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Cody had thought, before he got into the house, that the hardest part of all of this was going to be not knowing what to do with his free time. It turns out he didn’t need to worry—there hasn’t been a day yet that he’s had even a spare moment where he’s left with nothing to do. He’d known the cabin and the farm were in bad shape (it’s why he’d been able to afford it, after all) but he hadn’t fully known how much work there would be before he could even get to the real job of farming. He’s far from unfamiliar with hard work and long days, though, and it doesn’t take long for him to settle himself into a routine.
The Valley, self-sufficient and insular, has remained largely untouched by the war and its subsequent fallout. It's a surprising and unexpected breath of fresh air. For the first time in his life he's completely untangled from the web of the war; from the expectations of Kamino, and the GAR, and the Order. Speaking of—he's heard there's a wizard out in the woods somewhere, which usually spells Jedi, but he isn't in a hurry to meet them and find out. Cody’s days are already full of little headaches.
He’d been asked, more than once, why out of all the places in the galaxy he could go to retire he chose this. More work, after a lifetime of overworking. Cody doesn’t bother explaining himself and his brothers learn to stop asking. Letters sit, opened and waiting to be answered, filled with tales of all the other ways the clone forces of the GAR have chosen to spend their retirements. Bly sends postcards regularly of whatever new planet they’ve visited. Rex sends updates in between building plans, holos of the construction progress accompanying each one. Fox sends him job listings with no added comments. Boil and Wooley hound him insistently, wondering when he’ll let them come visit.
The thing is, there is a part of Cody that absolutely hates being alone. He thinks it’s ingrained in all of them; this distaste for isolation, the wrongness of being the only clone in a certain radius. Even when he spends time in town, when he sits for hours in the saloon, there’s still the poignant feeling of loneliness that gnaws at him. And yet—the letters all sit opened and unanswered. He will, eventually, send out long over-due answers. He’ll give them the address and wait for the day he’ll have a house too-full of his brothers. For now, it’s just him and the creaking cabin and the farm.
There are just some things that you need to do alone. Cody tills plots for new crops, buries seeds into the dirt with his bare hands, lets himself try and find something like peace between the hours spent in the garden and in the house, fixing leaks in the roof and holes in the floorboards. He stays busy, which is good. He learns new things, which is even better. In all of the abstract ways he’d known what it was to grow plants, to harvest your own food, make your own meals, but those were never things he had to do for himself. Everyday is a new process of figuring out what happens next, as his seeds start to sprout and they find new and increasingly creative ways to die despite his best interventions. Out of necessity he starts spending more time in town, mingling with all of the people who have been doing this for their entire lives. He learns how to shop at a market and gets a colorful lecture about supporting local businesses over corporate ones. He learns more recipes than he really knows what to do with. When the man who lives out on the docks comes back from the sea he offers to teach Cody how to fish, and then how to gut what they catch and fillet it. He learns how to swing a sword—not a lesson he needs, really, but he lets the guild leader teach it to him, anyway.
His days are long and tiring, but purposeful. By the turn of the season, Cody finally feels like he has something put together, something that’s his. The roof still leaks sometimes if it storms for a few days in a row and his tom kha leaves something to be desired, but he sleeps through the night more times than he doesn’t and he’s stopped dreading the sound of his comm going off. He writes his own letters, half-full of just names and places and people, all these new things that he’s had to get used to staying in one place. He draws charts up of his crop layouts for the new season and he clips pictures of the Valley that he knows Gree will like and at the end of every letter, he prints where he is, careful and clear. An address and an invitation and a promise.