Chapter Text
The room falls silent between them, only interrupted by the whirring machinery and the beeping of Cody’s heart monitor.
Eventually Crys manages to speak, voice cracking.
“He called me by my number.”
Obi-Wan blinks wearily at him. He’s very tired, and he’s not thinking straight. “Your number?”
“Yes, sir. My designation. CT-5119. He’s… never called me that, not once.”
Crys voice sounds far away and tinny. Shattered. Hollow.
“He’s never called any of us by our numbers,” Waxer says, and Boil snorts, shaking his head.
“What, is that the most outlandish thing going on here? It’s fucked, sure, but he kept demanding we kill the General. Y’know, the guy he— augh!”
Boil jerks, clutching his abdomen as he glares at Waxer’s elbow. He straightens, and sighs.
“Look, all I’m saying is, we all know he’d rather eat his own deece than harm the General. But he’s not listening to the General, and he’s certainly not listening to any of us. So what the kriff do we do?”
Murmurs around the medbay. Obi-Wan wishes he had an answer for them, but he feels utterly useless. He lets the voices around him fade to a quiet buzz, and instead focuses on the in-and-out of Cody’s breathing— steady, even, sure.
Perhaps that unwavering steadiness would even bring him some solace and answers, as is so often the case with his Commander.
Obi-Wan doesn’t know how much time has passed when Scabs appears in front of him. He didn’t even realize he’d left.
“I need everyone to leave, except the General,” Scabs says, followed by a predictable unison cry of outrage. This time, Scabs doesn’t budge. “I won’t repeat myself. Get out.”
Eventually the men file out, albeit extremely begrudgingly. Once the door schinks shut, Scabs turns to Obi-Wan.
“We found a tumor in the Commander’s brain,” Scabs tells him, swift and blunt. Obi-Wan’s blood runs cold, and he forces himself to focus on his medic’s every word and not the sudden ringing in his ears.
“I’m fairly certain we can remove it without issue. There is, of course, the very unlikely possibility that the surgery will kill him. As CMO, I have unilateral command over such matters. However… I know for a fact he would want me to discuss it with you first before proceeding.”
Obi-Wan takes every complicated feeling such a sentiment brings him, packs them away into a neat little box, and buries it to be dealt with much, much later.
“Would this be the standard protocol if it was just a tumor and not the… everything else?”
Scabs winces, a barely-there thing he immediately smooths over. “It would depend, of course. We would likely at least try some less invasive methods to start, sir. But given the everything else, especially that it’s requiring a fairly heavy sedation to keep the Commander under, something that would be inadvisable in the long term… I’d recommend surgical removal as soon as possible.”
Obi-Wan steadies himself in the Force. Takes three deep, even breaths. Nods.
“Then please, Scabs. Proceed.”
Scabs nods in turn, unlocks the antigrav on the gurney, and shuttles him off to surgery.
--------
When Cody wakes, his head is pounding something fierce and his mind is a slurry.
He grapples for his thoughts, finding them slippery and elusive. Perhaps he took a punch to the face from a B2. It would explain why he’s in the medbay, his nostrils tingling with the smell of bacta.
But, no— he remembers, suddenly, the awful headache he’d woken up with the previous day. Headaches aren’t uncommon for him, but they’re not typically unprompted with such severity. Usually injury or stress, but they were at hyperspace, in between campaigns. It’d gotten so bad he’d even considered going to Scabs, but he’d been up late with administrative work, boring yet crucial, and then he’d figured his General would be up doing the same, so maybe it’d be easier if they just worked on it together, and his General always had a kettle of tea going, maybe he had some herbs that would help soothe his blasted headache, so he went—
Went to go see the General, and then—
Cody opens his eyes.
The first thing he sees is General Kenobi sitting by his side, sighing heavily with palpable relief, lips quirking into a smile to light up a thousands suns—
“Oh Force, Cody, it’s you.”
Cody blinks, because— of course it’s him. Kenobi isn’t some snide natborn officer, he knows his men.
He shakes his head. Something— something isn’t right. He’d figured he ended up in medical for his headache after all, but no— he wasn’t going to medical, he was going to see Kenobi, his General, to see if he wanted to share a cup of tea while they—
His head throbs. “General? How did I— ?”
It’s then that he sees Kenobi’s arm is in a sling, a hole singed in his robes at the shoulder and a bacta patch underneath. A wound Cody is certain his General didn’t receive on their last stationing, because he would’ve known, he would’ve—
All Jedi are traitors to the Republic. Execute on sight.
Cody’s mind stops spinning in a single, terrible instant, before it flips completely as he throws his head over the side of the gurney and wretches his guts out.
--------
Obi-Wan watches with a resigned sort of horror as Cody vomits, he’s— he’s shaking with it, and Scabs is there, checking his vitals but Obi-Wan already knows what’s wrong, and it’s nothing that can be read from a scanner.
There’s a million things Obi-Wan wants to say to Cody, but instead he turns to Scabs. “Get the restraints off of him.”
Scabs turns to him. “With respect, sir, we need to wait and see if— ”
“He’s himself, Scabs. I’d bet my life on it.”
Scabs glares at him a second longer, before relenting and moving to undo the straps. Cody, choking on his own spit, shakes his head rapidly.
“No, no, don’t— ”
“Cody,” Obi-Wan says, as gently as he possibly can. Cody’s eyes snap to him, wide and red-raw and terrified. It nearly breaks him, threatens to rip him apart at the seams— he’s seen Cody survive so many things, true horrors that no man should ever have to endure— and yet he’s never seen him as scared as he is now.
But Obi-Wan just steadies himself and forwards on, as he must, because he so desperately needs Cody to understand. “I trust you, Cody. You were not yourself, in the Force. But you are now. You won’t hurt me.”
“I already did!” he snaps, before scrunching his eyes shut and shaking his head. He’s gasping, breath after stuttering breath. “I shot you. I tried to kill you— ”
His voice cracks, and suddenly he’s sobbing.
“I— I tried to kill you, sir, you— you need to have me sent back to Kamino, have me decommissioned, it’s not safe, something is wrong with me— ”
Obi-Wan reaches out for Cody’s still-cuffed, shaking hand and holds it within his own. Cody stills for a drawn-out second before, despite everything, grasping back.
“Cody, please, listen to me. It was not your fault. No one is— no one is decommissioning you,” Obi-Wan spits out, the word bitter on his tongue. “I know you Cody, and what happened, that was not you.”
“It was me, though,” he manages. “Kriff, I came at you with a knife and you were going to let me— you should’ve cut me down then.”
Just the thought alone makes Obi-Wan shudder. “No, never. It wasn’t you— I couldn’t feel you in the Force, Cody, that’s why I came looking for you.”
Cody opens his eyes, and stares where their hands are clasped. He shakes his head. “I— I don’t even know what happened, which means it could happen again, you need to get yourself away from me, it’s not safe— ”
“While you’ll need to stay for observation, we’re fairly sure we do know what happened,” Scabs interrupts, clearing his throat. “There was a tumor inside of your brain, Commander. Thankfully I was able to remove it with relative ease.”
Cody blinks through his tears, looking between Scabs and Obi-Wan. “A tumor? That’s what drove me insane?”
“ …Not exactly.”
Obi-Wan raises his brow, eyeing Scabs warily. “You found something?”
Scabs, ever the one to remain calm in a medical crisis, starts looking rather sick. Dread wells itself further into Obi-Wan’s gut. “We’re still examining it. But it seems as if it’s some sort of biochip.”
“ …A biochip,” Cody says, and it’s not a question. He just lets the word fall flat between them.
Scabs nods minutely. “Yes. But it’s corroded, so it’s proving rather difficult to examine exactly what data it contains.”
“A corroded chip in my kriffin’ head.” Cody mutters to himself. He shakes his head and tugs at his bonds, seemingly having forgotten they were even there, and sighs. His breath has started to even, tears abating, but Obi-Wan can still feel his inner turmoil, Force-signature thrumming in confusion and passive despair.
“Tektite is still examining it now, trying to see if we can actually extract anything from it.”
Obi-Wan nods absently. He knows it’s crucial to find out whatever they can from the chip, but what’s plaguing him currently is how the chip was implanted in the first place.
Cody has been beaten unconscious and kept prisoner before, as painful as that is for Obi-Wan to recall, but he’s never returned with a scar to suggest any kind of implantation.
…At least, implantation post decantation.
Obi-Wan looks to Scabs, and he doesn’t need the Force to know they’re thinking the same thing.
“I believe,” Obi-Wan says gently to Cody, who’s staring at nothing. “I believe we need to examine your brothers.”
That makes him turn, facing Obi-Wan with wide eyes. “What?”
Obi-Wan holds his gaze, refusing to waver. “I’m so sorry, Cody. But if there’s a chip in your head, it’s… unlikely that you’re the only one.”
“No,” he says immediately, closing his eyes. “No, no, that’s… ”
“Unthinkable,” Obi-Wan finishes when it’s clear that Cody cannot. “Unimaginable. But we cannot rule it out until we check.”
Cody doesn’t say anything to that, just gives him the barest of nods. Obi-Wan turns to Scabs, who’s already begun calibrating one of the scanners. “I’m assuming you’ll be able to find it, if it is there, now that you know what you’re looking for?”
“I believe so. We just need a volunteer.”
--------
It’s eerily quiet in the meeting room closest to the medbay, where Obi-Wan finds Ghost holed up. Some are slouched in their seats, heads buried in their hands, while others are pacing and stiff with tension.
He figured he’d be bombarded with questions as soon as he entered, but instead the men just look to him with varying expressions of hope and fear.
“He’s fine,” Obi-Wan says. Their subsequent relief is like a crashing wave in the Force.
The questions start to come, then, but Obi-Wan holds up a hand, making the nonverbal signal for radio silence.
Crys raises a brow at him, but turns off his comm completely, the rest of them doing the same.
“Thank you. I don’t mean to worry you, but I believe this matter requires some cautionary discretion.”
“Oh, we’re well past worry,” Boil says. “What the fuck happened to him?!”
“Scabs found a tumor in the Commander’s brain,” Obi-Wan starts, his voice carefully neutral. “He was able to remove it, but within the tumor he found a corroded biological chip. Tektite is extracting what data he can, but we’re to believe it’s the cause of the Commander’s… uncharacteristic behavior.”
That’s when the hells finally break loose, his normally composed men starting to shout over each other in panic, most of it variations on the same two, desperate questions: how and why?
Through the chaos, Wooley meets his eyes with a look of sudden realization, immediately followed by overt fear.
“It can’t just be him,” he chokes out, voice rising above the onslaught of questions. The men closest to him stop their shouting to stare at him with startled eyes. “It wouldn’t. Why would it? Maybe just the command class, but still, that’s… ”
Obi-Wan swallows, but it does nothing to soften the lump in his throat. He gazes over the men before him— good, honorable men, who’ve now quieted down as they stare between him and Wooley. Awaiting his reply like they so often await his command.
Good and honorable men. Far more loyal than they have any right to be. They don’t deserve this, they don’t deserve any of this.
And yet.
Obi-Wan turns back to Wooley, and nods.
“That is, unfortunately, what we need to find out.”