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He wakes to a peculiar pattern of knocks – bangs, really – on the door. It’s Anakin, of course.
One too many near-misses with the Force or a lightsaber upon being unexpectedly woken had resulted in them working out a code to use when waking each other.
Anakin is bothering him at a completely unreasonable hour, and he attempts to tell him so, but it appears that he has once again turned himself into a state of being not unlike a liquid and so his protest is mostly muffled by his riduur’s shoulder.
He feels Cody startle awake only seconds later, sitting upright. Obi-Wan grumbles, eyes still firmly closed, as he is abandoned to the blankets.
“Fives!” Anakin is almost-shouting.
Obi-Wan throws something at him with the Force; probably a shoe, he can’t tell exactly. Anakin bats it aside. “I’m not handling it this time.”
“We have to stop it from happening again! And Echo, oh Force, and Umbara, and –”
“Shut up, Anakin.” Obi-Wan grudgingly opens an eye to see Rex hovering behind Anakin, eyes wide with concern and nervousness, and Cody is still sitting on the edge of their bed and he can feel the strange mix of emotions he doesn’t have time to figure out but they’re not good ones pouring off of him. “You’re scaring Cody.”
Anakin snaps his mouth shut and backs up a little, looking sheepish. He steps on Rex’s foot, but Rex doesn’t give him grief about it, and that’s just weird.
At least Anakin still remembers the rules Obi-Wan laid down ages ago when they kept getting assigned to joint missions – nobody gets flamethrowers without his direct approval, nobody is allowed to pick fights with the medics, nobody gets more than two stims a day, Rex is to be asked, as circumstances allow, before being thrown, dropped, caught, flung, or otherwise manipulated across space with the Force, and Anakin is not to upset Cody.
Obi-Wan closes his eye again and sighs. “We already know about the chips, so there’s no reason for Fives to get shot, and we won’t be going to the Citadel, so Echo will be fine.”
“But they’re not here!” Anakin says in a low wail. “Rex doesn’t even know who they are! They’re still in training or something and we have to turn around and go get them!”
“Fine.”
“We can’t just let – what?”
“I said fine. Let’s go. Figure out where they are based on how old they are and let’s go. But do it somewhere else. Go bother Padmé. I’m tired.”
Anakin and Rex leave their room to blissful silence. Unfortunately, Cody also leaves a few moments later. Obi-Wan spares a thought to worry that he’s somehow upset him, since he didn’t say goodbye, but then he’s mostly asleep already again anyway and maybe he just didn’t hear it.
~
Rex is not having a good day.
His General had woken him up only a few hours after he’d finally gotten to sleep, and of course he’d had to get up and follow him around as he tore through the ship looking for something he kept not naming.
Then, finally, Skywalker had deigned to tell him what it was he was looking for, and it turned out to be some of his brothers that he didn’t even know. Fives, Echo – he’d never heard those names before. And Skywalker wasn’t telling him their ident numbers, so he had no idea where to tell him to look for them.
Rex was almost asleep on his feet by the time his General had grabbed him by the shoulders, stared deeply and with some creepily intense affection into his eyes, and said “I know! We’ll ask Obi-Wan. Where’s Cody’s room?”
And that had led to them finding General Kenobi in Cody’s room, in Cody’s bunk, and wrapped around Cody himself like a particularly persistent octopus.
Cody had looked . . . slightly embarrassed when they had woken him, but mostly blank. Rex knew that blank look.
Cody was scared.
Whether it was of letting his rather adorable crush on his General take the encouragement it was suddenly being offered in abundance, or of what his General would ask of him, Rex doesn’t know.
All he can do is follow his General around, try to keep him happy, and try to keep them all alive.
They end up in the ship’s briefing room, where General Skywalker pulls up a plan of the area around Kamino and starts muttering to himself. It appears that they will be turning around and heading for one of the outposts on the moons around their home planet.
Going right back into Republic space.
Cody stands beside him and Rex tries to be encouraging, but they’re so confused and tired and uneasy from all this sudden change that really all they can do is stand and watch Skywalker draw up some kind of battle plan with surprising speed. Whatever happened to him to change him, he’s improved his skills in leading a large group a lot.
General Kenobi slouches in a few minutes later, eyes firmly half-closed, wearing his own outer robes over a spare set of Cody’s blacks that are too long for him. The cuffs of the shirt and trousers have been rolled up by an obviously practiced hand.
Rex feels his brother flinch beside him and a small aggrieved noise. He can’t even find the heart to tease him.
Then Kenobi comes to a stop just in front of them and leans back into Cody’s chest. Cody automatically puts out his hands to keep the man from falling over and Rex can feel his despair as Kenobi just hangs there, arms supported by his Commander’s under them, his head tucked with ease into the shoulder groove of his armor. He rubs a hand over his eyes and squints at the map, beginning to pick apart Skywalker’s strategy under his breath.
“What’s your problems with it, Rex?”
Rex snaps to attention when Skywalker addresses him, and only then realizes what he actually said.
It is not a good day.
Honestly, if not for the fact that all three of them can speak the vod’e language with careless fluency, Rex would probably have drugged them and brought them in on suspicion of being spies or impostors hours before.
But they can speak it.
Rex straightens his spine and prays he’s not making a mistake in blindly trusting his apparent future self.
“You may be used to us, but we barely know you. You trust us to catch you when you fall but we haven’t built that kind of trust in you. Honestly, sir, you’re scaring us. What do you want from us?”
Skywalker lifts his head from the map and stares at him. “What?”
“We’re trusting you to keep us from being caught and killed for desertion. We’re not trusting you with our hearts.”
Skywalker’s face goes from blank confusion to hurt to horrified realization. He abandons the map to dart over and snatch Kenobi out of Cody’s arms.
Both of them flinch back at his sudden move, but he doesn’t do anything other than yank Kenobi away and prop him up against the holotable.
“Anakin,” Kenobi grumbles, still half-asleep.
“They’re not ours, Obi-Wan,” Skywalker hisses into his ear. “They’re the – the shiny versions of themselves. They don’t know us. They don’t remember. None of it happened to them.”
“Oh,” Kenobi says, and it’s soft and hurt and Rex feels sorry for him despite his total lack of comprehension on what his life has suddenly become.
He straightens up with an effort and directs the full force of his I’m Really Very Sorry Jedi Eyes on Cody, who flinches again.
“My apologies, Co – Commander. I forgot where – when –” Kenobi sighs and rubs his eyes again. “Fuck it, I need more sleep before I deal with this. I’m going back to bed, Anakin, don’t blow anything up, let Padmé look over your plans before you do anything. I mean it. Cody, I’m so sorry for making you uncomfortable and I understand if you don’t want to be near me now. Rex, don’t be afraid to tell Anakin when he’s being stupid, he won’t hurt you or anyone else because of it, he was a slave too, you know, he understands.”
He heads out of the door considerably faster than he came in, smacking into the doorframe and apologizing to it on the way out.
Skywalker stares at them. “Uh. Yeah. So. Um. Fives and Echo are my friends. Were my friends? And they were part of Torrent but they’re not here yet, so I’d really like to go get them before they get killed. They’re here. I think.” He points to the outpost on Rishi.
“They’ll be shinies, if they’re assigned there,” Rex says cautiously.
Skywalker nods. “So?”
“They won’t be able to do what you remember from them . . .”
“I don’t care! They’re my friends, Rex. Like you and everyone else here,” he says, so passionately that for a moment as Rex is caught in the full force of Skywalker’s smile, he believes it.
Then a wave of reality comes back in. Can they really be friends with their Generals?
Well, both of them are certainly acting like they were.
Rex decides to make another leap of faith.
“I don’t really know you, sir, but if you would like to be my friend, I would like to be yours.”
Anakin beams at him and it’s like a star going supernova. Then he bounces over and envelops Rex in a hug.
“I never told you how much I appreciate you before,” he says. “I do, Rex. Really. I’d be dead so many times over if it wasn’t for you. You pretty much taught me everything I know about being a general. I’m not ever going to hurt you or any of the vod. Not on purpose, anyway. I know I’ve got a stupid temper.”
He lets go and steps back, still grinning.
“And General Kenobi?” Rex says, a little more sharply than he means too, but Cody is still blank-faced and his hands are shaking slightly.
“Obi-Wan is – “ Anakin makes a strange face, apparently deep in thought. “I’ve got Padmé, right? Senator Amidala. Well, uh, you’re his Padmé.” He gestures awkwardly to Cody. “I wasn’t really paying attention while you guys were getting closer, but by the end of it all, you were comfortable enough with him to tell me I was grounded a few times because you were my dad, so. Uh. There’s that. And Obi-Wan’s really sleep-deprived right now and he always goes a bit weird when that happens so he honestly just forgot that you aren’t married yet.”
Cody makes a panicked squeak.
“No, no, it’s not like that,” Anakin says quickly. “Fuck, I’m messing this all up. You’re the same, both of you, he wouldn’t ever make you do anything you didn’t want to. Like, he sensed you were having a bad dream or something through your bond so he just got up and sleepwalked in to be with you. That’s all he was doing today. He’s not ever going to make you do anything.”
“I think we need to talk about this,” Rex says, grabbing Cody’s upper arm and getting even more worried when he doesn’t push him away, but instead follows his lead. “We need to have some time to think, General.”
“Okay, “ Anakin says, looking worried. “I’ll strategize with Padmé, but we won’t finalize anything without your input.”
Rex drags Cody out and down the hallways to his room, where he sits his brother on his bed and makes him do breathing exercises.
Anakin goes to bother Padmé.