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“I do what I can. Live for the moment, that’s who I am.”
“We all do what we can.” Cody adjusted, he scanned, always looking outwards, ever alert. “Except we all can’t just live in the moment. Some of us have to prepare for any eventuality.”
“Cody, that’s not what I meant, of course I am mindful of the future, and I am prepared.”
The pair stood in the empty room. He lowered his side arm, holstered it, but left a hand resting on the grip. General Kenobi swore there were no beings nearby, but the General Skywalker and Quinlan still searched. So far the post was empty, any signs of the Separatists long scrubbed from the area. If there ever had been any.
“You seem uneasy.”
“I don’t like traps.”
“This isn’t a trap, I feel it’s more of a distraction. But from what?”
He had no answer, but Cody felt it wasn’t a question that General Kenobi wanted him to answer. Wasn’t that their whole existence? Questions without spoken answers. They were like the dust on the benches of the abandoned room, particles without meaning. He stared from behind his mask at the Jedi.
“Just take it off,” General Kenobi ordered.
He could be so offensive and he knew better than to order. His bucket was not a hat to put on and off when the mood took him. It was part of him, a necessity, more than that, it meant security and decency. It would be like asking him to take off his pants and walk around.
General Kenobi smiled at him.
***
…Many, many years later…
Looking at the house that he had been directed to Cody paused. This could not possibly be correct. Its brilliant white domes were small but still domes, still fine architecture against the iron red of the Tatooine desert rocks. Like a mansion almost.
He moved into the shade of a wall and an eiobe poked its head over, curious of the rare visitor. A fringe of orange glass beads clicked and bobbed around its tiny head, keeping the biting insects out of its eyes. If an animal new he was here surely he knew. Should he wait or knock?
He felt again for the thousandth time that he was not normal, not just a regular being wandering the world. He was uneasy and under prepared. The civilian clothes felt rough and too loose. It touched in different places as he moved, not snug and fitted and heavy. He missed the weight of the armor the most. That and the adjustment of the weather, or sweat, or knowing a signature was nearby, the dark seemed so much darker without being able to see the glowing light of heated beings. He missed being able to talk to everyone. It was lonely without the thread of communication between brothers.
Cody straightened, it was better to fight on and face the obstacle that stand and wait for an attack. He looked around and listened and breathed, then put his hand on his side arm under his long robe. If this wasn’t the place, better to be prepared.
The arched door to the building gave nothing away. No hidden symbol, no obvious answer to the building’s owner. He knocked firmly and waited. And waited. And raised his hand to knock again, but it opened and he turned to face him.
His hand was on his saber. Looking older, a little threadbare, blue eyes cautious.
They stared each with their hands on their weapons, frozen into place.
He cleared his throat. “General…” he managed to say before his voice cracked to a hiss and he dropped his hand, opening both of them wide, palms up. A show of submission.
He knew he had changed, the aging process over the last six years had been more like twelve and felt like twenty. His hair, what was left, had whitened, his face sagged, skin that once sat flush on muscle and bone seemed to bunch and wrinkle. He didn’t even have his bucket to hide behind.
***
“I watch him.” Kenobi motioned to a boy, dressed in white and blonde, too blonde for life in the desert. A woman stepped out behind the lad and shoved a wide brimmed hat on his head. He accepted the intrusion stoically and continued to play with a toy ship. It was tied to a string that he dragged through the hardened dirt outside the front door. Whipping back and forth the ship skidded and skipped, then lurched into the woman’s leg as she inspected some machinery.
He’s my last assignment from Master Yoda. “He’s very funny, I’ve seen him run away from his aunt, and jump off rocks as tall as a man, and he has a little scooter thing he rides at night when it’s cooler. But I don’t really talk to him. I don’t think I’m suited to training, especially after,” he put his hand on his knee and tensed, “everything that happened. Sometimes I wonder if everything would have been different if Qui-Gon didn’t accept me when I was thirteen. I could have gone into the corps and been a farmer or a mechanic. It might have been better for the whole galaxy.”
“It would have all happened one way or the other. Do you think you’re so special that you were the cog that created the whole saga? I think you have done more good than bad.”
They watched the boy find out a stick he had hidden and tie the string to it. He couldn’t quite get the knots tied and the woman showed him, she put a kind hand on the boys shoulder and turned back to her machine.
The General squinted in the ever brightening sun as he watched the scene of domestic life. “What happened to our childhood? I was in the temple learning how to meditate and negotiate at his age.”
“What childhood?”
“Exactly. Even if I hadn’t been chosen, all those years training, it didn’t leave much time for play. And you Cody…” He shook his head. “What childhood,” he repeated.
Cody turned back to the desert and leaned against the rock. They were both in the shadow, a dark, jagged circle of shade. Two men, leaning on rocks.
“That’s me caught up. I watch him, Luke, I meditate and study a little and work. For years and years. I wanted you to come, but I didn’t think you would, or indeed could.”
“Did you think, if I did come, that I’d have to kill you?”
“I imagined I could do something, that we could work it out.”
Cody rolled up a pant leg, folding the material above his boot neatly. In deep blue ink a tattoo was neatly set onto his slightly sand speckled brown calf. It read in Mandalorian:
Live for the Moment
“I got that two years after everything. After a while our minds cleared. It seemed even clone brains can overcome if given enough time. You were always one for the present.”
Kenobi smiled, a hand unwrapped from inside his robe, a finger extended. He traced the writing a slow touch on desert warmed skin. “You got it for me?”
It felt obscenely personal, so much so, it made him uneasy, but a finger turned to a hand, a firm brushing on still well defined muscles. His head moved closer, they gazed at each other, eyes expressing so much that voices couldn’t. He pulled the knee into his own and leaned over his reclined face to kiss.
“It is my worst fault, always has been. To think too much about what might happen, what could have been. Master Qui-Gon would tell me to be mindful of the living Force, when I raced towards the future always at the expense of the here and now.”
“I thought the opposite General. You were always so present it made me mad. I thought we were always going to get ambushed or shot down for lack of preparation.”
He grinned again. Always one for happiness and sly jest.
He’d missed that. The soft beard, the shy smile and urgent hands. They relaxed into their embrace and the General pulled him closer, their arms entwined, breath sharp. His smell had changed, from the soap the temple used to wash clothes to an earthy scent. If Cody didn’t know any better he felt he smelled a little like ale, but he tasted the same. So sweet.
For once in their lives nobody would be here to interrupt them, or watch, or judge. He wondered if he still kept up the Jedi code? Did the attachment have to be curtailed, shut away and restricted to sex stripped of any emotion deeper than enjoyment?
He could accept that. Cody would take anything.
When the sun reached their necks they knew they had to move or be burnt to a crisp. Kenobi stood and held out his hand to help, but Cody pushed himself up. He was not so ancient that he needed that. Although he would not be wanting to sit on the ground again anytime soon, his hips ached and back. Yet the pain made him double his effort to stand straight, and to demonstrate his strength.
The General rolled his eyes at his efforts and folded his arms back into his robe, hood pulled up. He glanced again at the moisture farm and they walked, stepping from shrinking shadow to shadow.
He fussed over his docile eopie when he arrived home and Cody went inside gratefully. He drank thirstily from the pot of clean water and wiped the sweat from his face. The walk in the heat had been tiring; he frowned remembering he used to be able to travel twice as far with armor and rifles. He was getting as bad as a motherborn.
After taking his own drink Kenobi shrugged off his outer robe and comfortably took out some bread and dried meat, olives and dried jorgan fruit. Put it all on a large rough-hewn plate and motioned Cody to the sitting area.
“Not much,” he admitted.
“Better than rations,” they both said at once.
The smile, the teeth. Cody sat on the couch and he fussed a little, brought out some of the ale Cody had smelt on him. Then surprisingly, he took a pillow and sat on the floor, leaning against Cody’s leg. His temple momentarily pressed against his thigh.
They ate and drank, it was dream like. They were alive, they were free. The sudden freedom leaving them confused and emotional. For so long, their entire lives, they had been tools of war and bound by duty. Then the loneliness had begun. Now what?
Kenobi turned to kneel before him and they kissed again, his beard brushing on Cody’s skin like manna from the universe.
“I’m afraid it’s all terribly domestic here.”
The General undid his shirt, every tie and every clasp.