one the first cadets had picked up from their trainers, one the following generations had gone on to mime from their seniors. Every cohort laid their own rhymes on the melody. Even later, men in the field wrapped their adventures around it, their sorrows, their joys. 

A hum spilled over Cody’s lips, swallowed by the mask. No one in the transport would hear it—and that was fine. It resonated from his heart into his hands. Slowly, the firelight faded, dipping the little crew cabin back into darkness. 

There came the radio static again. The ticking of the dials going round and round and back the other way as the sergeant tried to make contact, cursing some more. Cody watched him give up on the device, then climb into the cockpit. Muffled voices filtered through the door. He saw a nervous man in their momentary leader, heard it in his tone, but it didn’t worry him. Competent people were nervous all the time. 

Cody, too, was full of nerves. Or was it excitement? He could barely contain it, the way it throbbed inside his chest. 

“Alright, folks, we’ve got our orders!” the sergeant announced upon squeezing back into the cabin. “We’re sweeping the shield’s perimeter for infiltrators.”

Flying low between buildings, their craft closed in on the deflector shield erected over Coruscant's heart. They weren't the only ones: engines cut through the rain, friend and foe distinct in their thrums and rumbles. A street came into view as they descended further, the hydraulics of the gangway already hissing. 

Out. Out. Out into the pale of the night, bruised boots on metal, raindrops on his visor, tilling lines through soot. A time signature in his head, steady as a metronome. Left foot forward, two-three-four, repeat. Like dancing in rapid forward motion. 

The transport’s headlights painted yellow cones into the downpour. Even though the sky couldn't be darker if it tried, Cody knew from the shift in the air, the pressure in the back of his head, that Confederate dreadnaughts hovered just inside the stratosphere. Always there. A foreign body in the Republic's flesh. 

Strangely, he relished that presence. Fighter craft zoomed overhead at dogfight speed. Screeching. Twirling out of sight. 

Welcome home.

Wetness pricked at the corners of his eyes despite his mask still fitting his face like a glove. 

He blinked, clasping his gun tighter as the rain slicked his palms against its grips. Time to get his mind on track. Where would a Seppie go if they wanted to break through the shield? 

Cody pressed against a  wall full of disintegrating posters, peering around the corner. 

He knew where he would go. Crack Raxulon or crack Coruscant’s central shield—those tasks weren’t so different. His stomach roiled. 

He moved forward, away from the sensationt. There: the Early High Republic Architecture Museum. Next to it, a Mandalorian fusion restaurant he’d dined at with his colleagues. A lottery. A second-hand clothes store. Consultancy offices. All chock-full of people by day, making for one of Coruscant's liveliest boulevards.

Tonight, it hydroplaned, distant fires reflected on glistening concrete. 

“What’s the plan?” the sergeant shouted over the rain. 

While Republica’s penthouses themselves lay well within the shield, the less aesthetically pleasing necessities did not. Cody’s eyes locked onto the flashes of combat beyond the boulevard. 

“To the transformer station!”

Running past rain-whipped planters and storefronts, all their colors washed to grey, his pulse shot up his throat. Couldn’t fail this. Couldn’t allow it. Not again, not when this was his one and only chance, no—he would drive them out, and he would do it alone if he had to. The desire filled his every cell. 

After the boulevard, the skyline opened up. The cityscape followed a natural dip in Coruscant's topography here, rooftops forming a mosaic below, granting him full view of the shield in the Senate Valley and the substation just outside its perimeter. This close to the government quarter, the street grid was dense. No wasted space. Every roof between his vantage point and the station was lined with gardens and solar panels. 

Plasma bolts zipped through the air, red and blue, blue and red, and each shot should tell Cody exactly where its sender was hiding. 

Should. He squinted. A rainy haze lit up whenever a bolt was loosed. The structures, the darkness and the spray blended together to make sighting the combatants impossible, and once more he lamented the absence of his old equipment. 

“The Seps are down in the streets,” he said, pointing to the blocks bordering the shielded district. “They’ll want to keep the power on. Once they’ve captured the substation, they’ll try to use it to short out a portion of the shield.”

Or at least that's how Obi-Wan and his ARCs had temporarily succeeded in Raxulon. If the Seps were smart—something they did occasionally achieve—they had taken notes on that day. 

A volunteer with a very young voice peered past him. 

“Why haven't we blown it up, then?” 

“Because it also powers the ventilation of a couple hundred bunker pods, soldier.” 

“Oh.”

Yeah. 

“We’ll flank the station from two sides, over the rooftops.” Cody gestured for the sergeant to take the right, waved five men over to follow him left. “It’ll make any Seps inside those buildings nervous and draw fire away from the—” 

The sky flared. Somewhere in the storm clouds above, a small enemy dropship had taken a hit. Its flaming carcass sagged, propulsion still running. 

“Take cover!” he bellowed just as the thing broke into two, no, three jagged pieces mid-air. The largest chunk—cockpit and fuselage and a crumbling wing—crashed into the shield with an electric boom that swooped all the way to Cody’s position before sliding off, tearing through a pedestrian bridge not far from the substation.

Too close.

Right over their heads whizzed the two remaining chunks; one into a building to their left, the other screeching down the boulevard behind them in a trail of sparks and smoke. Shards of glass joined the drum of raindrops on Cody’s back as he pressed into the ground. Heat from the explosion warmed the left side of his body.

Too close, too close, way too fucking close.

How he loathed urban warfare.

How desperate he was for anything he could get. 

“Get up! Go, go, go!” 

Back on his feet, he led the squad closer to those overgrown rooftops. A glance over his shoulder: what was left of the dropship’s tail smoldered in the street there, still, misshapen. Rain, darkness, fumes, adrenaline. 

Was that just fire, or did he see enemy movement inside? 

With a zap and a zoom, another pair of fighters passed overhead. Cody’s face twitched. Water trickled through his uniform, running down the front of his collar. His eyes snapped across the path ahead of them, calculating routes, tracking another misty exchange of fire somewhere down by the station. 

“Sergeant—change of plans!” he called out, pointing to the crash site. “Check that debris for droids!”

“And you’ll go forward with the station?”

Doubt and worry. His volunteers were soaked, little rivers dripping from the muzzles of their masks and rifles. They looked small. Harmless, soft targets.

Did he look like that?

The notion terrified him. 

“Just go!”

 

---

 

In the beginning of the war, battle droids had been something of a joke. There really was no way around it. Those gangly things, strangers to morals and opinions, marching into battle like a great migration of fish—glinting and stupid. Easy to pick off. Even easier to laugh at. 

On the slick grass of a roof biotope, Cody skidded behind a solar panel. The blaster bolts bouncing off its surface made sure it would be out of order come morning, but its cover saved his skin, clad as he was in nothing but a few layers of wool and linen. More shots scorched the lawn beside his thigh. 

Commando droids, in contrast, were no joke at all.

It had taken a while for the Separatist Supreme Army Command to realize that. Like someone lifted a blindfold off their eyes at long last. Any manufacturer capable of building commandos was certainly swimming in credits now, ubiquitous as those slinky bastards had become on the battlefield.

The droid stopped firing. Cody stilled. Where would it move? Where were its comrades?

Rain whipped past the solar panel’s protective slant, spraying fine droplets onto his visor. They didn’t run off like they would have done on his bucket. He wiped his face with a soaked-through sleeve, but he might as well have just let it be, for all the good it did. 

Over the rainfall and the chaos, he heard something. Footfalls, maybe. The music in his head kindly piped down, though it was still there in the background, matching its chimes to the mechanical whispers.

An irregular patter of water, like a boot coming down in a puddle. Cody yanked the mask off his face. 

That droid may be good, but it was no match for him. 

Vision as clear as it could be, he peeked over his cover, rifle in hand, and he didn’t need to think at all—he was faster, his aim more deadly. The droid’s last bolt zipped over him as it fell, a red-hot crater molten into its forehead. He still felt the heat where its shot had passed his temple.

Crawling, he made his way past its remains to the edge of the building. A large exhaust vent to press his back against, safe, and a passable lookout. 

Well. If it weren’t so dark. He couldn't even see what was going on in the street below. Still, he’d been correct in his earlier assessment: the assault on the substation had lessened as the Seps were forced to divert their attention, distracted by his push. 

Behind him, the building struck by the dropship belched smoke into the sky. On the boulevard strobed a firefight his volunteers were in the process of losing. 

Zap!

He pulled his head back just in time to avoid the blaster bolt from the street below. Scooting away from the ledge, he broke into a run along the row of solar panels, harassed immediately by another droid who had joined him on the rooftops. 

They all had a lock on him, and that was just as well.

Come and get me, Cody thought, sending a volley across the gap between the two sides of the street. He moved as fast as the bolts themselves. Not a problem in the galaxy except for the one right in front of him. This old DC-15A had its faults, but it may as well have been a sniper rifle in his hands—the commando droid atop the other roof scrambled, falling behind as it evaded his shots.

Shouting. Human voices. Some of his volunteers were catching up, providing cover fire, making themselves useful at long last. He heard two, three, then four of them, creating a window for him to make a dash for the next building. Cody sprinted for the edge to do just that, sure-footed even on the slippery grass and concrete. 

He threw his rifle. Jumped. 

In their final year as cadets, each clone had to complete an obstacle course in full gear. Tunnels, moats, walls, inclines—you name it. At its finish line, a ditch as wide as eight meters awaited. Flight school, as they used to call it, since everyone who could cross it while carrying forty kilograms of shit would need a pilot’s license for their legs. A little badge of honor. 

And the gap between these buildings here was, what, five meters? Basically nothing. Cody cleared it like a puddle on a sidewalk, tucking and rolling when he came down on the other side. Hot plasma sizzled through water as he snatched up his rifle again, crouching, moving ever-closer to the looming shield. 

The substation was more visible from here. Just one more building separated him from his allies on the ground, and they were growing more aggressive, pushing the enemy out of previously safe positions.

More shouting from behind, unintelligible. Sounds of alarm. 

He identified the cause: a good distance ahead, a squad of commandos entered the roof, five in total. Their metal hides glinted in the dull light of the shield. Like an unholy dome it rose from the planet’s pulse point, casting its glow into the night, fuzzy in the rain-streaked air.

One last obstacle in his way. 

As the droids dispersed across the roof, red bolts flying, that old song played louder in Cody’s head. He had nowhere to hide, except for the vent he threw himself against. Peering around the corner, he caught a glimpse of the station, its control houses and circuit breakers and voltage regulators bathed in electric red and pre-dawn blue. 

That blue crept up the horizon, chasing the black away. It showed him the edges of the storm: Coruscant’s leviathan, one giant octopus cloud emptying itself over its burning hoard. 

Only moments left until sunrise. 

Plasma hit the edge of the vent, very close to his cheek. More sizzling, that acrid smell in the air—the droids had him pinned, he’d known from the very moment they had appeared—and that shot had missed his jaw by mere chance just now. He breathed ozone and petrichor. 

At his back, the volunteers were still holding off the threats he had left behind, unable to make the jump themselves. 

Alone, alone, alone. He’d almost forgotten how that felt, to be the center of attention, the first thorn the enemy wanted out of their side. His face had gone numb, but he could tell it was smiling of its own accord.

Clank-clank-clank.  

Here they came; one droid from the left, the second from the right, and a third to vault his cover while the remaining two stood by in case he slipped their trap. 

All eyes on him.

Better put on a show. 

The first droid to reach him would be the one going over the vent box in about three seconds, but the most dangerous were the two coming in from each side. 

Left or right? 

An arbitrary decision, in the end. He picked the right side—the opposite of where his rifle had been pointing before—and fired around the corner. Didn’t hit. Made the droid flip-flop and delay itself, though. Its comrade’s shadow fell over him from atop his cover, barrel leveled at his face, and only his flinch reflex let him get away with nothing more than a scorch mark on his epaulet. 

Heat pounded in his neck. 

This was the part where his rifle proved too cumbersome for the close quarters he found himself in. No problem, though. He’d done it all before. Cody dropped, flipping the weapon, its hefty stock a thundercrack on the droid’s metal cranium as he swung it down with all his might. 

Any flesh-and-blood being wouldn’t have survived. Droids didn’t deal in concussions and skull fractures, however, so he did well in kicking this one’s blaster off the roof while it still reeled. 

Four seconds. 

Cody rolled into the downed droid’s arms as though it was his lover, brute-forcing it between himself and the barrage unleashed upon him from the droid that had flanked around the left. 

He noted their make, their lacking sleekness and wit compared to the commando models he had faced in more recent years; old machines only deemed fit for manning ships that were supposed to be shot down. He was wrestling with cannon fodder. 

Five seconds. 

Righty had recovered in the meantime—he could see it closing in from the corner of his eye. Couldn't let himself get shot while he was down. He allowed the droid on the floor with him to wrench him onto his back, its steel fingers digging hard into his flesh, or at least they probably did. He couldn’t feel much of anything. 

Can’t even hurt me, you useless hunk of metal.  

His vibro-knife cut its circuits, drawn so fast his mind hardly followed. It didn't need to. All that mattered was that his hands knew what to do. 

Six seconds. He heaved the mechanical corpse up, jostled by plasma impacts along its length. Heavy. His back ought to protest, an errant thought told him. It ought to buckle and bend and make him groan. 

How nice of it to play along for once. Every fiber of his being both present and gone, under his control and not. His sweat mingled with the rain as he swayed just a little under the weight of his burden. 

The next volley would kill him without a shadow of a doubt.

Fun. 

Naturally, he hurled his knife at Lefty’s head. It dodged—not optimal, but still buying him another fleeting moment to act—and he thrust his weight back, tumbling into Righty. 

Seven seconds. Or maybe eight? Time never did seem to pass as it should in the rush of combat. 

Righty tried its best to pry itself away from the dead weight of its squadmate and a full-grown clone, firing uselessly into the air. Its soulless comrades weren't showing any mercy. Plasma seared along Cody's sides. He was a hair’s width away from being toast. Righty teetered, so Cody pushed, one hand on its blaster, shoulder straining against its chest until they reached the ledge above the street. 

They dropped. All wind and weightlessness for a single, floating breath. It would be a long fall for Righty, plummeting to its demise, but for Cody, it was short: he hung on to the ledge, tiptoes on the windowsill below, clutching the droid's blaster. 

Now he just needed to get out of this. His lacking backup seemed to fire vaguely in his direction, at the droids closing in on him. 

As Righty crashed into the sidewalk below, he swung its blaster up. The weather tore at him, made his fingers slip on the wet surface, but falling didn’t even enter his mind. 

Clank-clank-clank.

Ten seconds. How freely they gave themselves away to him. He blew a hole into the first droid that tried to step on his hand and shoot him in the face, curling against the building as this one, too, dropped motionless into the street. 

Eleven, twelve, thirteen. 

Nothing. Cody, buffeted by gusts of wind and water, strained to hear enemy movement up above.

Clank-clank-clank.

Yes, there they went, but their steps were growing softer, red bolts flying at the station instead of him. He traced their line of sight with his eyes, squinting through the rain and haze to the towering arrester structure. The bolts never made it through. A bright blade danced down between the circuit breakers, off and on again, deflecting, disappearing, then popping up somewhere else with superhuman speed. 

His heart skipped happily in his chest—always trust a Jedi to show up at both the latest possible and most opportune moment. Hoisting the stolen weapon, Cody scrambled back onto the roof, flat against its surface. 

Here was one convenient thing about older droid models: sometimes, their script forced them to make decisions so staggeringly stupid, you’d be forgiven for thinking their programmers were on the Republic’s side all along. Decisions like turning their back on the enemy because a target with a whirling lightsaber—a kill priority, of course—had appeared on the battlefield. 

Their loss. Cody dropped them both with their comrade’s gun, efficient, simple. 

Five versus one, and still he was the victor; no armor, no comms, no frills, no nothing. Pleasure flooded his body, soft and tantalizing like the rain running beneath his clothes. Little streams off his chin, the tips of his scraped fingers.

Who was small, now? Not him. Not ever him, standing so tall over his foe, alive. He shuddered.

A rumble filled the air, then, as though the great storm itself was heaving a sigh through its  octopus maw. In the twilight, another Separatist dropship descended in flames, uncaring whether its artificial crew burned or not. It splintered. The parts hurtled into Coruscant’s skyline with their destructive load, displacing atmosphere and glass and concrete. The cacophony ground against his ears. 

Someone ought to tell the AA crews not to shoot those stars-damned things down so carelessly.

From the debris crawled more droids, their outlines clunky in the half-dark. Cody tossed away the Seppie blaster and dove to collect his rifle, eyes sharp on the other rooftops. More and more clankers filled his field of vision. Overwhelmed by the adversary, his volunteers would soon fail. 

The Jedi, at least, seemed to realize this. Abandoning their post down at the station, the humanoid figure darted up the facade of the building across the street, saber reactivating as they reached the top. 

Green. 

Green, and left-handed. 

They didn’t fit the profile of the dominant right Cody was used to having by his side, so deft with that blue blade, and yet…

The form was unmistakeable. Slashing through droids like they were nothing but training dummies, smooth as a nexu on the hunt, leaving white-hot gashes on metal carcasses. Cody shuddered once again, and not because of the adrenaline. 

Water on his skin. Thrills from head to toe, bliss inside his veins. 

Taking aim, down on one knee back in the cover of the vent box, he fired across the street. Two droids dropped. Faster than the falling rain, the Jedi adjusted their path of destruction exactly as Cody had thought they would. Hearing the hum of their lightsaber from this distance ought to be impossible, but he thought it was there, anyway, like a bassline in his mind as his shots and their slashes synchronized. Skillfully picked out. So deep it rattled his bones. 

When the last droid on that roof fell, Cody did not waste a single breath. He bolted. The jump across the street canyon barely registered with him—his eyes were fixed on the man in front of him, stanced in such a familiar way. 

He hit this roof much harder than the one before. No pain, just his left leg giving a brief wobble. Skittering on the grass, he saw the Jedi reach out, pulling him in without physical touch. The Force held him tight as they tumbled across marble tile—

—right into deep, deep water. 

Cody’s first instinct was to thrash. His second, with the taste of chlorine filling his nose and mouth, was to simply let himself be guided. 

Cover. Safe. 

His shoulder bumped lightly into the floor. Red light flickered over the water sporadically, casting two shadows onto the pool’s bottom, intertwined, floating their way over to the steps. 

When they broke the surface, resting low on those stairs, Cody didn’t feel out of breath at all. A solid presence at his side.

A solid presence that had never learned how to say just  a proper, simple hello.

“Sorry if I got your parade greens a little wet, there.”

Cody frowned, catching the rifle that hovered into his grasp, holding it securely above water as the rain continued beating down. Looking to the sky was like facing a high-intensity showerhead. 

Asshole, he thought with an old fondness. 

“Says the guy in his Primeday best.” He plucked at the heavy, not very Jedi-like tunic billowing around Obi-Wan, black among the pool’s little waves. “How was that dinner? Were the senators any fun?” 

There the man sat, in equal parts dignified and waterlogged. He pulled his ankle from where their legs had tangled, but his shoulders tipped closer, accentuated by the cut of his tunic. 

“Save it for later,” he said, collegially batting Cody’s hand away. “Was that jump truly necessary?”

“It wasn't far.”

“I know. I’m talking about all that fire you left yourself open to.”

Plasma zipped after them—after him, specifically, Cody realized, pressing himself up into a crouch on the steps. The tile outside their cover was scorched. 

“Ah,” he said with a wince he couldn’t keep down, hiding his mouth in the water. “Yes.” 

Obi-Wan narrowed his eyes. In the sparse light, that mellow blue became dark and colorless like the storm. Self-awareness trickled into Cody for a moment: the harsh in and out of his breath, his singed uniform, torn and smeared with soot that not even the pool could wash away.

Right.

Out with it. 

“I am letting you know that I am under the influence,” he spoke into the chlorine. Gods, there was a lot of it. 

“You’re—”

“High on launch. Reporting for duty.” 

Honesty went a long way, he supposed, as Obi-Wan barked out a startled laugh.

“Just thought I’d tell you.” 

The Jedi ran a hand through his hair, short strands not quite slicking back as he grinned in a way that looked painful. 

“Okay.” 

“Okay?”  

“Good to know, I suppose.” 

That same hand—the flesh one, because they lived in a world where Cody needed to make that distinction now—reached for his neck, dipping beneath the soaked collar. 

Calloused fingers over slick, grimy skin. 

Hm. 

When the touch lingered, his mouth moved just to fill the air with words.

“Any vital signs?”

Those fingers slid a little higher. Just under his jaw, they stopped, exercising the lightest of pressures. Water sloshed.

“Excellent heart rate for a small rodent, I would say.”

“Thanks, doc.”  

More plasma sputtered over their heads. A bolt hit the water right next to Cody, going up in a steamy hiss. The hand on his neck pulled him in and down so abruptly he barely had time to extend his blaster arm out in front of him, keeping the muzzle dry. Light pressure turned hard. 

Hm. 

This time, Cody spluttered when he came up, coughing into the water. 

“I should dunk you for that,” he said, trying to kick Obi-Wan’s leg. Obi-Wan kicked back, though in this pool it amounted to little more than a nudge. 

“Remind me the next time we’re having a splash, won’t you?”

Cody coughed again. “You won’t even see it coming.”

Obi-Wan pulled away, giving his shoulder a hard clap. He just smiled. 

“Glad to have you here, Cody.”

It was as though that hand had never left Cody’s neck. Imprints burning hotter than anything the firestorm could throw at him, just without the pain. Pleasant. He wanted it back. 

Adverse effects of the drug, no doubt—it was famous for making your codpiece feel a little tight every now and then.

“You, too.” Jerking his rifle in the direction of the fight, Cody dropped the smile that had overtaken him. He coudn’t remember when or how it had snuck across his lips. “Now, how about we shake off some of this water weight?”

His determination was mirrored on Obi-Wan’s face. The sun chose this moment to creep over the horizon, painting gold the rain, the ends of wet hair, the metallic hand. Its rays lit a spark in his eye. 

“After you.” 

 

---

 

Daylight turned the battle into a world of its own. Coming in from the side, it made the storm too bright, its haze pearlescent like a child’s colorful daydream. It shone surreal below the dark blue leviathan which in itself looked fantastical; a creature without rhyme or reason. 

Any semblance of juvenile whimsy died in the noise. 

Of the original troupe Cody had set out with, only a few were left, all of them pushed into the station’s labyrinth of transformers and scaffolding. Screams resounded from the control house where their singular medic patched up the wounded as well as she could. Wave upon wave of droids poured in from dropship fragments all over the city block, and they didn’t stop, not even when the defenders began breaking out the few grenades at their disposal.

Dreadnaughts hung above the rain. Out of reach. Always the easy way out; being the guy in the stratosphere sending death blows down to the surface whenever he pleased, not concerned at all with the slog of house-to-house combat. Cody wished he could land even a single scratch on those faraway giants. 

Ducking between the station’s arrestor towers, he took a second to reload. Just like on the roof, his left leg gave an odd little lurch, though his knee seemed fine when he planted it on the hard floor. A potential concern. 

He forgot about it when a pat-down of his pockets told him they were more loaded with water than with ammunition.

“Running out!”

Two mags left, one of which he swiftly inserted into the receiver. Click-clack.  

“I’m low, too,” a volunteer down the line of circuit breakers called. What little they’d been able to carry would leave them defenseless soon, ready for the taking. 

A lucky break was what they needed. And if none came…

Outside of cover, Obi-Wan’s strange new lightsaber twirled, a verdant contrast against the morning’s golden glow. Despite all the wrong colors, the figure he cut was as sharp as it was comforting. 

In a horrid chain of crackles and pops, something burst right where Obi-Wan was standing—a flare used as an offensive implement. Cody flinched on instinct. Magnesium whistled all over in a shower of white-red sparks. When he was done blinking the bright spots away, Obi-Wan had fallen back next to him, hissing as he shook out his arm. Droplets flew from the tips of his fingers. 

Cody gave him a cursory once-over. 

“All good?” 

Obi-Wan only harrumphed at that, inspecting his elbow where some shrapnel had torn at the fabric. He flexed his hand with a wince. “Almost dropped my lightsaber.” 

“They’ll overrun us at this rate,” Cody said, swallowing a glib remark at the last moment. “I have sixty rounds left. Can you move your arm?”

“Well enough.”

“What about the other one?”

Silver fingers curled rigidly. “It’s no good. You’ll have to get used to my left side.”

Fine. Not like it would make much of a difference, anyway. 

“What’s the plan?” Obi-Wan asked then, eyes hard. Their weight on Cody’s face went well with the trusty steel in his palms. Two things that belonged together. 

“Hold out. Buy time.” 

There was nothing better left to do. Having come to the same conclusion, Obi-Wan’s jaw shifted in displeasure, gaze drifting to the scattered fighters holed up with them.

“We won’t be able to stall them for much longer.”

“Yeah. I’m expecting them to flank within the next few minutes.” 

“What direction?”

Cody nodded at the right side of the station, down where the pedestrian bridge lay in ruin, offering plenty of cover. Obi-Wan followed his gesture with a frown.

“They’ll push us into the control house.” 

“Most likely, yes. But our reinforcements should show up any minute now.” Cody steeped his voice in conviction. “If we last another ten, fifteen minutes…”

They both glanced up. 

Pock-marked buildings. Bombed-out windows like crenels for their lurking enemy. Lightning between the clouds and sunlight on their billowing flanks, roaring alongside the cannon-thunder. 

Triple rainbows directly over the station, every stripe too vivid.

Like a damn mission marker. 

Obi-Wan’s eyes were dark again, fixed on those broken windows, hand unwavering on the hilt of his weapon. 

“I’ll make a distraction,” he said, predictably. 

Cody could picture it well: the Jedi dodging past speeding bolts, melting through circuits, invisible hands crushing hydraulic joints. That display used to be a part of his day just like breakfast and dinner. He hungered to see it again. 

“Chase them into the open so we can make ourselves useful, too,” he said, letting that hunger fill his gut. 

“Mhm.”

“And pick up some mags if you see any lying around out there.” He reached for the back of Obi-Wan’s neck, laying his hand there, squeezing for good luck. Short hair pricked at his fingers. “Don’t fuck up.”

“Now, why would I do that?” 

“You wouldn't. Not in front of me.” 

Obi-Wan rolled his shoulders, peering across the battlefield. The rainwater sheen highlighted the angles of his face, all fifteen years of war and wrinkles, marks of survival so stubbornly earned. His body hunched with predatory tension.

“Far be it from me to disappoint you, Commander.” 

The Jedi didn’t smile, but his voice carried the expression just as well. The feeling that had made Cody’s stomach churn sank lower, filling him with certainty: they would hold. After all these years, they were still the spear’s tempered point. Obi-Wan’s lightsaber ignited, wrong and right and new and old, raindrops hissing on its blade. 

And then he was off. 

“Watch him!” Cody barked at the others, following the flash of green through the crosshair of his rifle. 

Obi-Wan didn’t take long to deliver. Air shifted violently and a gaggle of droids was flung into the open, some already crushed, some sliced at the neck with the precision of an executioner. Others scampered back up, but they were too slow. Perfect targets. Bang, thump— they dropped nice and easy. Minimal ammo wasted.  

Passing fifteen minutes like this should be perfectly doable.

Of course, nothing in war ever went as it should. As Obi-Wan disappeared from Cody’s line of sight, weaving through the bridge’s remains, footsteps approached from behind. 

“Sir,” the volunteer said, fingers white around her blaster, “our radio op’s got a connection to Command.” 

Impatiently, he continued searching his field of vision for enemies to shoot. None appeared. 

“And?”

“You need to go to the control house.”

Finally, another droid flushed out by Obi-Wan showed its dome—and he missed. He cursed through gritted teeth. Fired again, and then a third time, until the blasted thing actually went down. 

Thirty-seven rounds left. 

“Sir? You need to move fast. The jammers—”

Yeah, yeah. 

“This better be important,” he snapped, rising from his kneeling position. Wobbled again. Roughly, he caught himself on the volunteer’s shoulder and pushed away. “Hold down my sight line!”

It was good to be checked in on, he reminded himself on his way over to the control house. Reinforcements, maybe. New orders. Rain sloughed off the hut’s angled roof like a miniature waterfall, but it wasn’t as though it could soak him any further as he ducked into the dry interior. 

Inside, a dull hum descended upon his eardrums. Like a row of freezers, the field generator in a forward camp, or a stealth speeder’s electric engine. A handful of wounded were crowded up against the consoles and walls. The whole room stank of bodily harm, hot and humid like the bar’s disgusting basement. The radio operator, too, lay injured. 

“Make it quick,” Cody said upon stepping closer, “our man is out there risking his life for us.”

“We have a signal from Command—”

“I know. What do they want?” 

Looking oddly guilty, the operator lowered his gaze. The radio crackled. 

“I repeat,” an older man’s voice resounded through the tangy air, “the shield must not be compromised. Do you hear me, Substation South-Central?”

“Yes, sir. This is the captain. We are holding—”

“Leave it!”

“Sir, there is a good chance we can—”

“Destroy the controls and abandon the station!”

What? No!

“But the—” 

“Spare your concerns, clone! I am well aware! Do as you’re told!” 

Someone wailed in pain. Somewhere by the bridge, Obi-Wan faced the enemy all alone. Below them, innocent civilians huddled in their bunker pods, trusting that they would be kept safe.  

Rage and duty clashed in Cody’s brain. Between them, his thoughts went cold, then hot, then cold again, twitching in his jaw. 

“Understood, sir.” His voice wavered just the tiniest bit. He exhaled forcefully, clearing his throat. “What are our orders after that?”

Silence. Static. It made his fists tremble where they clutched his weapon. 

“Sorry,” the operator mumbled, fiddling with the equipment strewn around him. “The line went down.”  

Alright. 

Okay. 

Just as forcefully as he had breathed out, Cody breathed in again. Took one last note of the blood, sweat and bile shed for this stupid fucking station. All the shelters depending on it for ventilation would soon smell like this, too, and then rapidly get worse. And it would rest on his shoulders. On his conscience. 

All eyes in the room were on him. Even the medic, intrepidly fighting her comrade’s nicked artery, spared a second to glance at him. 

“You heard him,” he barked, swaying with his anger. Dripping on the floor. Hot, cold, hot, cold. “Pack it up! We’re getting out of here.” 

Disbelief spread across their faces. Very few of them would make it. They had to have known this when they volunteered, but…

Hot, cold.

The safety of his rifle clicked on. His fingers had moved on their own. 

Hot.

He turned, stock raised over his head, bashing in the station’s control panel with many times the fury he had unleashed before. Glass splintered, flying everywhere. Metal bent, the noise bouncing off the walls, ringing in his ears. The force vibrating through his weapon with every impact jarred him from wrist to shoulder. 

Levers and buttons and bolts came loose. Cody freed one numb hand to tear at the loose panel, ripping it off its fastenings like he was peeling a stubborn fruit. It clanged loudly as he tossed it to the ground. 

Click went the safety one more time. He took aim, barely, and emptied the magazine into the dense web of wires and switches he had laid bare. The electric hum that had been present before died abruptly.

Empty, the mag clattered to the ground. When he turned to the room again, thirty rounds to go in his reloaded rifle, everyone was staring at him. 

Microscopic pieces of glass stuck to his hand after he ran it through his hair. 

It was done. He had done it. 

Cold. So very, very cold. 

“So much for High Command’s orders,” he said, letting his rifle’s forestock smack into his open palm. “Here are mine: figure out how to evacuate. If you can walk at all, take this.” 

Reaching into his pocket, he produced the package of launch. Soggy. Some of the pills were crushed and paste-like. He salvaged a few, tossing them at the medic who barely caught them. The mushy rest went back where it came from—it could still be useful. 

“What now?” the radio operator asked, struggling to get up on his bloodied leg. Cody pulled him to his feet. 

The truth was, he didn’t know. Not with the comms down, not with all this uncertainty, not with the reinforcements taking as long as they did. 

“I’ll get the Jedi. He’ll cover our escape, and then we’ll find another unit to join. Keep sharp on that radio, private.” 

He left the building without another word. 

His uniform stuck to his body, and as the morning warmed, the soaked fabric began to chafe. The waterfall just outside the door splashed the back of his head, washing away more of the protective gel keeping his hair in check. He could feel the curls loosen and shift. 

Rainbows mocked him from their breezy perch. Stacking over each other as though Coruscant's skies weren't brimming with terror right in front of them, inside them, through them. 

He raised two fingers to his mouth, whistling as loud as he could—one long blast for a cease-fire, executed in complete disregard of protocol—though protocol had gone to hell a long time ago. He just hoped it could be heard. 

What to do?

Rushing along the station structures, eerily still without the currents it was supposed to conduct, he collected every man left standing. 

That stillness. Lights out in the bunkers below, running on finite air. The thought plunged down on him, a cloud-burst, but the rain was mellowing, falling in thinner and thinner strings on his back. 

Behind the shield, those penthouses stood tall. Pristine under the morning sun. They would be safe. He had made sure of that by following the order, had made no mistake. And yet…

Blood on the pavement, glassy eyes, the headlights of a speeder in the black of the night. 

No way to undo that. No way to drag thousands of people from their shelters and out into this carnage. He whistled again, the ruins of the bridge in his sights. 

What to do, except to fight on? 

Obi-Wan stood over the rubble like he was carved from it, dark gray on dark gray, animated stone. He had done good work here. His chest heaved from the efforts evident all around him: droid corpses littered the uneven ground, warped and butchered. His saber whipped behind his back, deflecting bolts away from their group. 

A large shape blotted out the sun. Aggressively triangular. Dropships swarmed the sky, full-bellied, coming down far away from where Cody slipped into the cover of Obi-Wan’s blade. 

Too distant to see, but Cody knew, could swear he saw the white armor shining—and on it, blue marks of valor. 

In the shadow of the Resolute, he banished his worries to the future. 

 

---

 

IX. To the People of Coruscant

 

Valued Citizens,

do not be alarmed by the mandates presented above. In the face of rising aggression, a well-instructed public is a war half-won. We, the officers and policymakers working tirelessly to ensure your safety, have the solemn duty to inform you of the danger beyond our capital’s reach. 

We owe a debt to our soldiers on the front lines. Our Great Republic is entering a new stage of this conflict, one which demands constant vigilance that has thus far been supplied in abundance by our Armed Forces. It is in our best interest to return the favor now. 

These uncertain times call for action from every layer of society!

It may be that the war effort will deprive you of certain comforts the Republic and Her brave defenders have previously been able to sustain. It may be that in the following quarters, She will have to ask more of you than She ever has before. 

Know this: any hardship you may endure will be temporary, and after your day’s work is done, rest righteously assured that you helped your Republic take another step toward peace. 

Our path to victory is clear. Help bring this war to an early end! 

Join the fight on the homefront!

 

Speech transcribed from Republic Plaza, 3665 ATC by the Ministry of Information in cooperation with the Republic Security Bureau. Signed, Deputy Director Col. Wullff Yularen, RSB Headquarters

 

***

Notes:

MAN, WHAT A FAT UPDATE. This whole thing was a BITCH to write (as you can maybe tell by the fact that it took me months) so I had to fall back onto a bunch of parlor tricks, but in the end I did have fun!

The PSA parts of this chapter were heavily helped by some real WWII documents. The first bit comes from Portland, Oregon while the second borrows from a London air raid hand-out. The "address" at the end is heavily inspired by the Berlin Sports Palace speech, iykyk.

Also, I decided for the in-universe calendar being measured from the Treaty of Coruscant. I'm sick and tired of not being able to name certain years because the universe is locked to BBY/ABY. It's like writing from the POV of ancient people before Jesus was born - hey, man, what fucking year are you in?

From now on, Obi-Wan will be much more of a constant in this fic! We’ll be getting into the REAL meat and potatoes of the story soon, friends, so thank you all for sticking around <3

Next up: the fallout!

Chapter 5

A young girl’s feet left imprints in the ash; the first to disturb the street’s snow-white cover. It dusted her lekku, her ruined night clothes. 

Most near-human skulls looked the same.

Some of those skulls had horns or sharp teeth to make identification easier for the layman, but usually, the differences amounted to little more than enigmatic bumps and dips in the bone. The roundness of an eye socket. The placement of an ear canal relative to the hinge of a jaw. Details for medical students to agonize over, on the best of days. 

And on the worst… 

The girl's hands were wrapped in rags. She used them to flip over the bodies in the street, one after another. Tireless, filthy, and alone. It didn’t matter how small she was—the flames had drained all water from those husks, shrunken them down to half the size they had been in life. Dried-out tendons made dead limbs curl. Charred tissue stuck to bones, twisted into brittle strands. 

Cody had seen many a burnt corpse over the years. Looking out over the mess, even he couldn’t parse what littered the ground here; fatty headtails and other growths reduced to the same grease that sluiced from every organism unfortunate enough to get caught up in the blaze.

The girl picked at the remains of a jacket fused to skin. Desperate to get into the inner pocket where wallets and ID chips were kept, no doubt, but all the garment did was crumble under her shaking, clumsy hands. She scrabbled for more, tearing at the jacket-skin, her little jaw spasming against the urge to vomit.

He should tell her to stop. 

Obi-Wan grabbed his wrist. 

“I’m not doing anything,” Cody said, making an attempt to tug himself free. 

“You were thinking about it.” 

“I was. And I'm not gonna accost her.”

“Not even for a warning?” Obi-Wan’s smoke-scratched voice tilted upwards. 

“She knows what she's getting herself into.” Even if that was what they should do, Cody didn't feel like slowing down for someone who likely didn't wish to be talked to. He glanced down at the hand around his wrist. “So what are you doing? I won't snatch her away.”

“Of course not.” Obi-Wan slowed, and Cody felt a tug of impatience in his gut as his companion fell behind. They needed to go. As fast as possible. He turned, dragged out his steps. Now it was him pulling Obi-Wan along. Obi-Wan, who was doing what Cody wouldn't.

“Young lady.” 

The girl didn't look up from her work. 

“Do what you must, we will not stop you. We know you are not looting these bodies,” a charred wallet was discarded next to a body, “but be aware of what this might look like to others.”

She tensed, stilling where her knees pressed into soiled ground. The sight of her was grim. Tear tracks stained her cheeks, and Cody had to face away, walking faster. 

“The next soldier passing through may not be as lenient,” Obi-Wan called, letting himself be dragged along. “Don't get yourself arrested!”

There was no reply, or nothing Cody could hear, anyway. What this girl did or didn't do was none of his business. Voice low, he pulled the Jedi in closer.

“You think she'll stop if you tell her to?” 

“No,” Obi-Wan said.

Cody blinked at the sky. White like all the evenings in the Northern summer, fuzzy with smoke. Balmy. Beautiful, even, if only you forgot about the carnage on the ground, if only you could see the ships darting back and forth as anything other than airborne hearses. 

What if Boil was among the bodies here? Cody’s rifle strap cut into his shoulder after so many hours and he gripped it tight, the nausea within not a new factor, but a steadily worsening one. 

“You're very kind.” 

With a squeeze that felt almost grateful, Obi-Wan’s fingers slid away. 

“I wouldn’t say that.” 

What was there to be grateful for? 

The ash gave the impression of a cold winter morning, but it was hot, it was late, and no frost crunched beneath their boots as they made their way down the street. The silence became a winding beast in these canyons. No sound except the crackle of dying embers, the drone of battle at the edge of the atmosphere, the groans of damaged buildings. It seemed like even the smallest breath could bounce off the walls here, all color melted to black.

Sector 5 had been ravaged. One of the few surface places Cody could afford to spend time in—the remains of nice little street corners and hovertram stops, of food stalls and storefronts sparked sluggish recognition. People had always sat along the curb here, drinking at night, smoking during the day, making their own noise over the thrum of repulsors and busy chatter. There was the shell of the tailor shop where he went to get his uniforms fixed. 

Looking down at himself, he realized this one wouldn’t be saved. Holes, scuffs, burns and stains made him look like he had crawled through a pit of coal and wire.  

Wind blew and carried with it a smell even worse than what already surrounded them. It ruffled his hair, frayed like the threads of his uniform. He sniffed. Regretted it. Covered his nose reflexively. 

“Force,” Obi-Wan choked out, mouth pressed into his sleeve. 

They rounded a corner. The storm had raged here with exceptional strength, had uprooted lamp posts, scraped up walls, bashed in windows. Everything that once brought color to the street had been swept into a dead end, a great dune of ruin piling up against the remains of an electronic billboard. 

White smoke. Bodies in a pile just like the debris. Stacked by the wind how one would stack firewood, trapping heat so even the rain would not put out their flesh. Blood, nails, guts, hair—an impassable stench. The fat didn’t just run along the pavement, but took to the air, greasing Cody’s forehead, sticking to his lips. Beneath the death, it filled the street with a smell like roast drippings over an open fire. 

Ryloth, Christophsis, Saleucami, Geonosis. 

He had been there, and he had borne it. 

Neimoidia, Rodia, Utapau, Daiyu. 

Lots of big cities, lots of big fires, reflected in his visor or the dark of his eyes. He wiped his mouth. Smoldering corpses looked the same everywhere, and even Raxus’ lush colors turned gray when war came knocking on its gates. Maybe it should feel different on Coruscant. 

Spitting the taste of its citizens into the ash, Cody had a hard time gripping that feeling. 

“I was lucky,” was all that came to mind, and it was a worthless thing to say. Still better than saying nothing. 

“So you were.” Obi-Wan sounded carefully unaffected. Then he spat, too. “It’s not far now, is it?” 

“No. Boil and I, we…” Cody pointed with the hand that still clutched his rifle strap, stepping ahead. “We were somewhere over there, by the next block, when…” 

The flash, everything and nothing happening all at once. It drove an ache between Cody’s eyes far worse than any hangover. 

“Looks like one of the bombs went down right here.”

Following the line of Obi-Wan’s finger, he saw a jagged gash down the side of a building, as long as it was tall, spilling its guts onto the sidewalk and beyond: clean breaks, traces of brutal impact. The bomb had to have propelled itself down with thrusters in addition to gravity to break through stone like this.  

Cody wasn’t fond of the distraction.

“Must’ve been one of those basement piercers,” he said. "Off-target, though.”

“Seems about right.” 

Obi-Wan stopped where the debris blocked their way, one foot on a chunk of duracrete, testing its stability. Professional worry turned his brow as he rested his full weight on it, slowly pulling up the rest of his body.  

“I don’t think this one went off, Cody,” was his conclusion. “See?”

Joining him on the chunk—it shifted a little under their combined weight, and their elbows grazed as they steadied each other—Cody peered over his shoulder. There was a hole past where there once had been walls, comparatively small, in the rough size of a bombshell. If it had gone off, half the street would now have been a sinkhole. 

“I’ll flag it,” Cody said, reaching for their singular comlink. He had to suppress the haste rising in his throat, annoyance at no one in particular—but was he in the wrong for wanting to get back to The Boonta as fast as possible? Lots of time wasted by notifying the correct authorities, by getting splinters from this battle-cracked device, by laying loose bricks in the symbol for unexploded ordnance. 

He was left on hold for longer than he liked. 

While he waited, the call center’s monotonous buzz in his ear, he let his thoughts catch up to him. Though letting, perhaps, was not quite what happened; they moreso washed around him the moment he stopped moving, waves on the shore that weren't violent, per se, but nonetheless crawled farther up the beach than you had thought. Surging up his legs, pulling sand out from under him. 

In the sky, the hum of engines, headed where the two of them were supposed to be heading. Hearses, hearses, back and forth. 

And he was here, standing still. 

Gotta check the impact sites.

Gotta flag the dud. 

Gotta find Boil. 

Flash, fire. White, then red, then black. Inklings of a strong arm dragging him to safety in the night. 

In the present, another transport passed just above the skyscrapers.  

Boil. 

“Actually, you make the call.” He pressed the comm into Obi-Wan’s dusty hands. 

“What gives?”

An order: “Go on, Lieutenant.”

Cody needed to keep himself moving. If not ahead, then at least his own hands. As protocol demanded, he set about aligning the pieces of debris Obi-Wan had picked out: a circle wide enough to be spotted by droids flying overhead, and within it, an even cross. 

Eventually, the comlink buzz switched to an operative’s strained voice. Obi-Wan snapped off their coordinates, standing right by Cody’s shoulder, the hem of his tunics dangling into his field of vision. It took no more than a few moments. Confirm and double-confirm, over, out. 

The call button clicked. Wordlessly, Obi-Wan knelt next to him, helping adjust the pattern with deft strength. Cody expected a question or a long stare. None came. His own fingers struggled to grasp the rock, his leg trembled against the crouch, and the strain slithered through the drug-induced fog in his system.

More of a thin mist, now. 

It raised his defenses more than any action; the pain combined with the lack of anything to defend against. Sitting back on his haunches, the realization that he was imagining any threat from Obi-Wan at all only made it worse.  

The last rock scraped into place. Obi-Wan stood up, dusting off his hands. When he offered his left for Cody to grasp, nonchalant, like he hadn’t even thought about it, Cody almost took it as the slight some part of his brain wished to make of it. 

Obi-Wan’s grip was dry and firm. Cody recognized each callus scraping against his own, and let go quickly enough—his leg wasn’t so bad that he needed to be towed. Squaring his shoulders, he adjusted his rifle strap once more. The worn synthleather heartened him against the nerves pulsing in his throat. 

Not far. 

Go faster. 

They climbed the wall of debris blocking the street, and in his haste, Cody was glad the night rain had bound most of the fine particles that would be scratching his lungs otherwise. He could breathe as freely as the stench would let him. Making good headway through the wrecked sector, both men kept quiet like the stone around them. 

No words were needed. Obi-Wan knew well to walk like a soldier after all these years, just inside Cody’s periphery as they each stuck to opposite sides of the street, as close to the crumbling walls as they dared. 

It was all taking too long.

The protocol, the procedure, the fucking walking. He was running out—out of stamina, out of focus, out of the magic pills in his pocket. The last one… when had he taken it? He couldn’t remember. The steady throb growing louder and louder in his knee and up his leg was distracting him. 

A ship flew ever-lower between the facades, landing gears already out. It sported the bright colors of an emergency transport. This one had yet to be loaded, would be picking up anything that still had a heartbeat once it touched down. Cody sped up as though he could catch it, beat it to its destination, because any ship flying out here could be carrying Boil, dead or alive. Just a few more corners, and—

He stopped. 

The street he had come to know so well just two nights ago was unrecognizable. Trails of soot writhed like snakes across the asphalt. And that: slanted, more akin to curdled milk than a paved road, clinging to lost shoes, to mortal remains, hardening around imprints of panicked flight. Cool enough to walk on, now, though still radiating an uncomfortable warmth. 

There: it took him a moment, but he picked The Boonta’s entrance out of the countless blackened mouths opening into the street. Its neon sign was nowhere to be found. No color, no identifiers aside from its sheer size, its familiar placement across that large wall of billboards. Ahead, right outside the bar, the road came to an abrupt end. Slabs of ruined pavement crumbled down into the entrails beneath Coruscant’s duracrete skin. A thin mist of water sprayed from the hole, damaged pipes sticking out. Embers all around trailed smoke like incense, winding around the people positioned around the collapse.   

Terror struck him the way it hadn’t when he had faced down the firestorm, the droids, the onslaught of the enemy. He had left that behind, hadn’t stood still long enough to let it eat him up. But now…

He broke into a jog, his weapon's stock bumping into his back with every step. 

“What’s going on here?!” he demanded, ignoring the shouts from the other side of the hole telling him to stay away.

The firefighter crouched closest to him didn’t look up until Cody’s feet had inadvertently carried him into his personal space. 

“You—” A Devaronian. Overworked. Jumpy. “You’re not supposed to be here!”

Gnarled horns clipped Cody’s nose as the large man whipped around, a swell of pain in the already bruised tissue. He didn't care. 

“What is that hole? Has the shelter been evacuated?”

“You have to leave!”

“Where are the survivors?”

“You’re in the way!”

“I'll help.”

“You won’t!”

Body bags lined the sides of the street. An emergency ladder had been deployed at the edge of the hole along with ropes and stabilizing rods, people in bright jackets flitting about. 

“You could use assistance.”

“No! Back off, it’s dangerous!”

He knew that. He knew better than anyone. He’d been in the firefighter’s shoes often enough, tired from working, tired from yelling, tired of people thinking they had anything to say to him, and yet… Cody was tired, too. Too much so to find it in himself to empathize. 

“I need to find someone!”

The firefighter shifted, all broad shoulders and dwindling patience. “Tough luck.”

“I’ll leave when I get my answer.” Cody didn’t notice himself stepping closer, didn’t know if his grip on his weapon had changed—only that the Devaronian’s frown deepened. “I need to know if you’ve—”

“Go!”

Cody burned up from his stomach to his brain. 

“You will answer my questions, or I’ll—”

A serving tray-sized hand shoved his chest, hard. He reeled, slipping on wet ash. Blood poured onto his lip, hot and thick—or had it already been there, slicking his teeth for the entire exchange?

“Someone get this guy! Hey! Get him out of here!” the firefighter yelled, now holding a hatchet. 

Where had that come from? Cody must have missed something crucial. His thoughts melded with the fine spray of water from those damaged pipes, all dull and flimsy, running off the ground and into the hole. 

The shelter, caved in on itself and on everyone inside. On Boil. 

If he had even been inside. 

Shadows danced before him, bright vests in the mist, angry faces, voices through the mire. He was angry, too. Hadn't come all this way just to be refused at the finish line. Was it so difficult to give him answers? He wanted to speak, make more demands; couldn't tell whether his own mouth was moving, if words were coming out, and if those words were loud enough to be heard.

His tongue wasn't reliable. His feet were. They ached, his balance not quite right on the mangled soles of his boots, but they helped him cross the distance either way. 

Until hands grabbed him. Or tried to. Cody had some trouble seeing, could only distinguish basic shapes and sooty gray from that emergency neon stinging his eyes. They were stronger than him alone. They wouldn't let him through. 

And there was yelling, though no words reached through to him, only the idea, the hostility. Why all the noise? They didn't want to talk to him, anyway. 

Another ungentle hand joined the many others. Like an apparition, Obi-Wan pushed between him and the bright vests, a blur among blurs. The hand was his. Peace, Cody thought he heard him say , and misunderstanding, over the ruckus that filled his ears. 

Of course his voice would pierce through. 

Have you recovered a clone from the wreckage, Obi-Wan continued on the other side of the fog, and would a Jedi be able to help? 

The reply: we don’t know, and no. 

And: please leave. 

Fine! Cody would jump in that hole himself if that’s what it took. He shrugged himself free, the hands holding him back falling away now that Obi-Wan was here. All except one. It dug into his arm, painfully so, as though it wanted to wrap around the bone itself. 

It was digging in because Cody was pulling.

“Cody.”

The edges of the hole didn’t look impossible to climb. 

“Cody!”

So now Obi-Wan was raising his voice at him, too. 

Bracing his feet and rotating from the hip, Cody jerked his shoulder, a movement sudden and powerful enough to make the Jedi trip. In his sudden struggle for balance, Obi-Wan’s grip on his arm loosened a little. Cody still couldn’t see well, and Obi-Wan was standing too close, his off-center weight a heavy reminder of his strength before it shifted back where it belonged—and snatched Cody along. 

It was clean. Impressive, even, under any other circumstance. He couldn’t feel the ground beneath him for a moment because he had simply been removed from it, wrenched up with no more ceremony than a suitcase or an artillery shell. When his boots made contact with the floor again, they dragged more than they walked. The speed at which it happened took his breath away. 

Away, away, around a corner, shielded from all those eyes. They halted. Cody took a second to catch himself. Gather his wits. Feel the hands on him, see that ruined formal collar and the angry vein swelling close to it. 

“For stars’ sake, Cody, get yourself together!” 

He pressed at Obi-Wan’s shoulders, but he may as well have tried the walls all around them. The rifle dangled between their bodies, between their hips, all uncomfortably sharp angles. 

“I already did!” Cody locked onto that dead-serious glare and let his indignation paint over the shock. “You agreed to this. You said you’d come along. You’d help.” 

“And back you up when you threaten people with a blaster?” 

Sharp accusation, whetted by that raspy voice. It cut. 

“I didn’t threaten them. My muzzle discipline—”

“Muzzle discipline?”

“I had it under control!”

Just for a moment, Obi-Wan looked like he was about to spit in his face. The moment after, he deflated. Broad shoulders sagged, though his grip stayed strong, and one could be fooled into thinking both his hands were made of steel.  

“You need to stop this.”

His words were softer now. It didn't do anything to quell Cody's displeasure, but brought about something entirely new. Something he wanted to deny. 

“You know I wasn't about to hurt anyone.”

"Stop."

Unbearable. 

“Let go of me.” Hands twisted further into his uniform. “Let go!” 

“And what do you want to do, exactly? What do you think will happen?” Obi-Wan wore a grimace, his severity a cage. And Cody didn’t want to understand. Was it not obvious? He’d go back, get in that hole, turn over every stone, until…

Until…

What do you think will happen?

His right leg still moved reasonably well. Thinking of Boil, he slammed it into Obi-Wan’s side. Not to hurt—never that—just a well-aimed knee, nothing more, exerting the force needed to break out. 

But his rifle was still hanging there. In the way. 

Helpless fury never yielded good ideas. 

It took less than a second in the end: he floundered, and Obi-Wan let go, and Cody lost his battle with gravity. His left leg slipped out from beneath him; he sprawled backwards. On the filthy ground. On his ass. On his bad hip and his worse spine. He may have cried out. No way to tell after the impact deafened him, made his vision go dark, made him almost not feel the blow to his body as Obi-Wan went right down with him. 

In stunned paralysis, Cody watched on: the Jedi curled over his knees after they hit the ground, hissing, presumably, if the bared teeth were anything to go by. That silver hand was still tangled in Cody’s collar. Its joints clicked like a trigger on an empty magazine; sluggish little mechanisms that refused to move as supposed. Cody’s chest expanded right against the unfeeling tool. His fingers moved to pry its grip open without his mind ever issuing the order. They bumped into Obi-Wan’s, trying to do the same thing, bending one digit at a time until the prosthetic could be pulled away.

There they were, side by side, one on his back and one on his knees. Comedic, perhaps, to an outsider. 

“Outstanding move, I have to say.” Obi-Wan clutched his forearm where metal joined flesh, squeezing as though he could wring out the hurt. “Falling over in the street, like a pair of…”  

He sounded dead tired. His meaning hung unfinished and he huffed, shaking his head to himself. Sitting back on his haunches, he made no move to get up. He just breathed. 

Falling over in the street seemed to have become a specialty of theirs in the past couple days.

Flat on the ground, Cody found nothing to say. His anger drained from him. He imagined it might form a little puddle where he lay, soaking Obi-Wan’s knees, cooling the back of his head where a bruise was certainly forming. The ground, however, was warm, and his rifle rested across his chest the way it used to in long nights.

Why not stay down, his instincts asked. This was a well-loved predicament. Laid out in the dirt, staring at a smoke-streaked sky, Obi-Wan right next to him. Catching their breaths. Nursing their wounds. 

Yeah. Why not? 

They remained like this for an unclear amount of time. Maybe a minute, maybe ten. Cody’s heart banged out an unsteady rhythm, out through his shoulder blades and into the asphalt; no marching beat, no war drum. The battle was over. The music was gone. There was no meter for him to keep anymore, and so the breeze kept blowing, devoid of strings and flutes and song. 

One could almost get comfortable down here. 

The worst of the pain was subsiding into dull throbs when Obi-Wan stirred again, discomfort wrinkling his nose. His body unfolded slowly, gingerly, the act of standing a careful choreography. Viewed from so far below, in his heavy tunic and coating of cinder, he looked just like the buildings towering over them.

“I won’t rest until I know what happened to Boil,” Cody told him.

“Won’t or can’t?”

“You know.” 

Obi-Wan rubbed his brow and then his hair, one hand on his hip. “I see.” 

“I want to stop by the store.”

“Cody—”

“Listen to me.” Propping himself up on his elbow, Cody pointed down the street. “It’s just around a couple corners, and the dock is right there. We’ll need to hail a transport somewhere.”

“To the Temple.”

“That’s where they’d ship an injured brother off to, right?” 

Obi-Wan sighed. “Yes.”

“So let’s go,” Cody commanded from the pavement, “we can’t waste any more time.”

He noted the absence of a proffered hand with some satisfaction, bracing the rifle’s butt against the ground instead. It served well enough to help him up. His uniform, however, fell open as he moved, exposing the stained undershirt. The whole thing was held together only by his belt, and that just barely. 

What a sorry sight. 

“And forget about this.” He nodded back to where they’d come from. “I didn’t mean to cause a scene.” 

No immediate reply. That was fine, and in truth, he would prefer it if the topic didn't linger. 

That was why he didn’t expect Obi-Wan to draw him back in. 

“I don’t need—”

“A moment.” 

That severity was back, now without the edge of violence. It bode Cody to halt without even trying, a reflex, an old anticipation at the root of his brain. 

“Sir?” 

Obi-Wan’s flesh hand settled on his shoulder. It was something he liked to do no matter the situation; whether he was telling you that the battle had been won, or that someone had died, or that he was off to brew more caf, and would you like another cup? His warmth sank like water into soil, and Cody braced himself for… something.

“Don't bother with titles. I'm not your General.” 

“You keep speaking like one.”

A huff. “Yes, well—force of habit.”

“It's good. It makes people listen.”

“Then I hope you will do so, as well. This conversation lost track of itself a bit, I'm afraid. I'd like to come back to an earlier point.” 

“That being…?” 

They held each other's gazes, firm and rather close; enough for Cody to see every red line in those bloodshot eyes. 

“When I told you to stop, I meant it.”

Every speck of gold on blue.

“I have stopped. You stopped me, Obi-Wan. You pulled me away.”

“Don't give me that,” Obi-Wan cut in. “I've always admired your reason, Cody, and not once in over a decade did anyone have to…” He swallowed, breaking eye contact for a moment. “Well. Until now.” 

Perhaps Cody should feel shame. Somehow, Obi-Wan's presence would not allow it. No judgement in his stare, in his voice, even when judgement was being imparted.

“What I'm trying to say is—and believe me, I hate saying it as much as you'll hate hearing it,” a click of the throat, “don't make me see you like this again. Please.”

A command, no, a plea, a mountain moving beneath the water. Refusing to be comprehended, too big to fit in a thought. 

Like this. Like back there. Like minutes ago. Obi-Wan had accused him of being out of control. Of frenzy. And if Cody had truly behaved in such a way, this anger would be understandable. Deserved. But the way Obi-Wan looked at him now, the way his voice dipped, making a request most Jedi would consider selfish… 

Had he been scared? 

“You don't want an apology,” Cody stated.

“You heard what I said. Cody, I can't stand to…” Obi-Wan’s jaw shifted, his thumb on Cody's collarbone, trying to straighten out his lapels. So very gentle. “I'm trying to tell you this as your friend, do you understand?” 

Oh.

“I'm not entirely sure how that changes things.”

“Neither am I, truth be told. But I figured it does make a difference.” Comrade, friend—where did one end and the other begin? The lapels wouldn’t be salvaged, returning to their wrinkled state every time. “Just think about it every now and then. After today. Act on it, if you'd like. Yes?”

Cody’s chest felt wretchedly full.

“Is that an order?”

The touch slid to his bicep like a drop of water, giving the lightest squeeze. Obi-Wan’s face mellowed. No smile, nothing of the sort, and yet it was enough.

“You could just call it a promise, you know.” 

It was enough, so Cody pulled his arm away, letting that hand smooth along his sleeve until their palms rested against each other. Warm. A bit of an odd angle, a bit of awareness of the other. Maybe he was too accustomed to holding guns and knives. Always so stiff at the elbow, reluctant to relax his trigger finger, to let it curl without ill intent. 

“Alright. Let's call it that.” Orders and promises weren't so different, anyway. “I'll keep it—and you'll do what I asked, too.” 

It seemed to take Obi-Wan a moment to recall what had been said earlier, and when he did, something that was not quite mirth colored his voice. 

“Is that an order?” 

“Figure it out, boss.” 

He snorted. A hundred objections could be read from the angles of his body, but his hand pressed reassurance into Cody's skin. 

“Yes. Let's forget about all that, indeed.” 

 

---

 

Ridiculous, all of it, top to bottom and start to finish. An exercise in futility. An own goal, even.

Pacing around the big desk that was now officially his own, complete with a nice chair and a view of the vastness of space outside, Cody felt the need to kick something. He didn’t follow through, but the kit bag on the floor remained in danger. 

What were they thinking? 

Installing one new general was one thing. Demoting a whole bunch of them to replace them with their previous right-hand men—that was lunacy, and not just in Cody’s books. Now he stood in what used to be his General’s quarters, his General who had been whisked off to Coruscant for an audience with top brass, to return as a mere grunt whenever they deigned to send him back. 

If he returned. There were articles going around, whisperings among the troops of conspiracy and ‘decisive measures’. Large-scale arrests had been floated. Rumors about the circumstances of the late Chancellor’s demise, but that had been nearly two years ago, and nobody believed the lightsabers allegedly found among his belongings actually meant anything. They probably didn’t even exist. All fake leaks and sensationalism, no doubt, spurred on by Chancellor Amedda’s odd hatred of the Jedi. 

All the access codes had to be changed. Clearances shifted. Structures overhauled. Work that ended up on Cody’s shoulders, forcing him to take time away from the battlefield. The sheer stupidity of it all didn’t go past the Separatists, either. Media ban or not; the vicious mockery, the cartoons of headless snakes, the gloating offers to move the Temple to Serenno seeped through the cracks and fueled the rumor mill even further. It made him size up the kit bag again, ready to commit to the impulse this time. 

Someone knocked on the door. Cody controlled himself. 

“Come in.”

The shadow cast into the room by the bright hallway light was small. 

“Hope I’m not interrupting anything.”

“Oh. Not at all.” He stood there a little awkwardly, regarding the young Jedi on the doorstep. “Is there something you need?”

“Yeah. My Master back, for one. Any news?” 

“No. Sorry, kid.”

“Don’t call me that.” Reva didn’t sound too aggrieved as she circled around him, plopping herself down on that high-backed chair. 

“Apologies,” Cody amended. “That was unprofessional of me.” 

“It’s fine.”

He didn’t like staring across his boss’s desk at the child sitting in his boss’s chair, so he turned and opened the curtain to the bunk off to the side. The sheets had yet to be changed. General Kenobi had been the last one to fold them. He sat down, anyway, feeling just a little more comfortable. 

“So—he’s on your mind?” he hedged, clasping his hands. 

“Yeah. Obviously. And on yours, too.”

He huffed. “In the form of a massive headache.”

“I bet. And it’s not even his fault this time.” 

Signs and wonders. Reva made an indecisive sound, kicking her legs to make the chair spin counter-clockwise, her gaze intermittently drawn to the field of stars outside. She was difficult to read for someone her age, barely fifteen and yet so in control. Cody waited her out, slowly sinking into the mattress, into the smell that still lingered there. 

“I think we’ll need to be better friends.” 

His brain stopped in its tracks while the chair kept spinning lazily. 

“Pardon?”

“You heard me,” she lilted, her affect eerily similar to her Master’s. “I don’t want to make predictions, and the Force hasn’t told me anything bad in particular, but, you know, in case we don’t get him back…” Her fingers picked at the hem of her tunic. “In case I’m the only Jedi left on this ship, I’ll need to fill his boots.”

Replacing an old hand with his rookie disciple? Cody didn’t conceal how much he hated the idea.

“Those might just be too big for you.”

“I’m still growing.” She stopped her fiddling and spinning, leaning forward in her seat instead. “And if he’s not there, hypothetically, and you’re the one running all our operations, someone’s gotta keep you safe just like he always did. And you two are really good friends, so—”

He burst out laughing despite himself. 

“Is that what it looks like?” 

Reva shrugged. “You work really well together, and we need to get on that level, too.”

“I don’t think there’s anything special about it. It just comes with experience.”

“You think, but I know. I can tell, remember?” She tapped her temple and he leaned back in his seat, more than a little defiant against whatever she claimed to know about him.

“Maybe you’re telling wrong.” He didn’t like this proposal and the way she was looking at him, all-too perceptive, or maybe just bluffing very well. “He’s my boss. We get along.”

“Are you being defensive because I called you his friend, or because you don’t wanna be friends with me?” Reva braced her elbow on her knee, resting her cheek in her palm. Pensive. Relaxed, yet piercing in that indescribable Jedi way. 

“Don’t put words in my mouth.”

“Only if you stop putting words in my mouth about me putting words in yours.”

They smirked at each other—even if someone her age shouldn’t be anywhere near the battlefield, let alone aboard this ship, Cody couldn’t deny she was fun company. 

“He pulled me aside before he introduced me to you, you know,” she said.

“He did?”

“Uh-huh. Said that you can be pretty stubborn, among other things.” 

“Of course he would say that.”

It was her turn to laugh. “And he was right! Listen, I’ll also be getting demoted—sergeant, maybe even private—so I gotta float this while we’re both still commanders.” Just as quickly as she cheered, she was serious again, fixing him with her dark eyes. “We might have to make this work without him, and you two were successful together. No need to re-invent the engine here, right? We just need more rapport.” 

Rapport. In combat. With a damn child. Cody was hit by a wave of admiration for Rex, for any brother who managed to stick close to a fledgling Jedi like that. He noticed he was stalling by the time he looked back up from his own crossed arms, from the white tips of his boots. 

“You can’t force that type of thing.” 

“You and Master also started somewhere, though.”

“He’s a grown man. I was never all that good with teenagers.”

With that one teenager, at any rate. In hindsight it was a good thing he never got too close with Padawan Tano.

“You and me are the same age. Kind of.”

No. And yes. And absolutely not. But on the other hand, Rex had managed to adjust to similar circumstances just fine—so why couldn’t Cody?

“You’re not gonna let me get out of this, are you?”

“Nope.”

Remembering the freight-loads of admin work waiting for him, the hours he would spend hunched over that big, stupid desk, he made to stand. 

“Alright.”

Reva lit up. “Really?”

“Let’s go.” He gestured at the double-bladed saber clipped to her belt. “If he really doesn’t come back, you better learn how to sync that thing to me ASAP.”

He hoped it would never come to that—to the General being gone, to never seeing him again, to leading the corps without him. For good. It would hurt, perhaps even beyond the professional level. As they walked to the Vigilance’s gym in silence, he couldn’t help but wonder what else the General had told Reva. What stories. What insights. Whatever was leading her to be so bold. 

They were growing to be terribly alike, those two. 

 

---

 

The store: burned.

The dock: a graveyard of vehicles, some of them still smoking. 

Cody’s speeder, which he had nearly forgotten about parking here days ago: miraculously, inexplicably whole. 

“I fucking hate this thing.” 

“Aren't you glad it survived—”

Clank. He kicked its fender for emphasis. It didn't explode. It hadn't gone up in flames like everything else. 

How was that fair? 

“No. It's a piece of shit.” Running his hand over its hood, he wiped away some of the ash that had layered there. “Believe me. If anything on this planet deserves to burn, it's this.” 

How he was supposed to fly this thing to the Temple and tell Boil that he lost his job and his home, he had no idea. It just felt cruel and stupid. 

Obi-Wan busied himself with the ash on the windscreen. “Choice words.” 

“You'd understand if you had to work night shifts just to keep it from falling out of the sky.”

“If you're trying to make me reconsider flying this thing; congratulations, it's working.” 

“It's safe.” Cody leaned heavily against the door, the seats behind it calling to his taxed bones. “I made sure it is.” 

But it was good to be suspicious. Obi-Wan rounded the speeder once, twice, focused the way he usually was when asking the Force whether or not a slap charge had been applied to his vehicle of choice. 

His need to go home, in the end, outweighed his determination to make a third pass. 

“Let’s have it, then,” he said, stopping next to Cody and holding out his hand. 

What? Oh. Yeah. Cody shouldn’t fly today. Fishing his keys out of his inner pocket and handing them over, he stepped away from the pilot side. 

Watching Obi-Wan unlock his speeder was… odd. Seeing him climb in and fire up the engine was even stranger. Cody folded himself into the passenger seat, inhaling the mundane mustiness of the interior. It was almost comforting. His rifle went on the back seats, just within reach, just in case. 

“Well, this certainly takes me back.” Obi-Wan eyed the dashboard as he maneuvered them through the debris one-handed, his prosthetic idle on the armrest. “I haven’t seen something like this since my first flying lessons.”

“When was that?”

“Ah… I was fourteen, fifteen? It’s been a while.”

Thirty-five years ago. Cody’s whole lifetime, and then some. 

“It’s even older than that, though,” he said, pushing the dark thoughts away. 

“Yes. My Master and I were taught in the same speeder. Horrible old thing—maybe it was fine when he was young, but I was always happier to land than to take off when it was my turn.” When he tried to pull in the yoke to get the speeder off the ground, Obi-Wan seemed to be met with more resistance than expected. “And it wasn’t this stubborn.”

“The ascension gears are sticky.”

“I noticed.”

“And there’s no servo.” 

“I noticed that, too.”

“Both hands on the yoke. And accelerate so you can shift straight to steep ascent, the gearbox doesn't jive well with low speed.”

Impatient fingers wrangled the archaic paddle shifter. 

“Piece of—” 

“Told you.” 

With a wince, Obi-Wan gripped the yoke in both hands. The speeder’s nose tipped up, a far cry from its agile battlefield counterparts, but finally up and away. Around them, the dock space opened into the cylindrical abyss connecting the surface to the underworld. It was a long drop. He disregarded traffic rules, cutting straight up instead of taking the mandated spiral lane along the sides, flooring it into the steepest possible angle. A seasoned pilot at work. In a hurry. 

When speed and gravity pressed them both into their seats, his sleeve slipped back just far enough to reveal the junction of skin and steel.  

Cody balked. 

“Oh,” Obi-Wan said with all the grace and detachment of someone beholding a piece from an artist they generally disliked, "that’s uglier than I thought it would be.” 

Red as a blister, pulled taut around the prosthetic’s port as though the flesh beneath was about to burst like an overcooked sausage. 

Suddenly, a number of Obi-Wan’s small fumbles throughout the day made a lot more sense. And he'd been hiding it. He'd just carried on.

“Than you thought?”

“Mmh-hm.”

“How did that happen?”

“On its own, I think.”  

“How long has it been like that?”

“It was fine during dinner.” 

Couldn’t he just give proper answers? Too beaten for his temper to flare anymore, Cody decided to stop asking questions.  

“It looks inflamed,” he observed instead.

“Sounds about right.” The strain was evident in Obi-Wan’s voice. He still had to hold down the yoke, his entire right arm trembling, and his smile was a horribly obvious compensation. “Auto-inflammatory, auto-immune, something of the sort. I had hoped it wouldn’t happen so fast.” 

What? Cody gaped for a moment, trying to make sense of this information. “You'd think something like that would show up in your medical files a little earlier.” 

“You’ll laugh, but I said the same thing when they got me out of Scarif.”

He did not feel tempted in the slightest. “You mean to tell me that after all these years—”

“Take it up with my immune system, Cody. It’s like an allergy, or… or some intolerance, was what the doctors said. It could happen to anyone, anytime.”

Just like how anyone could be struck by lightning. Just like how anyone could win the lottery, could discover a new planet, could be born Force-sensitive. 

Cody had to sit with that for a while. In the meantime, they crested the edge of the portal, leveling out to glide between the heights of Coruscant’s skyline. Destruction hid behind countless towers. From the top down, things didn't look too bad—he had seen true, hopeless devastation on many faraway worlds—but nonetheless, this planet did not suffer well. Even the smallest of impacts hit harder here than they would elsewhere, snowballing down, the damage they left behind eating more lives and money than all the casinos of the lower levels combined. 

His attention darted back and forth between the pillars of smoke rising over deceptively small craters and that wrist, unsure of which he ought to feel worse about. 

“Why did they even put it on you if they knew you’re,” he gestured, “ allergic?”

“Commander’s orders.” Obi-Wan performed an illegal turn to the fastest Temple-bound route. “He won’t be pleased.”

So Cody had been wrong—he wasn’t too tired to get angry at all. It sparked inside him, catching on quickly. His stomach seemed full of dry tinder. If he ever happened across his successor again… 

“I’d like to meet him.”

“Just for a chat, of course.”

“I don't find this very funny.”

“Oh, neither do I. It's just that he outranks both of us now,” Obi-Wan pointed out. 

“His rank won’t do him any good. Fitting you with that thing is gross negligence, it's intentional, it's…” That raised skin. That stretched-out sheen. Inflammation would kill even a Jedi, and an exo-prosthetic for frontline service seemed unthinkable, and the treatments… “It’s murder, Obi-Wan!”

Murder, sabotage, treason. Betraying the battalion, every single soldier who relied on the cover of that blade and its wielder's steady command. 

“It’s hardly even manslaughter.”

“It could have killed you!”

“So could any of the bombs and blaster bolts that were coming my way. I don’t believe this thing would have turned my death into a court case.”

“Believe what you want.” Sickened, Cody pulled Obi-Wan’s sleeve back over that terrible sight. “Putting you at risk like that… what that means for the unit, for the whole corps, for Reva, for, for—”

“For you?” The Jedi never fully took his eyes off their path, sending just a glance from the corner of his eye. Cold water on the sparks in Cody's gut. 

Caught, he shut his mouth. It remained closed while they steered around a plume of smoke. The sky-lanes were eerily empty, so little noise in too much space, amplifying the silence inside the cabin. 

“The 212th was my responsibility all my life. Don't blame me for caring.”

“I am not the 212th.” 

“But you are part of it. You’ve been a pillar there for,” for longer than I ever was, “for as long as it has existed. Don't pretend your loss wouldn't change things.”

“It's bound to happen someday, you know.”

“And every Commander worth his salt should postpone that day as far as possible!”

“He must not be worth his salt, then. Or not as much as you—but we already knew that, didn't we?” As they drew closer to the government district, the central shield’s great bubble loomed into view. It looked rather less impressive in the daylight. “At any rate, he's lost me now. Nothing we can do.”

“Don't say that.” 

“What? Don't like to hear it?”

Those two little words circled between Cody's ears. They could be a point, or they could be a charge. Most of all, they were not said in uncertainty.

For you?

“You presume a lot.”

“Do tell me if I’m wrong.”

Frankly, Obi-Wan was not doing a good job with the forget-about-that part of their bargain. 

“I think someone needs to shut his mouth and watch where he's going.”

“I was already doing one of those things.”

“Try doing both.”

Small mercies: Obi-Wan ceased his observations, contending himself with silence and the way ahead. 

The air-lanes became busier klick by klick. Traffic from all over the region converged this close to the shield: emergency transports, patrols, units on the move, officers on their way to impromptu meetings at Central HQ. Last Cody had heard, whatever hyperlane bridgehead the Seps had secured for the invasion was being contested—or maybe it was back in control entirely. Hard to stay in the loop when the battle moved so fast. Back in the day, he would have received live updates on events around the planet in such a situation, but his new rank damned him to ignorance and the same delayed news feeds everyone else was using. 

They could remove his intel privileges. They could stick him in a soft, useless uniform. The one thing they could never take, however, was his experience: he saw the troop transports with their bows pointed downward—sometimes alone, sometimes in convoys, disappearing into the tangle of bridges, walkways and ship-lanes—and from that alone, he knew that the fight was not over. It had merely shifted. What was left of the Separatist invasion force must have fled into the underworld, trying to shake Coruscant from below. 

How long would it take to smoke them all out? How many people would return from their shelters to find intruders in their home? Cody felt a tension in his jaw, leftover chemicals urging him to stir before they wore off entirely. The back of his foot bumped into the cane under the seat. His skin burned.

There was a checkpoint at the shield. A sun-blasted mobile platform, the only shade provided by the interceptor craft docked off to the side. Past the checks, their speeder would be locked through the electric field like a boat from one river to another, a process that resulted in a queue forming in front of them. That, Cody thought, wasn’t sensible at all. 

If even a single droid with a rocket launcher was hiding in the towers around here… 

He was skittish by the time they glided onto the platform. His right leg trembled uncontrollably and he stared it down, wanted to press it or punch it, but reaching out now would only be admitting that something was wrong. 

“Weapons on display and unlock the doors,” the corrie at the checkpoint demanded. His voice sounded young, his helmet adorned with red decals, assault rifle strapped high on his torso.

“One lightsaber on me and one DC-15A, there on the back seats,” Obi-Wan informed him while searching the dashboard, looking a little lost. 

“Unlock the doors!”

Catching on, Cody leaned over to flip the switch in question, illogically located by the gear paddles. As a floating droid scanned their vehicle, the corrie opened the back door so violently Cody feared it would tear from its hinges. 

“This isn’t yours,” the guard said, holding the scuffed rifle up for inspection. 

“I’s reserve stock from the—”

“From the Guard!” He strode around to rip the passenger door open as well. “Did you steal it?”

It had been a long night and an even longer day. Cody knew what sort of frazzled temper he was dealing with here, looming over him. On a nicer evening, he would have snapped at the trooper to get off his case. Today was no such day.  

“It was issued to volunteers by the patrol forces, I know I am required to—”

“Get out of the vehicle.” That visor flashed in the waning sun. “Both of you!” 

Oh, great, he thought he heard Obi-Wan mutter under his breath. Cody painstakingly peeled himself from the cabin and onto the platform where heat warped the air, wrapping around his ankles and bouncing up into his face. 

“Arms up. Legs wide. Go on.” Handing the DC off to one of his comrades, the corrie accosted him while a third guard went for Obi-Wan on the other side of the vehicle. Through the heat-glimmer, Cody got a look at the queue behind them, at the impatient figures hunched behind windscreens, drumming their fingers. 

“Says here you're a captain,” the corrie said, flipping the ID he'd filched from Cody's open jacket. 

“Yes.”

“So where’s your plaque?” 

Not on his chest anymore, he realized upon looking down at himself. 

“Lost it.” 

“That’s convenient. Maybe you never had one at all.” 

That trooper was bored. Pissed off. Sweating in his boots, toasting in his armor, and had likely been standing here for hours. He needed to smear his misery off on someone else, and that someone happened to be Cody. 

“What are you accusing me of?” 

“You don't get to ask questions.”

Naturally. The corrie seemed disgusted as he stuffed Cody's wallet back where it belonged. His visor was opaque, but prying expressions from beneath it was something a clone learned right alongside walking and talking. This one, for example, was judging the way Cody favored his right leg even as he stood still, the hints of softness that came with age and desk work, his scar, the dismal state of his dress, of his hair. 

What was the verdict? 

He imagined this trooper’s hair was short under his helmet, well-kept with gel, or tied up tight in protective braids, or neatly shorn down to the skin. Someone who took care of his appearance, and who was used to his brothers doing the same. Someone who frowned upon neglect. A glimpse of himself in the speeder’s side mirror made Cody look away in shame—how he missed having his bucket, or at the very least his cap. 

Halfway behind his back, Obi-Wan was embroiled in discussion.

“Yes, I know it’s not registered to me yet. But if you look here, see, it clearly says that the old one has been lost.”

“Then why’d you run off with a weapon that can’t be traced to you?”

“The registration is pending, it’s hardly my fault the forms aren’t being processed in time!”

"It also says here that the owner of this weapon's been dead for..." The corrie seemed to be doing some silent math for a moment. "Twenty-five years."

"... Yes. He has. That's why his lightsaber is being transferred to me."

“Sounds like an excuse.”

“Feel free to check. You’d be able to trace it just fine. But if you insist, I might just wander into battle unarmed next time.”

Careful, Cody thought. Don’t give them any more ammo. Tensions had to run high if his assessment was correct, if there really were hostiles on the loose far below. His own corrie was like a hawk about to swoop, exuding an uncomfortable eagerness to put cuffs on someone, anyone, just to get out of the sun for a second. The air pressed into your ears here, made you a little deaf, made you hear your own pulse too loud.

“What’s all this?” A nat-born officer sporting a sunburn and an all-black uniform strolled from the shade of the patrol ship, fanning himself with his cap. “Are we making an arrest?”

“Sir, this one is highly suspicious.”

“Is he?” Once again, Cody was being looked up and down. “This one’s too old, Three-Six.” 

“No suspicious objects detected,” the droid chimed in mechanically. “Subjects identified as uncompromised members of the GAR.”

“No arrest, then.” Putting his cap back on his head, the officer squinted. “And a Jedi? That doesn’t fit the profile at all.”

A glance passed between Cody and Obi-Wan across the speeder’s hood. 

What profile?

The trooper—Three-Six—bristled high, jabbing his gun at Cody. “It’s not about the Jedi, sir, it’s about this one.”

“I’m just taking him to the Temple for treatment.” Obi-Wan stood with his hands up, eyes darting between the officer and the corrie handling his lightsaber. His sleeve had slipped again. “He works at HQ, so he would have to pass the shield either way.”

“This is true,” the droid supplied, then swivelling around to display some information only the officer could see. The officer, in turn, flushed a shade of red that had nothing to do with the merciless sun, his neck straining his collar as he puffed up like some Felucian jungle bird. Cody had some idea of what information caused this and suppressed a wave of smugness. 

“So what are we holding up the line for!?” 

“I thought he looked—”

“Are you deaf? I said he’s too old!”

“But it’s possible—”

“I don’t want to hear it! Pack it up and move along, you two!” Cody was ushered off with a sweeping gesture, pushed back into the passenger seat. The officer shut the door for him, not out of courtesy, but rather to underline the finality of his orders. He leaned down to the open window. “Sorry for the inconvenience. I was unaware the Grand Admiral employed people like you.”

“I’m the only one,” Cody said, rather automatically.

“Who would’ve thought? I guess the old guard is good for something, after all. Too bad the last few generations of your stock aren’t the brightest.” 

Cody was stuck between following the officer’s dismissive gaze— well, they’re corries, what do you expect— and the sizzle of contempt that wanted desperately to escape his mouth, but the man had already given the speeder’s roof a hard slap. 

“Now get going!” 

Through the barrier, away from the checkpoint, into the undamaged web of streets and towers within. Obi-Wan carefully adhered to the speed limit while he steered them through the shield lock, only letting his shoulders relax when they were well out of view. 

They were down one weapon. Not that it mattered here. The lightsaber was at its owner’s hip where it belonged, and the rifle would soon be returned to the Guard’s stash—it belonged there, too. Cody’s heart hammered at combat rate again, his fingers itching for what he’d lost. 

Calm. Calm down. Controlled breathing barely helped, but it did get his leg to stop bouncing, unruly as it may have been before. Obi-Wan studied him not-so-subtly from the corner of his eye. 

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Sure. Nothing at all. Cody channeled the full weight of his agitation outward until the other folded, eyes back on the lanes where they were supposed to be. 

That was quick.

“It’s nothing big, really. Just something amusing.”

“Amusing?”

“Well, I can’t say I enjoyed any part of that escapade, but it was refreshing to see that black-jacket get a proper scare.”

Uh-huh. And that right there was an obvious rhetorical maneuver, a telegraphed swing. 

Where was it aiming? 

“Always happy to serve,” Cody said, watching Obi-Wan closely.

“Truly.” Any tells were hidden well behind that beard and an air of indifference. Gearing up for the punch, now. Slowly twisting his hip into it. “It’s easy to forget who your new boss is sometimes, you know.”

“Tarkin’s my boss about as much as he is yours.”

“But my office isn’t down the hall from his.” There it was—a cautious hook, pulled as though to test the opponent’s reflexes. “Sometimes I wonder if I ought to be scared of you.”

Or perhaps it was a hook in a more literal sense, one that wanted to be bitten. Something squirmed in Cody’s stomach and he adjusted himself in his seat. He felt just like he had the morning after the pub crawl, with Obi-Wan at his kitchen table. Through the headache, that little thing in the Jedi’s voice had reached out to him, giving him trouble, making him overthink…

He was exhausted now, too. In pain. No cup of caf in sight. With Obi-Wan in his speeder, shifting gears, pressing buttons…

Fishing. 

“Boo,” was all Cody articulated in response, intentionally lacking enthusiasm, like a ghost that didn’t care for spooking. He wouldn’t bite. He wouldn’t argue, either.

“Funny.” If Obi-Wan was in any way displeased, he didn’t show it. Maybe it really had been nothing. Or maybe, somehow, he was satisfied with what he got. Whatever that was. 

As the Temple grew larger in front of them, Cody came to terms with the fact that he should just stop thinking for the day. Everything seemed confusing, irritating, a strain on his skull and the dehydrated clump of gray matter inside. 

What truly mattered loomed right in front of him. Everything else could wait.

 

---

 

In his head, a pulsing emptiness. In his bones, a deep ache. In his hand, a key. 

He knew where Obi-Wan’s quarters were. Sometimes the Temple felt like it wasn’t meant to be navigated by a Force-null, but Cody would manage, avoiding the cots and gurneys along the side of his path. They spilled over into training halls and rec rooms, out from a medical wing devised for the needs of a few thousand. Now, it had to serve so many more. 

The injured lined the walls. Just like the shelter, both in the night and after the collapse, and he felt sick, sick and tired. The Jedi couldn’t not take people in, after all. They couldn’t not drag Obi-Wan off as soon as he showed his wrist, treating him in a repurposed storage closet. They couldn’t not offer Cody a space on the floor— sorry, no more beds— and Obi-Wan, in turn, had been so quick to offer him his own.

He couldn’t not, and Cody had accepted. Accepted with hands that nearly fumbled, with eyes too wet and too dry, stabbing his brain when he tried to focus on a detail, on a row of letters or numbers on a display. There was no point to it. To searching. Not like this. He could see the shapes of his brothers all around, hear their voices, grunts and cries. None of them were the right one, and if they were, he had no way to tell. 

So there he stood. Many floors above, in a silent hallway, at a door. Trouble didn’t reach up here, and yet it could be felt. It lay thick in the air. In Obi-Wan’s quarters, too, and Cody let it streak across his tongue as he stepped over the threshold. It was clean in here, almost like a hotel room. The bed was made; no cups, no laundry, no pairs of shoes strewn about. There on the floor sat a kit bag. Not even unpacked yet. 

This, too, was part of his mission: undress, wash up, sleep until he was master of his own senses again, to then search for his comrade with wakeful eyes. Remembered politeness had him removing his boots before he went further into the room. It hurt. They wouldn’t quite glide off his feet, and the socks below gave the impression of having fused with his skin. They stuck to his bloodied ankles like band-aids. Any attempt at bending to reach there met stiff resistance, but he pushed through, hyper-focused on the bathroom door. The rest of his clothes fell off his body without much further effort. 

Where to dump them? They had to stink. He bundled them up inside his jacket and tied it off with its sleeves, taking them to the refresher with him. He saw a small tub there. He wouldn’t use it. The bundle went in the basin and he filed into the shower cabin, light-headed, leaning against the wall for support. 

Water. This shower had a water setting. Cody turned it on without hesitation, hissing when it sprayed his wounds. He wanted it cold. He wanted it like the rain, running down, washing away the filth. Little gray-brown-red rivers slithered into the drain, becoming clearer by the second. He shivered. The cold numbed him pleasantly, didn’t rake over the damage like hot water would.  

After, he took a long look at himself in the mirror. Two days’ worth of stubble. But his damp hair appeared as though he’d fixed it in place for combat, no longer frazzled, and deep down, that calmed him. He drifted back into the main room like this. Around a corner, out of sight from the door to the hallway, a bed waited for him. Not a ship bunk, not a field cot, but what most Jedi preferred: a simple futon. 

Swaying, Cody loomed over it for a moment. He had blisters from the firestorm. Scrapes and small cuts that would bleed all over the linen. But the thought of covering up, of scratching his wounds with every minute shift of his body, the mere notion of having to find the right cabinet and clothes that would fit him comfortably… no. 

Just collapsing was the only thing left to do. On top of the blanket so he wouldn’t ruin the mattress, the sheets arranged with military precision, crisp and unused. 

Of course. Obi-Wan had never gotten to sleep here after his return. Last night, he had left for dinner, only to be kept awake by war. And the night before…

His smell probably still lingered in Cody’s hovel. In his bed. Here, it was slight. Almost missing. As though these weren’t his quarters at all. Obi-Wan’s scent had been so unmistakeable on Cody’s pillow, in the very air of his tiny apartment after that humid night. As he drifted off, he didn’t wonder how their bodies would have had to slot together to fit on his small mattress. How carefully Obi-Wan would have had to disentangle himself on that early morning. 

Cody thought of tomorrow. Of combing through the overwhelmed Temple. Of finding Boil. 

And then, he was out. 

Outside. Bursts of fire crashing around him like tidal waves, bubbling asphalt holding on to his feet. A whirl of black and red in which he couldn’t move, not an inch, despite the voices calling out so desperately.

The fire wanted to eat him. It shot up from the treacherous pool of asphalt, lit up his joints, raced along his back and made him blind. Arms clamped around him. A weight, a shape. He needed to hold on to it at any cost. When he could see again, he was inside, roaming the Temple halls. Shells shook the foundations, making plaster rain. Looking. Searching, frantically, down every nook and cranny, and never finding. The corridors twisted themselves up into impossibilities, free of reason and direction and the laws of physics. 

And on his back, that dying weight. Bleeding. Growing heavier. It was important, so important, and Cody could feel it pass. Tears sprung to his eyes. Welling up, unstoppable, like a cadet's first failure, like a trainer's ruthless reprimand. He couldn’t. He couldn’t. Asphalt held on to his bare feet, and he carried his dying friend, and there was no help. 

None. Nothing. Except...

He spasmed awake atop the sheets that now smelled of his own distress, damp skin sticking to the blanket. His heart hammered so violently he might vomit it all out. 

It was dark save for a sliver of cold light emanating from the bathroom. Shutters had been drawn down over the large windows, and in the sparse illumination, a mattress thumped onto the floor. The vibrations jarred his quivering heart. 

“Sorry.” On the other side of the room, Obi-Wan clumsily dragged a spare pillow from a cabinet. He looked freshly washed. His right arm was covered in bacta bandages, entirely white, and no longer ended in a prosthetic. Silvery scars stretched across his back as he bent to adjust his bedding, his legs clad in the type of loose pants that resulted from wrapping a width of fabric around yourself. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“You didn’t.” Cody’s tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. Dry. He could feel his own pulse there, too. “Boil?”

Gods, his voice trembled. He trembled. And the pain didn’t stop. The burning, the ache, the weight pressing him down. When he tried to move, his stomach threatened to empty itself. 

“They’re treating everyone they take in, but they haven’t registered the names yet.” Obi-Wan stood hunched and tired. “We’ll have to ask again later.”

“What’s the time?”

“Ah—four? Five?”

So they’d be sleeping through the day. Cody shivered. Reminded himself to breathe. He wouldn’t be able to fall asleep again, not when his heart was doing its best impression of a hyperdrive engine, thundering in his ears. So heavy were his limbs that he couldn’t even curl up against the pain. Sympathy colored Obi-Wan’s voice.

“They gave me some bacta for you.”

“No painkillers?”

“Not until the other drugs wear off.”

Right. Fuck. 

“Then you’re gonna have to help me put it on.” 

“It's that bad?”

Yes. Speaking alone felt like it would make his insides twist. The most he could do was roll onto his stomach to allow himself the least bit of decency. Not that Obi-Wan hadn’t seen plenty of him in the communal showers and washrooms they’d been afforded over the years, but back then, they hadn’t been putting their hands all over each other. 

Or in this case, hand. Singular. Following Cody’s grumble, Obi-Wan knelt by his side, wedging the bacta jar between his knees to twist off the cap. Both his fingers and the paste were cold. It left a numbing, medicinal tingle wherever he spread it—treating the blisters on Cody’s hands, elbows, back and legs. Soothing the swelling around his ankles. 

“Aren’t you tired?” Cody asked eventually, lulled by the touch. It didn’t make the pain go away, but it certainly distracted him. 

“Very.”

“You should sleep.”

“Not until I’m done with you.” Deft motions massaged the paste into the muscles of his lower back. “And even then, I’m not sure…”

Too much going on. Too much chaos in his head. Cody understood, deeply.

“Tell me more about that dinner,” he said. “It’ll calm you down.”

A huff. “Or make me hungry.” The hand left before poking his shoulder. “You need to turn around.” 

Cody didn’t think so. 

“Come, now. Your ribs look awful.”

Probably also the reason why lying on them was torture. Grudgingly and with a little help, he rolled onto his back, wincing when the paste came into contact with the sheets. Obi-Wan made some sort of sound and then dipped his fingers in the jar again.

“Maybe I should’ve offered you something to wear first.”

“I’m not wearing anything I can’t put on myself.”

“Fair.” In the low light, the Jedi’s half-naked body bent over his. “This might hurt.”

Yeah. It did. Cody clenched his teeth against the cold pressure on his ribs, on the vicious, sprawling bruises. It’s what he got from dangling off the side of a building, he supposed, watching the muscles in Obi-Wan’s chest shift as he dutifully kneaded the healing paste into his skin.

“About that dinner—I’m certainly glad I went. I can’t recall the last time I ate this well. Appetizer, main course, dessert, everything.”

“Wow.”

“Before the war, a senatorial banquet would’ve had—hm—five, six courses at least? Especially if the senators in question are from Naboo. But this was just a small meeting, of course.”

Of course. Cody just let the words wash over him. 

“I do wonder how Senator Amidala sourced those ingredients. I haven’t had a shaak roast in years. She said the cuts came straight from the meadows around Theed.” A brief bout of silence as Obi-Wan moved to scoop up more bacta. “But that’s neither here nor there. I enjoyed the company more than the food, in the end.”

Hm. Politicians. Really?

“Oh, don’t pull that face. You know she’s an old friend, and Organa’s an even older one. And the twins are delightful. Senator Amidala had to send them away right after dessert—I barely got to speak to the adults in the room, the way they kept bombarding me with questions.” 

Ah, yes. Those kids.

“Are they… Is there any sign of them being, you know—”

“Gossiping now, are we, Cody?” Obi-Wan smiled down at him, his hand smoothing up his chest. “Even if they were, it wouldn’t be any of my business.” The touch settled over his still-fluttering heart. “Good grief. That’s racing.”

“Yeah. Pulse of a small rodent, or whatever it was you said.” Cody tried to mirror his expression, tried not to shift under that hand. His face was starting to feel numb, too.

“I’d be flattered if I didn’t know better.” 

“There are more reliable indicators for that type of thing, boss.” 

He wasn’t sure if he could blame what he was saying on the drugs at this stage. He didn’t take it back because he wasn’t a coward, and because this just about passed for humor between two soldiers.

Naturally, Obi-Wan looked. 

“Well. That isn’t flattering me at all.”

And thank the stars for that. Luckily, Cody’s heart was sending his blood anywhere but down there, and he found just enough strength to swat at Obi-Wan’s face. 

“Don’t look, you pervert.”

But he had to laugh. Or wheeze. His body was too battered to support an actual fit of hilarity, but Obi-Wan understood it well enough, swatting back at him lightly.

“I’ll have you know, the vegetables in the main course looked much better than this.”

“Oh yeah? Did you like those?”

Obi-Wan wiped what remained of the paste on Cody’s stomach. “I did, very much.”

For a while, at the beginning of the war, Cody had thought the Jedi were above this type of low-brow engagement. 

“Sorry for not living up to your vegetable fantasies, then.”

But the Jedi were just people, too, and his stupid remark got him a laugh. It felt… nice, even though nice wasn’t something his nervous system dealt in at the moment. 

“I shan't judge. I think we’re all feeling a little wilted after today.”

“Wilted.”

“Limp. Flaccid. Withered, if you will.” Obi-Wan took the jar and got up with a miserable creak of the knees, looking around the dark room as though he had forgotten something important. “Anyway, where were we?”

Bad metaphors for cocks. And…

“The company.”

“Ah, yes. Lovely people.” Depositing the jar on a dresser, he crossed the room and picked up the gray tunics lying discarded in a pile. “I hadn’t really known Senator Mothma all that well before, but I think you’d like her.”

“You think?”

Obi-Wan fiddled with the dirty fabric. “She’s not what you’d expect of a Chandrilan noble. Their customs are…” He patted the garment down, clearly looking for something. “Well, I have my reservations about her type, to say the least, so I was happy to be disabused of those notions as far as she is concerned. And—”

Cody craned his neck as well as he could when Obi-Wan whipped a small, crumpled box out of the folds. 

“She brought me a gift.”

And a sinking feeling once again spread in Cody’s gut. “Ulterior motive?”

“Oh, no doubt. She is pleasant, but she is a politician. I can only hope I didn’t break it—it’s quite a rarity.” 

Rare presents from controversial political figures?

Oh, no. 

“What is it?”

Placing the box on the floor and flicking off its lid, Obi-Wan picked up a small object. It was difficult to tell in the dark—a thin, glossy thing, shaped a bit like a large predator’s fang. Pretty. It looked like it was carved from wood and inlaid with polished resin. 

“A robe pin.”

“For you to wear?” Cody had a hard time imagining it. Maybe it could've gone well with those fancy tunics. Just maybe.

“Oh, no, I don’t think so. It’s a Jedi-made object, and she merely wished to return it. Apparently, some three-hundred years ago a knight fell in love with a Chandrilan prince and gave this pin to him as a token. It hasn’t been fashionable for a while, but I’m sure the archivist will appreciate it.”

Huh.

“Sounds like an heirloom.”

Obi-Wan shrugged, placing the pin back in its box. “Who knows. She gave me a pretty little story about how it had been stolen, about how that royal family doesn’t exist anymore, and how she found it at an antique shop here on Coruscant. The seller urged her to take it.”

It all sounded terrible to Cody. Shivering through a new wave of pain, he wondered how much this development really should alarm him. 

“Don’t worry.” Obi-Wan read his mind. “She’ll let me know what she wants from me soon enough.” 

Great. Wonderful.

Cody stared at the ceiling, didn’t react when the light inside the bathroom was switched off. He didn’t have time to bother his head about whatever Obi-Wan was getting up to, not when he had bodily functions to recover, not when the coming day would be spent finding his possibly-dead best friend. 

The bacta swaddled him in burning comfort. 

“Night,” he said into the nothingness.

“Sleep well,” Obi-Wan said back.

 

Notes:

ANTIQUE SHOP MENTION JUST IN TIME FOR ANDOR SEASON 2 RELEASE! YAY!!!

Looots of load bearing dialogue in this chapter, phew :’D And SO MUCH Codywan interaction! I’m trying for that vibe you get from those war movies where the soldiers are all way too comfortable and weird with each other. It’s a thing of beauty, I think. Comrades need to occasionally fall over together, touch each other tenderly, and talk about their vegetables. Yeah.

Thank you guys so much for putting up with my long ass update intervals and for all your lovely comments <3 You really, really keep me going!!