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Two compression bandages for blaster bolts.
Five bacta patches for assorted cuts and burns in need of serious attention.
One abdomen shot in need of dire attention.
"You're dripping blood on the carpet."
"It looks better that way in my opinion, sir."
Obi-Wan looked up mid-seal, mid-silence, jerking the arm he was bacta-ing back together. His commander’s eyes were glazed and raw but tinged with laughter where he was slumped against the wall, shoulders dusted in ash.
“It- my apologies.” Obi-Wan’s hands grazed gently back to the bandage. “I just wouldn’t have taken you as one to find his sense of humor after nearly losing his arm.”
Cody huffed gingerly and the weight on Obi-Wan’s chest lifted, even if just a fraction. Low voices littered the dark around them.
“Today wasn’t your fault.”
Cody’s eyes were still just as raw, just as distant as Obi-Wan traced another wine-dark droplet making its way down his hip, slowly working its way into the previously plush carpet now crushed by plastoid and bodies. When Cody spoke, it was gentle from where he lay, the humor in his eyes gone; hesitant and soft.
“Do you remember Umbara, General?”
Obi-Wan thanked all his stars that his hands didn’t shake on the wrap that was still no closer to being finished.
“I remember going back to the barracks that night, alone. I didn’t understand. I wanted someone to pay for it. Me, you, Rex, General Skywalker, anyone. Someone had to- someone needed to pay. I was angry, gods so angry and I just couldn’t, didn’t understand, didn’t want to understand because that meant a possibility that it was my fault. Or your fault.”
Obi-Wan was exceptionally aware that his hands, like the air between them, had stilled, and that red on the carpet was still growing.
“I remember making it back, thinking that my bunkroom- it was so empty and it echoed. I couldn’t stay. I left, went for the halls to get away or throw up or- just, I don’t know, get out. And then I walked by your door.”
He could still taste the ash on his tongue.
He remembered Umbara.
Remembered the aftermath, of sinking, curling against the wall of the Umbaran barracks and for one precious minute in his life, allowing the facade to break and hot, angry, shameful grief to wash over him. It was the only time he would admit to himself that he understood the freedom of the dark side.
The hallways had been abandoned, the control room fully manned for the botched onslaught. He had presumed himself alone, so for a second precious minute curled against the wall, he allowed that rage, that grief, that hatred to mount into a guttural scream, echoing in his ears, shaking in his hands and turning the edges of his vision red with the blood of every body he had sent out to die at the hands of a brother.
It had went as quickly as it came. Face flushed with shame. A cold tingling in his hands to match the chill of the floor. A gasping, tears he hadn’t known were being shed drying rapidly in the recirculated air, eyes frantic, robes askew, alone with the ghosts in a bunkroom on Umbara. He had heard the footsteps in the hall, had frozen in fear of discovery, in fear of his state, had heard the steps hesitate outside the door, slide down the wall and become silent. They sat, this mystery person, in mutual grief and anguish and exhaustion and simmering anger projecting in the force with a ferocity startling, screaming in a way not unlike Obi-Wan’s.
Composure found itself a foreign concept for the second time in Obi-Wan’s life as Cody reached, finding his General’s face, his neck, the other hand his shoulder, his jaw and drew him close, forehead and hands touching gently, bandage forgotten for hesitant touches.
He was acutely aware of the tears this time; painfully, obviously aware of the path they traced through the ash and dirt and blood painting his face, as Cody hushed rough, just enough to hear, between gritted teeth and grittier tears.
“Not. Your. Fault.”
Heavier, between the weight of the bodies and the weight on his chest.
“Not your fault.”
Quieter, next to shallow breaths and gently intertwined hands, drifting ash and low voices.
“Not your fault.”
Into a soft stillness.
“It really does suit the carpet, doesn’t it?"
The quite broke, a low chuckle rumbling from deep within Cody’s chest, aching, tired humor lighting the amber in his eyes, the etched lines on his face that matched Obi-Wan’s own, vibrating through aligned legs, shoulders, hands, foreheads. The pressure hadn’t left Obi-Wan’s chest, was still an oppressive, ever-present weight he was certain he would die tethered to. Three words wouldn’t heal a present past, but for the first time since the beginning of the war, facing the weight seemed less burdensome.
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Te kyr