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He knows he should get up, open his eyes, do something, be useful. Yet Obi-Wan just drifts in the dark haze, barely able to even twitch an eyelid or move a finger because he is so tired, and watches the lights of the Force signatures around him.
Most of the time they’re dim, like raindrops running down glass. There if he chooses to see them, but not obvious. He can feel the resonance of the Temple as well, the background hum of thousands of years of Force-sensitive life it has sheltered a steadiness in the back of his perception.
The brightest and warmest thing he has to hang on to is the presence of Cody that his mind is strangely reluctant to let go. By now he knows for sure that it’s not real. There’s no way anyone could spend so much time just wasting time beside him, even if they were injured, and he knows from the strength of the presence that his hallucinatory Cody is just fine.
For a while he was sure he sensed Anakin close to him, and that did make sense, because it didn’t stay too long. But then, when he dragged his consciousness closer to waking to listen to what Anakin was doing, he was talking to Mace Windu, of all people, in a friendly way about installing a zipline into the Council Room, of all things, and Obi-Wan sank back into unconsciousness with relief at not having to hold himself up anymore and also profound misery that he was apparently so lonely that he had resorted to hallucinating Anakin’s voice and the feel of his hand holding his own instead of just his Force presence.
That was an inexcusable weakness. He was a Jedi – he was a Sith – whatever the fuck he was now, he was a fully trained Force user who knew the dangers of letting emotion rule his actions.
Having your brain make up the Force presences and actual presences of the two people you loved most in the world just to give the illusion of them uselessly hanging around and not getting on with their lives so you didn’t feel as alone while uselessly hanging around yourself is terribly selfish and emotion-driven.
He feels a brief flicker of amusement that even when his brain was dreaming him up, Anakin was still talking nonsense to anyone that would listen, but then it flattens out into shame and worry. What if Anakin sees the memory of him thinking that he’d talk to Mace about something so undignified? It’d surely make him upset.
I’d be much better off if I could channel this power and connection to the Force into healing, Obi-Wan thinks miserably as he retreats back into the dark cocoon of his subconscious or whatever plane of existence his mind is currently on and tries to crawl inside the star that represents Cody. He only succeeds in haphazardly wrapping his mind around part of it, but it will have to do for now.
Anakin’s presence moves further away and eventually goes back to the dull light on the horizon that it had been before. It’s impossible to never see Anakin in the force because his presence is so blinding, but it’s dim and content.
Content without him. Well, Obi-Wan thinks, that’s a natural part of growing up. He’s got Padmé now to be his family. He doesn’t need me anymore.
That doesn’t make him feel better, and that makes him feel even more guilty, because he knows that it should.
Obi-Wan presses himself to Cody’s Force signature and tries to ignore everything else around him.
~
Cody startles awake with a strange pressure behind his eyes. He rubs at them, but it doesn’t go away.
Mace and Plo are standing over Obi-Wan, looking anxious. Cody watches them for a moment and then heaves himself to his feet, dragging his shirt over his head and only getting lost in the sleeves for a few seconds.
He feels a steadying hand on his back as he joins them and he leans into his buir, stifling a yawn. It feels like he’s been running instead of sleeping.
“What’s going on?” he mumbles.
Plo’s arm around his shoulders tightens. “We felt Obi-Wan’s Force presence almost vanish, so we came to check on him. He is alive, but we cannot feel him any longer.”
Cody blinks down at his General. Logically, in any other circumstances, those words would make him panic. But how can he panic when he can not only see his General breathing, but feel him as well?
He puts a hand out and touches his General’s wrist, just lightly with the tips of his fingers. He feels the pulse flutter under his skin and smiles absently, pulling his hand back.
“Do that again,” Mace says, straightening up from where he has been bending over Obi-Wan.
Puzzled, Cody does.
The two darjetii stare at each other, and then Plo carefully lets go of Cody. They stare at each other again.
“It’s not me,” Plo says.
Cody looks between them.
“We can feel his presence now, but only when you are touching him,” Mace says slowly. He frowns down at Obi-Wan for a long moment. Cody isn’t a fan of the way he’s looking at his General, as though he’s a problem that needs to be solved, but he knows that that’s the way Mace looks at most things, so he doesn’t outwardly react.
“Ad, may I glance into your mind?” Plo rumbles behind him, and Cody turns his head to look at him.
He trusts Plo, of course he does, after Jango went away Plo has become their buir. He knows that whatever Plo wants to do, it won’t hurt him.
He dips his head in acquiescence and moves over to his chair, which has been pushed back a little from beside the bed, probably by Anakin leaving. As soon as he loses contact with his General, the pressure spikes.
He obeys Plo’s calm instructions to lower his shields and let him in more on instinct from having done it before than from really hearing them. He feels Plo enter his mind, polite and careful and most of all warm, and mentally grants him access to anything he wants. It’s not like he knows exactly what’s in his head that might help his General, but he’s willing to trust his buir to know what to look for.
The pressure gets heavier as Plo prods gently at how he’s feeling right now, and Cody can sense, through him, the Force swirling around him. He looks at himself as Plo sees him and almost throws up his shields again in shock; he’s wrapped up in his General’s Force presence, so thick that his own spark is thoroughly drowned.
“Well,” Plo says dryly, calmly exiting his mind and gently nudging him into putting his shields up again. “I think we know where Obi-Wan’s Force presence has gone.”
Cody leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees and running his fingers through his hair in distraction. “What is that? How is that possible? Is it hurting him? I didn’t know . . .”
“It appears that Obi-Wan formed a Force bond with you some time ago. It’s quite healthy. And now he’s, ah, sort of using you as vacation home.”
Plo’s explanation does not help him.
“In less abstract terms, he’s hugging you,” Mace explains, still looking at Obi-Wan. “If his physical actions were lining up with his mental ones, he’d be sitting in your lap.”
Cody feels his face heat up and not for the first time is glad for his dark skin. He can hide more of his reactions than people with lighter skin, like Anakin. Then again, most people can hide more of their reactions than Anakin.
“Is it hurting him?” he asks again.
“It will, if he doesn’t let you go,” Mace answers, and Cody’s grateful for the straight answer. “Usually this kind of thing only happens to other Force-sensitives who know each other intimately, when one of them is dying. The dying one takes refuge in the other’s mind as a sort of reflex. It hasn’t happened in living memory of anyone here except possibly Yoda. I only know of it through the older healing texts in the library.”
Cody’s head shoots up and he stares at his General. “But he’s not dying! Is he?”
Mace shrugs helplessly. “Kix and I had literally just finished a checkup on him when you woke. Physically, he needs more time either in bed or in a bacta tank to finish up his healing, but he’s going to be just fine. I fear the problem is in his head.”
“How do we fix it?”
“In the texts, it was procedure to bring the dying body to the nearest medical facility and fix it up until it was no longer dying. Then the mind of the dying one would return to the body and they would come back to life.” Mace pinches the bridge of his nose. “It was considered a rather Dark technique, but not irretrievably damaging to either party if it was done with consent. If the body couldn’t be saved or healed, the dying one would either pass into the Force as a spirit or possess the body of their host, depending on their intentions.” He lowers his hand to give Cody a rueful smile. “I wrote a paper on the phenomenon when I was a padawan, that’s the only reason I know this much about it. It literally has not been seen for centuries. I don’t think Obi-Wan is even consciously aware of what he’s doing.”
Cody stares at his General some more. He knows that Obi-Wan would never hurt him. He doesn’t fear that. And you would willingly give him your body as his own, wouldn’t you? his mind whispers.
He knows he would without a second thought.
“But he isn’t dying,” he says slowly. “Why is he running away from himself if he isn’t dying?”
As soon as the words leave his mouth he knows they’re stupid. For as long as he’s known him, his General has been running away from himself.
Plo shrugs. Cody hadn’t even noticed that his buir had put a hand on his shoulder again, but now he leans against Plo’s torso and tries to think. He can deal with the pressure behind his eyes now that he knows it’s his General, but he’s terrified that he will just give up and go away and leave him.
“Physical contact between the two of you seemed to help,” Mace says slowly. “When you were touching his hand, his Force presence spread out over both of you. Perhaps if you could keep contact with him and then meditate, try to reach him in your mind and tell him to go back to his own body?”
He looks at Cody with an expression Cody can’t read.
“I can try,” he says.
“It’s not an order, Cody,” Mace says with more softness than he’s ever heard from him. “It’s not even close to an order. If you do this, it will probably be extremely personal for both of you. It’s likely that you will end up sharing every detail of your lives to each other and I mean every detail. He clearly trusts you, as he picked your head to escape to instead of Anakin’s or anyone else’s, but it will not be pleasant.”
“I want to try,” Cody says.
Plo squeezes his shoulder. “Meditate the same way I taught you and your brothers, ad’ika,” he says. “You will find him there.”
Cody nods.
“We should wait outside the room,” Mace decides. “Both to avoid distracting you and to keep everyone else from disturbing you as well. But first, I will tell the medics what’s going on.” He rises to his feet and Cody thinks he actually looks a little worried. “Ponds will have my head if I upset them again,” he mutters as he leaves.
Plo squeezes his shoulder again, and he feels a brush of worry love trust tenderness pride against his mind. “We’ll be there if you need us,” he says, and also leaves the room, fastening the blanket tent flap behind him.
Cody slowly gets to his feet and walks the few paces to the bed, looking down at his General. He’s no longer feverish, but he’s awfully pale and still.
He reaches out and brushes a lock of his hair off his forehead. Obi-Wan’s eyelids flutter just slightly.
Making up his mind that if he’s going to do this, he’s going to do it right, he pulls his shirt off again and climbs onto the bed, making himself comfortable. He ends up on his side facing the wall, his General cradled to his chest, holding his hand with both of his own and pillowing his head in the crook of his elbow. It’s the same way he’s held dozens of his brothers when they are injured and scared and need someone just to be there.
Their breathing syncs as Cody begins to search his mind.
~
Obi-Wan wakes up in the chair in his mindscape. It’s darker than it usually is, but apart from that everything looks perfectly normal. He sighs, settling back and getting comfortable. It’s nice to be back somewhere familiar instead of drifting in that darkness.
Even here, his selfish mind won’t stop; Cody is curled around him in the chair that is bigger than usual, his head on Obi-Wan’s shoulder and arms wrapped around his chest. He’s asleep.
Imaginary Cody looks a little tired, but not nearly as tense and worn as he had the last time he’d seen him, before Order 66 happened and he was flung into the battle on his own. Obi-Wan can only see part of his face, but his hands are soft and have no new scars, his hair is clean, and he’s only wearing the undersuit of his armor. He never does that unless he truly feels safe.
Obi-Wan presses his cheek to Cody’s hair and wishes with all his heart that this was real.
My subconscious seems very set on providing me with a version of him that returns my feelings, he thinks. I wonder why that’s so?
He sighs, his breath stirring the soft hair beneath his lips. It tickles and makes him almost smile. It’s so very selfish to retreat into fantasies like this. No wonder he was never a good Jedi. No wonder he is such a weak Sith.
Remembering the last time he’d dreamed of this, of waking up and finding Cody beside him, close and warm and reassuring, he cringes slightly. Even if it was only in his own head, he had still admitted far too many things to him that he should never have said.
Telling him just how lost he was at the prospect of having to find another job after being inevitably forced to leave the Order because of his ineptness? How weak. There were billions of people just like him who were not part of the Order and they got along just fine.
Admitting that the only reason he had got and kept his Council seat despite all his abject failures as a person and as a Jedi was because he could, against all odds, hold his own in a battle and they were in wartime? Pathetic, especially to someone as skilled and deadly as Cody was. And hinting that he would miss that privilege? He would actually die if he had ever said that in real life.
A Jedi was not supposed to be proud.
He gets more and more tense as details of his last dream-conversation come back. The worst part had probably been where he had clung to his Commander like some kind of needy idiot and all but begged him not to leave him for any reason. I’m a grown adult, he tells himself. I don’t need my hand held. What a failure I am. How disappointed Master Jinn must be in me, if he can see me. All the worst things he feared about me have come true. I should never have been trusted to train Anakin.
Oh, Force, he’d actually told Cody that he would not accept any other Commander after he was rightfully demoted and the 212th assigned a more competent general. How selfish and possessive of him. How insulting to Cody, to his past work, his capability, and to his very identity. He is so much more than just a side note to his general. It certainly wasn’t Obi-Wan who saved them all most of the time.
Obi-Wan realizes that he is struggling to breathe and has a death grip on Cody’s arms. He forces his hands to relax and immediately feels horrible because he’s probably given him bruises.
It’s still hard to breathe. Well, does he really deserve to?
It figures that he can’t even have an imaginary Cody without hurting him.
He wrenches himself as far away from him as he can, which isn’t really far at all since he’s practically sitting in the man’s lap, how awful, when he remembers practically ordering him to fight the Council if – when – he was removed from it.
What was I thinking? he wonders, and startles when something damp runs down his cheek.
He’s fighting for air and swiping miserably at the tears that won’t stop coming when Cody stirs and then raises his head, turning to look at him and then straightening up, forcing him upright and raising his hands to rest flat on Obi-Wan’s chest.
He shifts in mortification as Cody moves his weight and turns and gets his leg around him, so that now he is sitting in his Commander’s lap. He turns his head as far away as he can and closes his eyes, desperately trying to calm down and be presentable.
“Hey, hey, it’s all right now, cyar’ika,” imaginary Cody says, and his voice is soft and so very worried. “I’ve got you, ner’darjetii. You’re safe now. Shhhh.”
Obi-Wan snatches breaths where he can as he tries to get away, but Cody is tangled around him like an octopus and he can’t put his hands down anywhere for leverage without putting them somewhere on Cody. His hands hover stupidly above Cody’s thighs as his legs refuse to help him stand and Cody’s warm hands rub circles over his breastbone.
He hates his traitorous body as it relaxes under his touch and the warmth of his breath against his neck. His lungs steady out their rhythm, not into silence, but into regular and desperate sobs and he can only turn his face away from Cody’s and clench his jaw to keep the words that want to spill out inside.
A butterfly-light kiss ghosts over the skin below his ear, and Obi-Wan can’t stop the tiny squeak he makes. Cody laughs quietly and it echoes through his bones.
“That’s it,” he murmurs. “Come back to me, General. You’re safe here.”
“Commander,” Obi-Wan manages to rasp through a tight throat and stinging lungs. “I’m terribly sorry, please let me go, I just need a moment –” he breaks off on another sob and jerks forward against Cody’s hands.
He finds himself pulled back against the solid strength of his body and those hands drive hard into his chest, shocking him into breathing properly for the first time in what seems like hours. There’s no strength left in him to struggle and he goes limp against his commander, still an undignified mess who doesn’t deserve the worry and affection he can feel pouring off of him like an ocean.
Obi-Wan closes his eyes and tries to just focus on breathing as Cody holds him close, whispering phrases he doesn’t quite catch in his ear.
~
It had been much easier than he’d expected to find his General’s presence in his mind – how had he missed it when he woke up, he’d never know – but getting him to listen without freaking out was a different matter entirely.
Cody had woken up in a very neat and organized library, which he assumed was Obi-Wan’s mindscape. General Buir had taught him and all his brothers a little about how the jetii organized their minds, and he recognized the marks that he had been told to look for.
The strange vines on the walls between the bookshelves looked . . . out of place, somehow, but he had bigger problems than the decorations to think about. Namely, his General, who was currently almost sitting in his lap and having a panicked meltdown.
He lifts and tugs until they’re arranged more comfortably, with Obi-Wan’s back snug against his chest and both of his legs draped over one of his own. They’re twisted a little weirdly, but the chair is meant for sitting on sideways and it’s actually fairly comfortable.
It takes longer than he wants, but Obi-Wan finally seems to recognize him instead of continuing to struggle blindly against his arms. Really, it’s like holding an armful of eels.
He’s still turned away from him, staring out at the wall, but he’s no longer actively fighting his hold.
Cody finally gives into his first impulse and presses his lips lightly and briefly to his General’s warm skin just behind his ear. He makes the most startled squeaking noise Cody has ever heard, but he doesn’t sound unhappy, and Cody laughs from the sheer relief of it, once again whispering reassurances that he is safe, he is not alone, he is wanted. Then Obi-Wan speaks.
“Commander,” he says, and his voice is rough and broken and sounds like he’s been kriffing tortured, and Cody wants to lock him away in a place he’ll be happy and safe forever and never let him out, but at the same time he feels a jolt of hope down his spine because his General recognizes him, he’s not wandering in his mind anymore.
He doesn’t catch all of the next words as his General’s voice cracks and fades in and out, but he catches “ ‘bly sorry please – let – go – just – moment” before he chokes on another of the awful shuddering gasps and folds forward against his supporting arms like he’s suddenly lost all his bones.
Cody pulls him back up so he can breathe, and when he doesn’t, he hesitates for a moment and then punches him as hard as he can in the stomach. Obi-Wan jerks and makes a shocked whimper, but he starts breathing more regularly again and sags back against his chest.
“Sorry, sorry,” he says into his ear. “You need to breathe, cyar’ika, you’re safe here. That’s it. I’ve got you.”
“Cody?”
“Yes?”
His General tilts his chin up a little to look at him, tired bewilderment written all over his face. “Cody,” he says again, and his cold fingers brush over Cody’s own where they rest over his heart. He folds them into his own hands.
“I’ve got you, General.”
“You keep coming back,” he says. “Why do you keep coming back?”
Cody presses another kiss to the top of his head and smiles as Obi-Wan makes another soft noise of confusion. “Because you are my friend.”
“No, no. Why is it you? Why doesn’t my mind give me Anakin or Ahsoka or Satine or Master Qui-Gon or anyone else? Why is it always you?”
“I’m not your imagination, General. I’m real. You let me into your head.”
He shakes his head a little. “No, you can’t be real. Real Cody doesn’t have time to waste on me. You’ve been here for days and you haven’t left. I thought Anakin was with me before because he didn’t stay very long, but when I tried to wake up he wasn’t real either. I –”
Cody strokes his General’s hair as he turns his head into Cody’s shoulder as far as he can and still breathe.
“—weak, stupid, useless, arrogant, selfish,” Obi-Wan is sobbing. “Keep wanting. Can’t stop thinking you’re here, wasting your life waiting for me, not being free. Can’t stop wanting – wanting—”
“What is it you want, cyare?” Cody asks quietly after Obi-Wan doesn’t continue.
“This,” he says, snuffling unattractively into Cody’s shoulder, who winces and decides that after all, it’s only mental, and he can always do laundry later. “Want you. Want Anakin. Don’t like being alone all the time. Want touch. To be liked. Not to be a burden. Don’t ever want you to let go.”
“Then I won’t,” Cody says simply, and pets Obi-Wan’s hair some more. He seems to like it.
“I want my real Cody.”
“I am real, General. You let me into your mind.”
Obi-Wan shakes his head and clings tighter. “Not real. Want real Cody. Not more false promises. Got to – to be professional. Ask him what he wants. Doesn’t deserve just to be stuck with broken me.”
Cody sighs and decides to change tactics. “Then you need to wake up. Pull yourself back into your own mind and wake up. Then you can find the real Cody and talk to him.”
Obi-Wan sniffles and seems unconvinced.
“He’s waiting for you,” he continues, and then tries something else. He feels guilty about it, but he needs Obi-Wan to listen. “He has important things he needs you to sign off on, and it’s holding everything up since you’re asleep. Cody needs you to wake up.”
He feels more than sees Obi-Wan’s eyes flutter closed, and feels him breathe in and out, his brow furrowing.
“Why’m I not all the way in my mind?” he questions.
“Because you’re in Cody’s,” Cody answers simply. “You’re reaching out with the Force and trying to pull him to you."
Obi-Wan jerks upright, looking horrified. “I’m hurting him,” he says, with more animation than he has shown for anything else since Cody tranquilized him on board the ship, even during the fight with Sidious. “I can’t keep hurting him. I’ve got to stop. Got to—”
The room around him dims and thins. The weight of Obi-Wan on his lap begins to disappear, and Cody prepares himself to rise from his meditative state.
The last thing he notices is that some of the dried vines along the wall are peeling and drifting to the ground.
~
Obi-Wan wakes up.
He aches all over, his ribs and his leg most of all. His right hand and forearm feels like it’s on fire. His mouth is so dry he can’t even swallow and he feels filthy and covered in sweat.
Then his blurry eyes clear and he sees two achingly familiar brown hands wrapped around his own pale one, and realizes that the arm that hurts is no longer there.
He also realizes that Cody, real Cody, is there behind him, holding him propped up like a pillow to help take some of the pressure off the places that hurt, and his head is cradled in his arm.
“There you are,” says Cody’s voice from behind him, and he can feel it against his back.
Oh.
Cody isn’t wearing a shirt, and neither is he. He glances down at himself – that’s understandable, because he's covered in bandages and bacta pads -- but Cody appears to just be hanging out. In his hospital bed. Shirtless. Snuggled up to him.
Obi-Wan’s brain decides to take some time and not panic, because it’s too busy rebooting from being terribly confused instead.
“Yeah, you’re still pretty tired, aren’t you?” Cody continues quietly, pushing some of the limp greasy hair off of Obi-Wan’s face. He can only blink up at him, overwhelmed by the sudden rush of euphoria from simply being touched, feeling another person alive beside him. That it’s Cody only adds to the strange wonder of it.
Now that he thinks about it, nobody’s really held him since Anakin was about eleven.
Child Anakin liked hugs, but teenage Anakin was too . . . something for them, and it wasn’t like he could go around randomly asking his friends to hug him.
No, wait, his mind says distantly. That’s not true. Things started changing after the war started. It wasn’t like that.
It’s too hard to hold on to those thoughts, though, and they slide away from his mind.
“It’s going to be all right now, cyar’ika,” Cody says, and Obi-Wan uses all the energy he has to roll over and hide his face in his commander’s – well, it would have been in his shirt if he’d been wearing one, but as it is he has about a second to be embarrassed before he’s burying his face in Cody’s shoulder, his one working hand scrabbling for something to cling to, and making quiet distressed sounds both of confusion and of pain.
After that it’s a bit of a blur – he knows that Kix is there, and so is Plo, and a bunch of other people, and they’re poking and prodding and giving him painkillers and nudging gently at his mind until he lets them in to look around. It’s Mace who appears from somewhere and enters his mindscape, looks around at the destroyed library, the only space still somewhat normal the area around the chair that is his favorite, and traces the outlines of the vine wallpaper with his hands that burn at first but then soothe where they touch.
Obi-Wan doesn’t remember deciding to put wallpaper in his library. Hadn’t it always been stone?
Through it all, Cody is a steady presence, reassuring him when he flinches away from the medics’ hands and holding him when the open wounds in his mind make him almost bite through his tongue in an effort not to make a sound.
When it’s all over he feels better; cleaner and the drugs have started to work, so the pain in his arm feels like it’s just hovering near the ceiling and his leg and ribs are taking a nap.
Cody is still there, sitting up at the foot of the bed. He’s still holding his hand.
“Got to tell you,” Obi-Wan says, straightening up as much as he can and attempting to look in control and professional. “Got to tell you something. Cody. Commander.”
“Yes?”
“You –” Obi-Wan stops. He sighs. “You’re a person.”
“Yes, General.”
“Got money and skills. War’s over. Sith’s dead. Go where you want, yeah?”
Cody smiles at him. “I have.”
Obi-Wan ponders this for a while. “Can’t have,” he decides. “Someone stole your armor. And your shirt.”
“It’s over there,” he says, nodding to a corner Obi-Wan can’t see.
“Why?”
“Because I took it off.”
“Why?”
“Because I wanted to help you be comfortable.”
Obi-Wan frowns. “I like your armor. Keeps you safe. What if you get shot at? No Force. No armor.” He feels disturbingly upset by this and tightens his fingers around his. “You’re not allowed to die. You’re a person but I’m telling you this. Not allowed.”
“Nobody’s going to shoot at us.”
“How do you know?”
Cody nods at the wall – huh, it’s not a wall, it’s just a blanket. “Because Kix and Helix are just on the other side of the curtain. They’ll kick anyone’s ass if they try to get you out of medical before they clear you.”
That makes total sense, Obi-Wan decides. He beams happily at Cody. He’s so lucky to have such a smart friend. “I love you, you know?”
Cody makes a weird face, but he says, “I was sort of suspecting that, yes.”
“You’re, like, my favorite person ever. Even more than Anakin. You don’t eat worms. Or crash ships. I don’t like it when you glare at me when I fuck up but I can live with that.”
Cody’s covering his mouth with his hand, but his eyes are smiling. “General, maybe you should stop talking? I can see Fives out there with a holorecorder and I think you’d be really embarrassed about this later.”
Obi-Wan frowns. “Nonsense. You’re my favorite. I want to tell everyone.”
“If I lay down again, will you go to sleep?”
He considers this. Cody is warm. Yes. “Maybe.” That’s it. Keep him guessing. That’s why people call him a negotiator, after all.
“Hnnn,” he says, wriggling around to get comfortable. Those painkillers were really miraculous. He finds the most comfortable spot on Cody’s shoulder for his head and yawns. “My Cody. Yes.”
“Yes,” Cody agrees, and everything goes dark.
It’s probably because he’s closed his eyes.
~
“I’ve discovered the source of the trouble,” Mace says, standing outside the room. Cody is standing half and half out of it, keeping an eye on his sleeping General.
“What is it?” Anakin says, fiddling nervously with the arm he has brought with him on his latest trip to check on Obi-Wan.
“Broken Force bond,” he answers succinctly. “It looks like Sidious somehow took advantage of Qui-Gon dying suddenly without severing their training bond to insert himself into the empty space, and kept himself unnoticed. When he died, the backlash all rebounded onto Obi-Wan, as well as whatever emotions he was passing off on him as well.”
“That’s not good,” Luminara says, brow wrinkling as she frowns. “What can we do to help him?”
“Time and painkillers. Maybe a few of us can help him sort through his mindscape, get rid of those constructs.”
“Oh, have you tried that?”
Mace nods. “Yoda and I shared a meditation and found that it’s considerably easier to remove them from each other’s minds than it is to remove them from our own.”
“No wonder it’s knocked him out for so long,” Aayla mutters from across the room where she has been checking on Shaak, who’s asleep again. “Kriff, that must feel awful. I can’t even imagine.” She shudders. “Carrying a dying bond along this whole time, having it rotting from the inside, and then having it just yanked away with no warning.”
“No wonder he’s always been so averse to any kind of mental contact,” Anakin echoes. “He did meditate with me sometimes when I was little, but he stopped way sooner than most masters did with their padawans.” He bites his lip. “I thought it was because I had so much trouble concentrating and it was irritating him. It makes me want to learn how to raise the dead just so I can kill him again. Sidious,” he clarifies.
“We don’t need him running around again, Anakin,” Mace says, half-joking and half-serious. “Please don’t try to call him back just to have some revenge.” Anakin looks annoyed, but Mace continues, “We can get much better revenge by taking his idea for an empire and putting someone we want at the head of it.”
Anakin opens and closes his mouth a few times. “You want revenge?” he finally says.
“Shit, yes,” Mace responds emphatically. “Do you know how much paperwork that disgusting parasite of a sith-spawned bastard made for me in the last ten years? If I didn’t think the risk was too great I’d be summoning him back right alongside you and chaining him to a desk for the next century or so. Make him sign the fuckin’ paperwork until his hands fall off.” A slightly alarming dreamy expression is on his face.
“What do you mean, he doesn’t like mental contact?” Cody questions the rest of the room, bewildered.
“Most of us have friend-bonds, crechemate-bonds, we casually brush up against each other’s shields and share bits of memories and emotions as part of normal conversation,” Luminara explains. “Obi-Wan used to have a few of those, but around the time Qui-Gon died he sort of choked them off and didn’t form any new ones except his training bond with Anakin. He was always reserved, but it became even more pronounced.”
“But—”
Luminara looks at him curiously.
“He made one with me?” Cody says, a little unsure now that he’s correctly naming the . . . thing he’s had with his General since just a few weeks after they met. It was just, sometimes he could feel his directions even when he wasn’t there or talking to him. Sometimes he just knew where he could find the man, especially if one or the other of them was in trouble. He could tell what mood his General was is, how tired he was, if he needed something urgently. And he knew it worked both ways, because far too often Obi-Wan had shown up with exactly the right thing at the right time just after he’d been wishing for it.
Luminara’s eyes widen, and she glances at Mace and Anakin, still immersed in daydreaming about what they’d have liked to do to Sidious.
“I wonder if he was being prevented, then. Maybe Sidious could influence him to cut off bonds with other jetii, but he couldn’t see bonds with non-jetii? How intense was it?”
“Uh.” Cody thinks for a minute. “It was strongest when we were within normal communication distance, but even when he was a long way away I could always tell when he was in trouble. The only time I couldn’t feel him clearly was when he went to check out that signal from a few thousand years ago and they all disappeared for a few days. When we’re together, I can generally tell what mood he’s in, vaguely where he is, if he needs my help. Just little things like that. And he generally shows up if I think about him hard enough, so I’m fairly sure he can sense me too.”
Luminara’s eyebrows rise higher and higher as he talks. “That sounds like a full bond,” she says. “That’s about what I can sense from Barriss. When did he establish it with you? Did he ask?”
Cody shrugs. “A few weeks after we were assigned to him. And yes, he asked.”
She holds out her hands in apology. “I didn’t mean it like that, I’m sorry. I just meant, did it spontaneously form or did he deliberately form it.”
“Oh. Yes, I think it was deliberate. He said it would make it easier and safer for us to work together, and that it would be minimally invasive. And,” he hesitates. “We were made to help you. How could I refuse?”
“Do you want to break the bond? There are many ways to do it safely.”
“No!”
Luminara looks a little startled by the sharpness of his refusal.
“I want to keep it,” he says, giving the little humming presence in the back of his mind that is so uniquely Obi-Wan a gentle tug out of habit. “I like it.”
“Okay,” she says. “Okay. I just want you to know that if either of you wants out of it, it can be done.”
He nods. “But the reason I brought it up is, if Sidious was using you as containers for all the things he couldn’t afford to think about to keep his plans going, I think I know what he was giving to my General.”
Luminara tilts her head. “So far we’ve found pride, irritation, anger, and frustration.”
“I think he was pushing all his guilt into him. And maybe his . . . I don’t know how to describe it. Being uncomfortable with himself. Always thinking there was something he could be doing better.”
Her head drops. “Yes, that’s Obi-Wan. Even when we were initiates, he was always thinking he was never good enough. And Qui-Gon didn’t exactly help build his self-confidence, either.” She straightens. “I’m glad you told me that, Cody. I’ll inform the others and put it on the list we’re making. That’s very helpful.”
“You need to know. I’ve just been in his head. He’s not – It’s not a happy place.”
Luminara reaches out and clasps his shoulder briefly, and they stand together in silence.
The voices they’ve been ignoring get louder, and they look over at Mace and Anakin, who are still planning what they’d like to do to Sidious.
“I’m glad that General Skywalker is getting along with General Windu now, but it’s a little scary,” Cody says.
“Yes,” Luminara says. “Hopefully something will come up to distract them before they talk themselves into actually learning how to raise the dead.”
As if on cue, Rex bursts into the infirmary, towing Padmé behind him. She looks stubborn, he looks annoyed.
“Anakin!” he says, a pleading note in his voice. “Please tell Padmé that it’s far too dangerous for her to accept Chancellor Chuchi’s offer to become Empress!”
Anakin and Mace stop bickering mildly about whether putting Sidious in a lava field or in the desert and making him do paperwork would be worse and turn to stare at Padmé. She meets their gaze defiantly.
“I was Queen was I was fourteen,” she snaps. “I could do this. She’s right; the Republic is broken; the setup for the Empire is already there and we might as well use it!”
Cody shakes his head and retreats back into his General’s room. He can hear Kix and Luminara shooing the argument that’s beginning to boil over out into the hallway.
He sits on the side of the bed again and takes his hand in his own, nudging the feeling (the bond, he whispers to himself, and holds that new knowledge close) in his mind again and getting a sleepy flicker of hmm? in response.
“We’ve got you, cyare,” he says quietly. “They’ve worked out what’s hurting you and they’re going to help. They’re not angry. You’re not alone anymore. I’ve got you.”