Chapter Text
"They shouldn't have sent you," Quinlan said bluntly, crossing his arms. In front of him, Obi-Wan winced as the genetic transformation was slowly being reversed, revealing the true man underneath. "This should have been a Shadow's job, not yours."
"What choice did we have?" Obi-Wan retorted, with no small amount of bitterness. It took both men aback, Obi-Wan stiffening as he sat on the edge of the bed, before slumping. His hands twisted together in a move that would normally be hidden by the sleeves of his robes, now exposed for the whole world to see.
If Quinlan was the whole world, of course, being the only person present. Even the Jedi Council were leaving Obi-Wan be for the moment.
Quinlan sighed. "None, as usual." The Chancellor was not to be refused, not without potentially paying a worse price than what he was asking. He didn't envy Obi-Wan and the Council, trying to find a way to get the Jedi through the war without losing everything that they were.
He shook his head, fingers flexing inside of his gloves and mouth twisting down. "You should have learned from my mistakes. I never wanted to see you make them too."
"I know," Obi-Wan said, eyes remaining downcast. There were deep bags under his eyes, exhaustion written over every part of him.
Quinlan had struggled coming back to the Temple. No one really understood what he had gone through, and how hard he had to fight to come back. This wasn't the way that he wanted anyone else to understand, least of all Obi-Wan.
"It's easy to tell yourself it would be worth it, isn't it?" Obi-Wan still couldn't look Quinlan in the eye. "Force, I just want this to be over."
There was nothing that Quinlan could say that would make Obi-Wan feel any better about it. The war wasn't going away. Quinlan was becoming less and less convinced that it was possible to be won. And both of them were more alike than they cared to admit, willing to throw everything away for just the hope of making it all stop.
They'd both failed. The war raged on. The Sith Master was as elusive as ever. But they were still there, and neither of them had truly Fallen.
Obi-Wan huffed out a breath and finally looked up. "Thank you for coming for me."
"I might have come for you, but you didn't come with me," Quinlan reminded him. "I'm still tempted to kick your ass for that." Was that a smile?
"I'm not the one you should be thanking, anyway," he added. Commander Cody had succeeded where Quinlan had not. He had to admire the gumption of the man to take the plan and throw it out the window.
"I told him to send Skywalker. But that's not what happened, wasn't it?" After they had arrived at the Temple, Quinlan had put the pieces together about what had happened. There was no way that Skywalker would have gotten the shuttle there on time if he'd been the one that had gone to Obi-Wan, as Quinlan had intended.
"You're the one who brought him along in the first place." And there it was, the barest red tinge in the man's ears, exposed by his lack of hair. Quinlan knew there was more to it than he'd been told.
If Obi-Wan really thought he could hide his tells from someone who had grown up with him, he had another thing coming. Even with Obi-Wan still shielding himself in the Force—and that was going to be a karking painful time, once he let those shields fall—his body still gave him away.
"Not really—I just needed troops for backup," Quinlan said. "He brought himself along."
The red tinge spread. Quinlan couldn't help but smile, letting his arms drop to his sides.
"He's good for you." Obi-Wan sat upright at that declaration, frowning at Quinlan in suspicion. "Not many people can make you listen when you've got your back up. Not even me. I'm glad he's watching your back, Force knows you won't do it for yourself."
He held Obi-Wan's gaze, not bothering to hide the knowing smirk. Obi-Wan was the first to look away, the flush having extended to his neck.
Oh, he was going to hold this over Obi-Wan for years. He would never let him forget it.
"It worked out for the best," Obi-Wan admitted. "I'm here, aren't I?"
Quinlan's smirk become a proper smile again, letting himself deeply feel the relief before releasing it to the Force. "Yes, you are."
It was enough.
Anakin was roiling with conflicting emotions as he stalked through the halls of the Jedi Temple, treading a familiar route. He'd received word that his master had been discharged and was resting in his quarters, finally back to his own face.
Anger, fear, betrayal, sheer utter relief—they all swirled inside him, choking him. He grit his teeth, doing his best to keep his composure, pulling into himself as tightly as he could. Even so, any Jedi he encountered in the corridors took one look at him and immediately made themselves scarce.
Force, Anakin was so karking angry, and he couldn't hide it. It ate at him as he drew closer to the rooms he had grown up in, before he'd been given his own quarters with space for Ahsoka. Not that he was there much—most of his free time on Coruscant was spent in Padme's rooms, taking advantage of being on the same planet as his wife.
She had pushed him out the door when the news came, telling him to go see his old master. Anakin had wanted to protest, but there was a look in her eye that made him swallow his words.
His wife was very wise. If she thought he needed this, then he probably did.
But knowing that he needed to see Obi-Wan didn't make it any easier, or Anakin any less conflicted. He paused in front of the door, which still had various scratches that Anakin had inflicted on it as a child.
He clenched his fists, choking back the anger that threatened to overwhelm him. Obi-Wan was on the other side of the door. His master wasn't dead. He wasn't Fallen, as Vos had heavily alluded to happening if they didn't bring him back in time. Which was ridiculous. Obi-Wan Kenobi wouldn't Fall. He couldn't.
Anakin wanted to turn tail and flee back to Padme. Hero with no Fear, indeed. He was so full of fear, and he never dared let any of it show.
But right now, the anger was winning. And he couldn't yell at Obi-Wan as easily in a holo-call.
He took a deep breath, and opened the door, letting it slide shut behind him as he stepped into the living room.
Immediately, he was almost bowled over by what he could feel.
Obi-Wan was sitting on the couch, a blanket wrapped around his shoulders. His master was back to his normal appearance, minus the hair and beard, which would need time to grow back.
He was an open wound in the Force. His normal shielding had failed him entirely, and Anakin could feel—everything.
Pain—guilt—regret—betrayed them—failed them—
It didn't quite show on his face, as Obi-Wan tried to stand to meet him. It didn't work, as he was too tangled in the blanket to get up. But there was a look in his eyes that meant he was bracing, expecting an incoming blow—expecting Anakin to blow up at him.
Anakin blinked at him, rocked by the maelstrom in front of him. It was so easy to think of Obi-Wan Kenobi as the perfect Jedi, the one who could do no wrong, perfect detachment and dedication to the Force.
He should have known better. Anakin was raised by this man, and he should have known better.
Because there was an undercurrent to Obi-Wan that for once was exposed for any Jedi to sense. Beneath the guilt and the regret, love ran steady.
The anger and the fear drained away from Anakin, leaving him feeling hollow and shaky. He crossed the room and plonked himself down on the couch next to Obi-Wan, folding in on himself to rest his head against Obi-Wan's shoulder, as he had done so many times in the past, when he was much smaller than he was now.
Obi-Wan was there. He was alive. And he still loved Anakin, despite the distance that gaped between them so often.
His master slumped back into the couch, abandoning his effort to get up. Obi-Wan leaned back against Anakin with a heavy sigh, resting his cheek on the top of Anakin's head. The maelstrom inside Obi-Wan didn't go away, but it quieted.
"I'm glad you're alive," Anakin mumbled.
The responding hum vibrated against him. "I'm glad not to be dead." Obi-Wan's voice was still a little hoarse, but he sounded like himself, Coruscanti accent and all. Anakin wondered how exactly his voice had been turned into Hardeen's, then shelved the thought. It wasn't important.
They stayed in that position, the silence drawing out into something tangible. There was so much that Anakin could say. He could yell at Obi-Wan about the deception of his faked death. Or he could admonish Obi-Wan for disobeying the Council and going off on his own—but that wasn't actually unusual for them. They had more missions go sideways than ever had gone to plan, and they were both used to improvising regardless of permission.
There was only one thing that really mattered.
"Vos said you were going to Fall." The words were quiet, so quiet that at first Anakin wasn't sure whether Obi-Wan had heard him.
"I could have," Obi-Wan eventually responded, equally quiet. Then his voice grew stronger. "No, I would have, if I had stayed that path. I was so convinced of what I thought must be done that it blinded me to the darkness surrounding me."
Anakin struggled with that idea. He hadn't believed Vos, at first. The man had come to him fresh from the Council, still battered from his previous mission, and furious enough to chew nails. He'd told Anakin the truth about the Rako Hardeen mission, about Obi-Wan's survival. And he had told Anakin that if they didn't bring Obi-Wan back, he would Fall.
He hadn't believed it, but he'd come anyway. Anakin would always come running when Obi-Wan needed him. It wasn't the first time that Anakin had saved him, and he knew it wouldn't be the last.
Obi-Wan was still talking, voice taking on the lecturing cadence so familiar from his youth, and Anakin forced himself to pay attention again. That tone meant that Obi-Wan had something important to say, and for the first time in a long time, Anakin was ready to listen.
"The dark—it preys on fear. It separates you, makes you believe that you are alone, that you have no way out other than what it shows you. When you are alone and believe you have nowhere to turn, it's easy to make the wrong choice."
"You didn't Fall," Anakin pointed out, immediately feeling foolish for needing to voice it.
His master nudged him. When Anakin twisted to look up at him, there was the smallest smile on his face, sad yet undisputably fond. "That's because you came for me, you and Vos and Commander Cody."
The man let out a deep sigh again, the smile dropping. "I thought I was alone, could not see the precipice I stood on, but you came. You didn't let it happen."
Obi-Wan's mind brushed against his. I'm here, it said, both a greeting and a statement of fact. Still here. Not alone.
"A Jedi is never alone. We have each other, and the Force. There is always hope, and sometimes you just need to be reminded how to see it."
In Obi-Wan's mind, it was like looking up at the stars, beacons of light in the Force. There were the Jedi, shining brightly all over the galaxy, too far away to touch but always there.
Anakin had never thought of it that way. He knew he experienced the Force differently to everyone else. There was very little he wasn't capable of, if he wanted it badly enough. And for him, people were more like songs than stars, something he was so used to that they became part of the background noise of his life. He could pick out the melodies of those he was closest with from parsecs away.
Him and Obi-Wan—they'd been discordant of late. Equally stubborn, and struggling to connect as the war pulled them apart then forced them back together in equal measures.
But Obi-Wan was right, as he so often was. Anakin had forgotten how to listen, but the Jedi were always there, humming in the background.
He wasn't alone, either. Obi-Wan was there. He wasn't dead yet, and they had time to figure out how to hear each other again.
Cody's comm crackled. "Word from the bridge," Boil's voice said in his ear. "General's on his way, estimated arrive ten minutes."
A part of Cody that he hadn't even realised was tensed relaxed again for the first time in weeks. His General was nearly back on the Negotiator, where Cody could keep a close eye on him. The jetii would be lucky if Cody ever let him out of his sight again, after the stunt he had pulled.
"Keep the hanger clear," Cody told Boil. "Let's keep this calm. We don't want to spook him the moment he's back."
Word had spread through the Negotiator of the General's survival almost as soon as the extraction squad had touched down on Coruscant. Once operational secrecy was no longer a requirement, his troopers had immediately blabbed to their brothers. From there, it spread like lightning through the GAR.
Cody could only wish that intel travelled as fast as gossip. All his batchmates had commed him before he'd even finished debriefing the Jedi Council at Vos' side.
Afterwards, Cody had returned to the Negotiator to resume command. It meant that he hadn't laid eyes on his General since they parted at the Jedi Temple hanger, Kenobi being hurried off to the medbay while the waiting Council members cornered Cody before he'd stepped foot on solid ground.
They never said as much, but Cody had the impression that the extraction mission wasn't officially sanctioned. However, there was no reprimand, as they had achieved their goal and brought the rogue jetii home.
It had been a full week since then. Kenobi had remained at the Jedi Temple, being thoroughly poked at by the healers and grilled by the Jedi Council. Cody had spent the time on what his troopers had taken to calling a rampage, doing a full top to bottom inspection of the Negotiator and making sure every speck of it was up to his standards. His troopers had scrubbed it until it shined, and there was not a single piece of equipment that hadn't been inspected and repaired.
The ship that Cody commanded was the closest thing that Cody had to call his own. He took pride in it, the way that he took pride in all the people under his command, for all that none of them actually had a choice in being there.
Not even the jetii. And that was a truth that Cody was finding harder to swallow with every passing day. The events of the previous few weeks had put it even more sharply into perspective.
What would they have been forced to do, if the General had not come home of his own free will? That idea would be a new source of fuel for Cody's nightmares for many nights to come.
He shook off the thought. It wasn't helpful. Instead, Cody focused on the well-trodden path towards the hanger, noting the stream of troopers normally on duty heading away from it.
By the time he got there, the corridors were empty, and his footsteps echoed in the emptiness of an eerily quiet hanger. The only sound other than Cody and the hum of the ship's engines was that of a shuttle, gently lowering itself onto the floor.
It was in better nick that the ones that Cody had spent the last few days with. As the ramp lowered, he wondered if he would be allowed to keep it.
Then Kenobi walked down the ramp, his bag on his shoulder, and nothing could draw Cody's attention away from him.
His hair was still very short, barely more than stubble. But his face was back to normal, making the deep bags still under his eyes immediately obvious.
Kenobi stopped a pace in front of Cody. "Commander," he greeted him in his normal Coruscanti lilt. His eyes met Cody's, unerring finding his gaze even with Cody's helmet blocking his view.
Cody saluted. "General." Then he relaxed again, jerking his head towards the exit. "Come on. Your room is ready for you."
Kenobi fell into step beside him, quieter than usual. This was the point where Cody would normally expect a quip, or to discuss the state of things. Instead, Kenobi walked in silence, letting it grow between them with the weight of their last meeting.
It was for the better. This wasn't a conversation that Cody wanted to have in the corridors.
There were more troopers as they neared the living quarters. They saluted as their commanding officers passed, but did not try to approach, as per Cody's earlier orders.
It made it easier for Cody to notice the way that Kenobi's shoulders relaxed with every step, with every acknowledgement. The Negotiator was as much the General's ship as it was Cody's, and it was doing its job at putting him at ease.
Kenobi's room was nearly as he had left it when he had last disembarked the Negotiator, so many weeks previously. The only difference was the freshly laundered sheets on the bed, and the lack of dust. Cody had put Boil on that, wanted to make sure only troopers that the General knew well were inside to clean it. He wasn't quite sure how the Force worked, but he knew that people left traces.
As Cody shut and locked the door behind him, Kenobi placed his bag on the bed in the corner. There were two chairs stacked into the corner to make room for Kenobi's meditation mat, still laid out in the middle of the room.
Cody rolled up the mat and got the chairs ready, while Kenobi went to the tiny kitchenette and pulled out the tea supplies. It was a well worn routine for the both of them, something they did after the harder missions had finished debriefing, in the calm before the storm began again.
Before long, they were settled on the chairs, holding steaming mugs with GAR logos and pre-packaged tea. Cody smiled to himself as he watched Kenobi take his first sip and crinkle his nose, his helmet now sitting on top of the meditation mat. His General had never gotten used to the taste of cheap tea, but he still drank so much of it that it must have almost replaced the blood in his veins by that point.
The silence settled around them. Cody stayed quiet, watching his General, waiting. He had made the first move through bringing him home. It was Kenobi's turn to reach out, now.
And reach out Kenobi did. "I'm sorry," he said. It was the first real thing Kenobi had said to Cody since the whole saga went down.
"For what?" Cody asked, keeping his expression still. He was going to make Kenobi work for it.
"For disappearing," Kenobi responded, meeting Cody's eyes. The tea hadn't relaxed the tension the man still held in his shoulders. "For thinking I could do this by myself."
At this, Cody couldn't stop the sigh. "You let the chance at stopping the war blind you." He didn't bother hiding the reproach in his tone. "You should know by now not to take risks like without someone watching your back."
Without me, he didn't say, but both of them heard. The lightsaber clip felt heavy on his belt.
"That was foolish of me." Kenobi put the now empty mug down, running a hand across his face. His sudden grimace at the lack of beard didn't escape Cody's notice.
"Thank you for leading the mission," Kenobi continued. "You did not have to do that."
Cody huffed. It seemed Vos had blabbed. "Of course I did. Giving you any chance at getting away would have been too much of a risk."
"Anakin was there," Kenobi pointed out, working his way around the question that Cody knew was on the tip of his tongue. "Yet you were the one who came to intercept me."
If Cody were Kenobi, he would respond just as obliquely, allowing them to dance around the heart of the topic without ever actually reaching it. However, Cody was not Kenobi, and he had inherited every bit of the typical mando'a bluntness.
They had danced around what was between them for long enough.
"I knew if I were the one to ask, Obi-Wan, you would come back." It was the first time he had called Kenobi by name. Until the war was over—until Cody was free to choose his own fate—it would have to be the last time.
Kenobi's eyes went very wide. Whatever he had been about to say died in his throat, mouth opening and closing without sound.
"We both have a duty," Cody continued, holding Kenobi's gaze. "To our people, and the Republic. This war is not done yet, and it must come first. But after…" He let his voice trail off.
Kenobi visibly swallowed. The tips of his ears were bright red, for once not hidden by his hair.
"After," Kenobi repeated, voice hoarse. "After, should we both survive, we should talk."
"And we will survive," Cody said. He was certain of it. "But only if you allow me to keep watching your back." He couldn't stop himself from reaching for the lightsaber clip on his belt, brushing his fingers over it.
Kenobi's eyes followed the movement. The smile that blossomed across his face warmed Cody from bucket to boots. "My life—and my lightsaber, it seems—are safe in your hands."
Your lightsaber is your life. It was a common admonishment between Master and Padawan. Yet Cody carried Kenobi's lightsaber regularly on his belt, Kenobi's life in his hands.
"There will be an after," Kenobi said, his eyes suddenly distant, pupils contracting until his eyes were nearly all iris. Then he gave himself a shake, focusing on Cody again, in the present once more. "That is my promise to you."
Cody had grown used to the strange jetii way of looking at things, the way they interact with the Force. It was totally outside his understanding, but he didn't need to understand it to accept it. If Kenobi made such a promise, than it would be kept. That was all he needed to know.
He could wait. And in the meantime, they had a war to win.