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Obi-Wan waits until he’s himself again to return to his ship and his men.
He’d spent a handful of days as the bounty hunter Rako Hardeen—hard, grueling days on the run, with no one to trust or turn to. Uncomfortable in his own skin, unfamiliar with the shape of his own face, surprising himself with his reflection. It had been fun at first—play-acting, outsmarting Moralo Eval and Cad Bane, staying alive by his wits alone. But with every lie and every death, it had turned more and more sour. Now, his own face restored and a bristle of chestnut stubble on his head and his jaw, he can finally let go of Hardeen: his narrow motivations, his criminal’s paranoia, and his greed.
It was a relief to shrug him off. To go back to being Obi-Wan Kenobi, Jedi Knight, High General of the Republic, commander of one half of the Open Circle Fleet. To be good again. It meant not having to mistrust everyone around you. Obi-Wan feels it’s underrated, being good.
Rumour is the currency of rank and file soldiers in port. So Obi-Wan had thought that rumour would have carried news of his resurrection up to the Negotiator, his cruiser, where it hangs above Coruscant like a smaller city in the sky. But by the time he steps aboard, hooded, cloaked, and anonymous, Obi-Wan has realised he was wrong. The personnel he passes startle to attention when they see that he’s a Jedi, but there’s no recognition. They don’t know who he is. They’re not expecting Obi-Wan Kenobi to return—they’re expecting a new High General.
The secret of his own identity gives Obi-Wan a delicious thrill of excitement. It’s an unfamiliar serendipity to be the bearer of good news for once.
The starboard bridge—the nerve centre of a Jedi cruiser—is busy with personnel engaged in the work of running an army. Clones in white plastoid take orders, and march smartly out to action them. Clones in uniform greys hurry from console to console. Here and there, there are non-clone personnel: different faces, different complexions.
A star chart, shimmering blue, rotates slowly above the holotable in the middle of it all. In front of the chart stand Sergeant Boil and Commander Cody, deep in conversation.
In the moment after Obi-Wan steps through the blast doors onto the bridge, all the chatter stutters to a halt. Boil collects himself enough to snap out, "Commander on deck!" Almost as one, the troops on the bridge straighten to attention.
Correct as they are, Obi-Wan can sense their eyes on him—assessing, bewildered. They would have been expecting a new general. In this tense moment, they’re waiting to see who the Jedi Council has assigned them.
Smiling, Obi-Wan lifts the hood from his head.
A ripple of shock flies through the bridge. Boil takes a step back, mouth falling open. And Cody—unflappable Cody, whom Obi-Wan had seen punch General Grievous in the face without a moment’s hesitation—drops his helmet.
The emotion that flares out from Cody is like a shockwave from a dying star: heart-stopping shock and a nauseous disbelief. Into the silence on the bridge, Cody says, without taking his eyes from Obi-Wan, "Sergeant, I think I need to go to the medbay."
Obi-Wan brings a hand to his chin, not entirely unselfconsciously. "Do I really look that bad?"
In the next moment, all procedure is forgotten as the bridge erupts. Obi-Wan is surrounded, clones whacking him on the back, grinning into his face, asking question after question—and though normally he’d call everyone back to some semblance of formality he thinks just this once he can let himself have the moment; just this once he can let himself be buoyed up by the clamour and the delight. He had been dead, after all.
But on the edge of the celebration, Obi-Wan can still sense Cody—his Force signature unmistakeable to Obi-Wan after all their time beside one another—and he feels like a stormcloud on the horizon, all roiling confusion and distress. So he says, loud enough to be heard, "It’s good to be back. I promise, I’ll explain everything to you all in good time–" He turns to fix Cody with a glance, "–but first of all, Commander, may I have a minute of your time?"
"General," Cody says, and it comes out more of a croak.
There’s nowhere truly private on a starship—not even one as big as the Negotiator. But they go forward, to where the wide viewscreen shows the glittering lights of Coruscant below them, its curved horizon fading up into black, busy with air traffic, and the officers—with a glance at each other—have the grace to quietly leave them the bridge.
When Obi-Wan turns to him, Cody is standing at attention, eyes fixed somewhere over Obi-Wan’s left shoulder.
"Cody," Obi-Wan says, "At ease."
Cody lets go the tension in his body—and then, as if that were all that had been holding him together, his knees go from underneath him and he stumbles forward. It’s only because of Obi-Wan’s Jedi reflexes that he manages to catch Cody by the shoulders.
He eases Cody to the floor, and puts a hand on the back of his neck to push his head down. "Head between your knees, commander," he says. "And keep it there. That’s an order."
Leaning his elbows heavily on his knees, Cody keeps his head down. "Don’t need to order me, General," he manages.
On one knee beside him, Obi-Wan says, "My, my. If this is the welcome I get when I come back, remind me never to fake my own death again."
Cody shudders, something that might be a laugh if it weren’t so choked. Up close, Obi-Wan’s usually stoic commander is wide open in the Force, radiating feelings too complex to put a name to. Obi-Wan puts a hand on his pauldron. "Cody," he says, "are you all right?"
Cody lifts his head. Close up, with the light of Coruscant’s evening sun on his face, he looks awful. Obi-Wan has never seen Cody so pale, and there are deep shadows under his eyes that hadn’t been there before. Even so, the commander musters a businesslike edge to his voice when he says, "Sorry, General. Don’t know what came over me."
"You’re exhausted," Obi-Wan says, and it isn’t a question. Now he sees it, he can feel it too, a tiredness so profound it’s like carrying a weight on his shoulders. He and Cody had been used to keeping long hours, but this is something more: a powerful admixture of exhaustion and grief. "How long since you last slept?"
Cody sinks his face into a hand. "I don’t recall," he says.
"Cody," Obi-Wan says, his tone a gentle prod.
Cody’s shoulders sag. In a low voice, he says, "Not for 36 hours, sir. Couldn’t say I’ve had more than six hours in the last 72."
"You’re not on double shifts?" Obi-Wan asks, disbelief colouring his voice. "Not anchored over Coruscant. Did the Order–?"
"Not the Order," Cody interrupts, lifting his head. "It’s just–" He breaks off, begins again, somehow awkward. "I’m your marshal commander, sir."
And now, belatedly, the guilt catches Obi-Wan like a sucker punch. It takes his breath away.
He’s a high general of the Republic, and Cody is his marshal commander. In the event of Obi-Wan’s death, the commands which had been Obi-Wan’s became Cody’s alone. All that responsibility they’d shared, all those long hours, all the lives and deaths, and Obi-Wan had let it all fall onto Cody’s shoulders.
Cody goes on, "I had to get everything in order, sir. I had to make sure. And–"
"And?"
"And sleep wasn’t exactly forthcoming, sir." Cody’s face tightens. The bitter memory of grief and guilt rushes out from him, all at once, almost overwhelming Obi-Wan with its intensity. "You were dead. Shot by some no-account criminal on a Coruscant rooftop. If I had been there, if I’d been with you—well, that’s what I couldn’t get out of my head."
The image comes to Obi-Wan with such clarity he can’t be sure if it’s a real vision or just his own sudden guilt sharpening his imagination: Cody, sleepless and haunted at the helm of the Negotiator, the ship called for Obi-Wan’s halfway-serious nickname. Cody, dogged by the idea that he could have saved his general, driven to perfect all the responsibilities Obi-Wan had left him when he died.
The commander shakes his head, scuffs his thumb across his eyes. "They wouldn’t let me come to your funeral. Said it was a Jedi ceremony." Something like a smile—but not a smile—twists his face. "Captain Rex tried to get me to take some leave. Think he wanted me to come get drunk with him." He shrugs. "But I had too much to do."
Obi-Wan would have to remember to thank Rex for trying. "Oh, Cody," Obi-Wan breathes. "I’m sorry."
"Sir," Cody says, fixing his gaze on Obi-Wan with fresh acuity. "How is it you’re not dead?"
"I had to go undercover," Obi-Wan says, trying to remind himself how important it had been. "I had to become the criminal that killed me to infiltrate the bounty hunters planning to kidnap the Chancellor. My death was the key that unlocked the whole scheme."
Cody stands abruptly, and goes to the viewscreen. Obi-Wan follows. He can feel the fight between duty and distress coming off Cody like sparks. At last Cody grits out, "You could have told me, sir. You could have trusted me."
"My death needed to be convincing, and for that, no one could know. Only Master Yoda and Mace." It sounds like an excuse even to Obi-Wan’s ears.
Leaning heavily on the console, Cody turns his head to face Obi-Wan. His normally iron-clad composure is brittle now, Obi-Wan senses. Cody doesn’t need to say anything. He only meets Obi-Wan’s gaze with his own.
In that moment, Obi-Wan remembers every time he had ever been facing the enemy, and turned around—on a windswept battlefield, in the blasted ruins of an abandoned street, on the tilting bridge of a battleship—to find Cody at his back, without Obi-Wan even realising he was there.
Sighing, Obi-Wan says, "I’m sorry, Cody." He has to dig for the words—not the easy ones, but the right ones. "You’re my right hand. No general ever had a more dependable commander. I’d be hard pressed to fight this war without you." His hand goes to his beard, that old thoughtless habit. "But I didn’t think. I didn’t think about you, having to face this war without me."
Cody turns entirely from the viewscreen to face Obi-Wan. The Force around him, turbulent with emotion, seems to sharpen. The commander balances on the pivot of a decision.
Then Cody ducks his head, and the moment breaks like a cloudburst as he comes down on the side of honesty. "Losing you was like…" Cody begins, slowly, "Like you’re standing on the deck of a cruiser, in the middle of a battle, and everything is going just fine. And then—then a blast from a proton torpedo hits you amidships and takes out your systems, all in one go, and the gravity just… stops." He rakes a hand through his hair. "This thing, this invisible force you barely even thought about, it was holding you down and now it’s gone and you’re just—floating. Helpless." He looks up, face colouring. "Am I making any sense?"
Even while Obi-Wan’s grateful that Cody is choosing to tell him the truth, the pain of it—Obi-Wan’s oversight, Cody’s hurt—still cuts like a vibroblade. Obi-Wan lets his eyes close for the briefest of seconds, and, as it often does in difficult moments, Qui-Gon’s voice comes back to him.
Don’t let the emotion take hold of you—but let yourself feel it. Let it go, but not before you understand the lesson it’s trying to teach you.
He’s never too old to learn, it seems. And today’s lesson? Looked at from another angle, it’s a gift: Cody’s devotion, laid bare in front of him in this quiet and vulnerable moment.
Obi-Wan opens his eyes, and offers Cody a crooked smile. "Perfect sense." He reaches up to let his hand fall on Cody’s shoulder, where his armour meets his black undersuit, fingers curling at the nape of his neck to underscore his next words. "I can’t promise I’ll make it through this war alive. I can’t promise that for either of us. But I do promise that I won’t deceive you again."
Cody holds his gaze. Then he leans forward to press his forehead to Obi-Wan’s, in the way Obi-Wan has seen the clones do sometimes with their brothers. Their noses touch. Cody sighs a breath, and Obi-Wan does the same. Their breaths mingle, invisible, uniting them. It’s a gesture of something meaningful, a connection words can’t adequately express.
When Cody pulls back, the flush across his cheeks is deeper, but his soul is quieter. Obi-Wan grins. There’s something satisfying—maybe the rarity—about seeing his commander blush.
A cough brings them both back to their surroundings. Twenty paces away, all the privacy the bridge of a Republic cruiser can afford, there is a mob of clones attempting—and failing—to look busy. And beside Cody and Obi-Wan, awkwardly at attention, stands Sergeant Boil, his helmet back on, holding in one hand a cup of steaming tea and, in the other, Cody’s own helmet.
Despite all his training, Obi-Wan had failed to notice him approach. Now his attention is refocused, Boil’s helmet can’t hide the flutter of amusement wafting off him from Obi-Wan.
Nor, apparently, from Cody. "Sergeant," Cody’s growl is a warning.
"Tea for the general, sir," Boil says, managing a remarkably even tone. "Thought he might be in need of one, coming back from the dead and all."
Obi-Wan takes the cup gratefully. "Thank you, Boil."
"Didn’t I ask you to get me a cup of caf an hour ago?" Cody asks, narrowing his eyes.
From Boil’s uncomfortable shift, Obi-Wan deduces that the sergeant had taken the unilateral decision that his commander had had enough caf already. To save him from having to come up with an excuse, Obi-Wan says, "No need for that now. I can take over from here. You really ought to get some rest."
Glancing along the bridge, Cody sighs. He leans closer to Obi-Wan, and mutters, "You know I’m never going to live all this down, sir."
"Troops like to see a little humanity in their officers now and again," Obi-Wan says. "And I’m sure it’ll be overshadowed by the story of my miraculous resurrection in no time. Now," he says, placing a gently insistent hand on Cody’s back, "Go to bed. The war will keep for a few hours. And I’ll still be here when you wake up."
Trying to regain some composure, Cody snatches his helmet from Boil and jams it back on his head. Even so, the mingled confusion, exhaustion, and affection drifts off him, sweet as jogan cake. "Yes, sir." He shoots a quelling look at Boil, unmistakeable even through the helmet, and turns to leave the bridge.
Obi-Wan watches him go, a fondness uncurling inside him that was familiar, yet heretofore overlooked. Then he goes back to the holotable. "Sergeant, patch me through to the entire ship." He grins at the assembled bridge crew. "I’d best let everyone know I’m back."