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Even with half their number still deployed on an away mission, there are over a thousand clones aboard the Negotiator when Obi-Wan returns from his adventures as Rako Hardeen.
Obi-Wan doesn’t see a single one of them on the way to his quarters.
He feels them, dimmed flickers of griefconfusionhurt in the Force that make his heart ache and his chest feel tight. In the mess. In the infirmary. In the barracks. He feels them, but none of them seem in any rush to come welcome him back, and he …
Well, he tells himself that’s for the best. They deserve an apology and an explanation, and he fully intends to give them one. But it’s been weeks of too much running and too little sleep trying to thwart the latest plot against the Chancellor, and perhaps they could all do with a night to settle before they try for that debrief. Cody should be back with the rest of the company by four-hundred hours; he’ll do it then. More efficient that way. Very practical. Cody would approve.
(It may be the only thing about all of this that Cody approves of, but that is a bridge Obi-Wan will cross when he comes to it.)
Tomorrow, he promises himself, as he blinks into the dark of his quarters. There are still datapads piled on the desk where he left them, and a half-finished mug of tea collecting dust on the single-counter kitchenette. It’s like he just stepped out for a moment—like the last three weeks were just a strange, chaotic dream.
Only, Obi-Wan can’t remember the last time a dream left so many bruises. Bruises, burns, breaks in two fingers on his left hand, but that was what he got for punching Anakin and Eval bare-knuckled in the face. Highly uncivilized. It’s nothing a few turns of meditation won’t sort most of the way out, just as soon as he has the energy to do it, and he simply hadn’t had the stomach to let the med droids do it after the small matter of having his face, skull, and vocal cords painstakingly rearranged.
He grimaces again, stifling a shudder at the strangeness of his own skin. Feels tingly. Feels odd, like it’s still … settling, somehow. Like clay that hasn’t quite firmed itself into shape, which is a nauseating thought. Yes, he thinks wearily, toeing out of his boots on his way to his bunk. Better to wait until tomorrow.
For now, he’s only too glad to collapse into his bunk, socked and tabarded and giving not a damn. Rest. That’s all he needs. A few hours’ sleep, and he’ll feel …
❂ ❂ ❂
… awful.
Force, Obi-Wan feels awful when he wakes—face hot-sore and throbbing in time with his heartbeat, throat stinging like nettles with every breath that scrapes through it. The med droid warned there might be some discomfort from the recalibrations, once the anesthetics wore off, but Obi-Wan had never known droids could have such a gift for understatement.
He shifts, wincing at the answering protest of a dozen bruises and a few bacta-patched burns. That kriffing box. Dioxis, laser spikes, flamethrowers—he’d give Moralo this: that foul little Phindian was thorough.
It takes another set of knocks on the door for Obi-Wan to realize what woke him in the first place. There’s someone outside. There’s someone—
“Sir?”
Obi-Wan knows that voice. Obi-Wan knows those knocks.
Cody. A rush of warmth, followed almost dizzyingly closely by a swell of confused dread. How is Cody here? He’s not supposed to be back until—
Obi-Wan’s eyes dart to the chrono by his bunk, and he bites a curse behind his teeth. Nearly seven-hundred hours; he’s overslept. Badly.
“Coming,” he rasps. It feels like pulling a wad of steel wool up his throat, and when he tries to clear it, tears prick his eyes. Reminds him of when Corellian mumps hit the creche when he was a youngling; he’d survived for a week on nothing but lukewarm broths and chamomile tea, and hadn’t spoken more than a handful of words the whole time.
He doesn’t have that option, just now.
Apologies and explanations, he reminds himself, pushing to his feet (and steadying himself on the wall when the floor tilts underneath him). You owe them that. And he’s put it off long enough—too long, perhaps, if Cody’s felt compelled to come looking for him.
Tugging his slept-in tabards as straight as possible, he pastes on a smile and waves the door open. “Cody—” he starts, but his voice catches when he sees the look on Cody’s face.
His helmet’s under his arm, and that means Obi-Wan sees everything—the parting of his lips, the widening of his eyes. It’s the closest thing to shock he’s ever seen from his commander, and guilt twists in Obi-Wan’s stomach like a vibroblade.
But then—
“I knew it,” Cody breathes, and for what might be the very first time, Cody doesn’t wait for an invitation; he steps across the threshold like he’s being pulled, eyes never once leaving Obi-Wan’s as the door slides shut behind him. “They said you were dead, but—”
Before Obi-Wan can muster even the start of an apology, there are arms around him, pulling him into a hard, desperate embrace. Plastoid digs into Obi-Wan’s sore ribs, but he barely feels it, the sensation lost to the warm-bright wave of Cody’s relief that enfolds him just as completely as the commander’s arms. There’s no anger, there. No hurt. There’s only a gladness so pure that it rings, rich and resonant, in the Force, and Obi-Wan feels a catch in his throat that has nothing to do with the damage from the voice modulator.
He buries his face in Cody’s shoulder, ignoring the soreness of his reshaped cheeks and the throb of his new-again nose. Doesn’t matter. None of it matters, because it’s only pain, and he’d been bracing for something so much worse. He’d lied, and so many people had been hurt, and the thought of seeing some of that hurt reflected in those amber eyes he loves so much had gnawed at him since he first agreed to take on this mission. That this is the greeting Cody gives him, after all of that …
Obi-Wan doesn’t deserve him.
He drags his voice up from the depths of his chest. “I thought—” His throat spasms around the words, and he has to pull back to bury the cough in his elbow. Seems more polite than burying it in Cody’s blacks.
Cody’s brows furrow, and Obi-Wan feels a tendril of concern spread through all that sunlight warmth. “Thought what?”
He doesn’t want to say it. He doesn’t want to say anything, in point of fact; his throat feels like—well, like he’s spent three weeks with a metal ball the size of a jogan pit latched onto his larynx. But he very specifically doesn’t want to say that. It makes his stomach churn, oil-slick and sour, like saying it will break whatever wonderful spell Cody’s under and remind him what an utter bastard Obi-Wan has been.
But with every second of silence, Cody looks more and more troubled, and Obi-Wan knows these sorts of things never get better for dragging them out.
He sighs. “I thought you’d be angry,” he says. “Understandably so,” he’s quick to add. “This deception … it was necessary, but it wasn’t kind, and I’m sorry that you got caught in it. I’d hoped … word sometimes takes a while to reach the Outer Rim. I thought if you and Ghost Company were there when it all happened, occupied with an assignment, we might be able to wrap the whole thing up before you ever found out. But things took longer than I’d hoped, and well—the vode grapevine is a more powerful intelligence tool than I originally imagined.”
“So the Outer Rim deployment was your idea.”
Obi-Wan swallows, smothering a wince at the raw, sticky sting at the back of his throat. “It was.” And maybe if it had actually worked, he wouldn’t feel so ashamed to admit it; but now, it’s yet another scheme he’s perpetrated on his own men, and a failed one at that.
He feels drained, suddenly. The exhaustion hits like a mudslide, bone-deep and smothering, and it’s all he can do not to sag against back of the desk chair just a half-step behind him.
He starts to rub his eyes—to push away the blurriness, the burn, but the skin of his face feels bruised under his fingertips. It hurts. All of it hurts, and he’s so blasted tired. Three weeks of playing the part of a monster, feeling the darkness like worms trying to burrow under his skin. And after all that, it almost hadn’t even worked, and the cost …
A hand touches his shoulder, and even knowing who it belongs to, even feeling Cody’s sunglow presence in the Force, Obi-Wan can’t help but flinch.
“Obi-Wan,” Cody says softly. Not General. Here, in the privacy of Obi-Wan’s quarters, the general is allowed to be Obi-Wan, and the commander is allowed to be Cody, and they are allowed to be themselves, together, simply and completely.
Here, in the privacy of Obi-Wan’s quarters, they’re allowed to be in love.
“Obi-Wan,” Cody repeats, stepping in closer. Obi-Wan hadn’t realized he’d stepped back, but the edge of the chair prods at a sore spot on his hip, and his fingers dig white-knuckled into the upholstery.
Obi-Wan blinks, horrified to find his eyes are welling. “I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I couldn’t think of anything else.”
“Why not let me stay?” Cody asks. “Why send me away?”
Breathe in. Breathe out. Obi-Wan tries to release the sharp tangle of emotions in his chest into the Force, but they’re twisted too tightly, and the thorns have dug so deep. “For the mission,” he manages. “I was worried you would see through the ruse. My brilliant commander. My Cody.” And it’s true. He was right, even, if Cody’s first words to him were any indication. I knew it. Even from the Outer Rim, he’d seen through it.
But it’s not the whole truth. “And for you,” he adds, softer, face flushing with shame. “I didn’t want you to be here when I—when it happened. I didn’t want to do that to you.”
Cody frowns, confusion furrowing his brows. “But Anakin and Ahsoka … ”
“You think I wanted to do it to them?” The words come out sharper than Obi-Wan means them to, and he forces another inhale, another exhale, and tries again. “Someone had to witness it,” he says slowly, eyes averted. He’s not sure he wants to see the look on Cody’s face just now, wonders if Cody could imagine ever doing something like this to any of his brothers. “Someone close to me, someone people would believe. And Anakin and Ahsoka—they would think they’d lost me, and that was more than bad enough. But you … ” He glances up. “You would think that you’d failed me. And I couldn’t do that to you.”
It feels dangerous, letting his feelings for Cody guide his actions. He knows it isn’t the same as being controlled by them, and he knows himself well enough to know that he can walk that line. But times like this, it’s …
Force, it’s hard.
It’s hard, and he’s tired and sore and guilty, and his skin kriffing itches from the accelerated hair growth. Which sounds so trite in his head that he can’t help but laugh, but the laugh comes out so much like a sob that he claps his hand over his mouth and nearly gasps at the pain that ripples through his cheeks.
“Kark,” he hears, and this time, when Cody touches him, he manages not to flinch. He leans into the touch, instead, and lets himself be steered into the desk chair. It feels good to sit. It would feel even better to lay down, but the bunk is so far, and he still owes so many apologies, and— “You don’t owe anyone anything.”
He said that out loud.
“You did.”
He hadn’t realized people actually did that outside holonovels.
“Apparently, they do.” Cody offers up a small smile, settling a hand on Obi-Wan’s knee. His thumb rubs soothing circles on the fabric of Obi-Wan’s leggings. “But I mean it. The vode are fine; you don’t need to apologize.”
Obi-Wan runs a hand over his fuzzy scalp. It doesn’t hurt, at least, but he’s afraid if he starts scratching that he’s not going to be able to make himself stop. “I can feel them, Cody,” he rasps. “I hurt them. They mourned me.” Which is humbling and heartbreaking in roughly equal measure. “And now they’re avoiding me.”
Cody opens his mouth.
Shuts it.
Opens it again with a low, heartfelt swear. “That was my fault,” he says.
Confused, Obi-Wan blinks. “How—?”
“I told them to wait.” Cody’s face twists in a grimace. “To give you some space, let you decompress. Three weeks is a long kriffing time to be undercover, especially with a crowd like that, and I wanted to—” A wry whuff of a laugh. “I wanted to be here to help when you found yourself with a thousand-odd overenthusiastic troopers rolling out the welcome wagon.”
Ah.
That was …
Obi-Wan says, nonplussed, “But they felt … pained.”
“I’m sure some of them are,” Cody answers, with all his usual frankness. “But that doesn’t mean they’re not glad you’re back, or that they don’t understand what you did. You did what you had to do for the Republic; if anyone can understand that, it’s a brother. I’d bet you every credit to my name—which, for legal and regulation purposes, is none,” he adds with a quirk of his lips that makes Obi-Wan smile, “that if I hadn’t said anything, you’d have had a hundred happy vode on you before you cleared the hangar.”
Which sounds … nice, Obi-Wan thinks. Nice, but extremely overwhelming.
“You may have made the right call,” Obi-Wan admits, feeling his spirits brighten. Upset, but willing to forgive—Obi-Wan will take that and be grateful for the privilege. It’s so much better than he’d dared expect, especially after Anakin’s outburst at the landing bay. “Thank you.”
“Thank me by getting back in your bunk,” Cody replies. “You look like—”
Obi-Wan holds up a hand. “Please don’t finish that sentence.”
“Like a freshly bloomed Barelia blossom,” Cody finishes smoothly, rising to tuck a kiss to Obi-Wan’s brow.
Obi-Wan can’t help it: another flinch slips past his guard, even at such a tender touch. Give him a blaster burn, Obi-Wan thinks miserably. Give him an electrostaff. Give him a lightsaber for kark’s sake, because even that would be better than the strange, stomach-turning throb under the skin of his face. It’s pulpy. Like his skin is too tight and the meat is too soft, and if he thinks too hard about the feeling of muscles and structures shifting across the bones, he’s quite concerned he’ll retch on Cody’s boots.
Cody leans back, a scrutinizing edge to his soft, fond stare. “How bad is it?” he asks in a tone that says Obi-Wan can either tell him, or he can tell Gurney, and Cody is at least in this regard the much softer target.
“Bounty hunting isn’t for the faint of heart, I’m afraid,” he admits. “Nor prison, for that matter, but it’s mostly bumps and bruises.”
“And broken fingers,” Cody observes, eyeing the splint on Obi-Wan’s left hand.
Obi-Wan waves it dismissively. “Nothing that won’t heal in a few days. Truth be told, the mission was less disagreeable than the disguise.”
Cody gives him a look that says, Do I need to ask, or can we both just assume I’m going to need you to be more specific?
He really does have the most expressive face, Obi-Wan thinks fondly. “Facial reconfiguration and a vocal chord modulator,” he explains. “It’s … not pleasant.”
“It kriffing hurts,” Cody translates, lips thinning. “Face and throat, then?”
Obi-Wan nods, grateful for a yes-no question.
Cody’s lips thin further. “And you couldn’t have mentioned that before we talked for ten minutes?”
“You know I love our talks, my dear,” Obi-Wan replies, smiling. At least, he thinks he’s smiling. He feels like every muscle is just slightly out of place, and they twitch and shudder under the strain of whatever expression he’s managed to stretch into place.
Cody’s sigh is at least as affectionate as it is longsuffering as he reaches for his gauntlet comlink.
“What are you doing?”
“Comming Gurney.”
Obi-Wan shakes his head. “That can wait. I need to talk to the others.”
“You need to let a medic look at you. You sound like you swallowed a bramlik with a jet juice chaser, and it’s been getting worse since I got here.”
“It’s not that bad,” Obi-Wan protests. Which might be more convincing if his voice didn’t break in the middle like a pubescent padawan. At Cody’s flat look, he sighs. “You’re sure they’re all right?”
Cody’s flat look softens into something immeasurably fond, and also ferociously exasperated. “Worse than a mama rawka, you are,” he mutters. “The men are fine. But if you try a shipwide broadcast sounding like that, you’re likely to make them think they actually have something to worry about.”
That’s dirty sabacc. Obi-Wan tells him as much, but Cody looks unrepentant. “I learned from the best, sir. Now.” He offers Obi-Wan a hand up from the chair, which is both unnecessary and also very much appreciated, and Obi-Wan lets himself be herded back to his bunk. Sure hands make quick work of his belt, obi, and tabards, folding them into a neat pile Cody deposits on the desk, so Obi-Wan can burrow under the covers in nothing but his undershirt, linens, and socks.
It is, admittedly, much more comfortable this way.
It’s more comfortable still when Cody sits himself on the edge of the bunk, fitting easily in the curve of Obi-Wan’s body. “Gurney’ll be here soon,” Cody says, gloved hand carding gently through Obi-Wan’s prickly new hair. If Obi-Wan’s throat didn’t feel like a column of Dantari fire ants, he might start to purr.
Instead, he reaches a hand out from the covers and taps a quick thank you in dadita against Cody’s thigh, hoping all the while that Cody hears the parts he doesn’t say. Thank you for understanding. Thank you for forgiving. Thank you for loving, even when duty makes it harder than we’d like.
And maybe Cody does hear, because the smile on his face is warm like sunrise as he catches Obi-Wan’s hand and brings it to his lips. “We missed you, cyare,” he whispers against bruised, bloodied knuckles. Like a blessing. Like a benediction. “Welcome back.”
To Obi-Wan, it feels like welcome home.