Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Cody doesn’t like his office. It’s not that it’s not a nice office. It’s very cushy, as Rex likes to point out when he visits. In fact, it’s bigger than his old office and quarters on The Negotiator combined. 

There’s a sleek coffee table framed by two plush couches that Cody has slept on more often that he’d like to admit. The desk is wide enough for all the never-ending piles of flimsy and datapads. There’s a top of the line caf machine against the back wall next to a secure locker for his weapons and armor that’s still painted gold. There’s even a window that spans the entire length of the eastern wall. 

The GAR barracks, or what is left of them, are a sprawling mess of office towers and residential compounds with all the amenities that a clone could ever need. It’s a jumble of repurposed warehouses, thrown together haphazardly after the War had ended. Most of it is underground, or what passes for underground on Coruscant where there never seemed to be any ground at all. But a select few of the buildings rose into the upper levels. Some of them even had natural light. Windows. 

Unfortunately, Cody can’t help but think, his office was nice enough to have one. 

Some of Cody’s brothers would kill for a window with a view of the cluttered Coruscanti skyline packed with a never ending field of skyscrapers painted with graffiti and advertisements for the Spotchka flavor of the week. Waxer loves to sit on the windowsill and just watch the assortment of speeders and starliners whizz by. Fox likes to rest on the furthest couch, with his back to the window, eyes closed, and just listen to the sounds of the city. The blaring sirens. The insistent horns. The screams and hollers of people in the streets below. Rex even comes by just to peer up at the sky, a would-be-stunning blue that’s muted by layers of smog. 

But Cody had turned his desk to face away from the window less than a week after he had been promoted. He had even gone so far as to replace the padded swivel chair with a straight back durasteel one from the mess so he would stop accidentally swinging around to face outside. 

It wasn’t that Cody didn’t like Coruscant. It wasn’t that he didn’t like the lights and noise and people. 

It was because of the way the sky looked just before dawn. The way the gray-blue lightens softly before the sun could rise and turn it harsh. The way that thin strip of pale light just along the horizon was the exact same shade as Kenobi’s eyes.

It was because of the way the flashing neon signs would catch in the corner of his vision and remind him of the blur of a lightsaber moving across the battlefield.

It was because of the way the haze would lift just enough on a clear day that Cody could see the silhouette of the Temple between the gaps of skyscrapers. 

Cody doesn’t like his office. But even with all of the influence and power he now holds as the Commander in Chief of the GAR, he can’t manage to get a new one. 

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Cody doesn’t have to look up to know exactly who’s standing in his doorway. He had heard his footsteps from all the way down the hall, and only one person in this building walked around like they owned the place.

“What do you want, kid?” He keeps tapping away on his datapad, typing up the last bit of a requisition form and forwarding it to his liaison in Chancellor Organa’s administration. 

When Cody does finally look up, he sees Commander Sprint leaning up against the doorframe with an air of nonchalance that Cody has only seen on someone that is entirely comfortable in their own skin. It’s an ease that he himself has never quite found. 

Sprint had taken up the mantle of leading the Coruscant Guard after Fox, Thire, and Thorn had been removed from active duty at the end of the war. Being so close to Palpatine, brainwashed and controlled by the Dark, had messed with them. Even after the War ended, and the months spent with the temple mind healers, none of them were quite ready, or able, to step back up to the plate. 

Sprint had been recommended for the position by Master Ti herself. Cody hadn’t liked it initially. He had protested loudly, in fact, that a shiny, who had graduated from the command track a month after the end of the War, had no business running the Guard. 

As it turned out, a fresh face, metaphorically speaking, was exactly what the New Republic had needed. Someone that had never been touched by the Sith Lord’s influence. Someone who still believed in the New Republic as it should be, as it was supposed to be. Someone willing to fight for a Senate that had only ever recognized them as sentient. Someone who had never been treated like a clone by the senators they were being ordered to protect. 

Sprint had settled into the position immediately, taking to it like a Quarren to water, but it had taken Cody much longer, years, to adjust to Sprint’s attitude and presence. But as rough as he might act to the kid, Cody can’t say that he still dislikes him. 

-

“Commander Sprint, reporting for duty, sir.” There’s a smooth uncalloused hand stuck out in Cody’s face. 

Cody takes it, absently noting the shiny’s strong grip. “Sprint?” Not the weirdest name Cody has ever heard from a brother, but it’s certainly up there.

“Yes sir.” Sprint’s smile is entirely self serving. It promises a sharp tongue and a quick wit that Cody is sure will be just as bad as Fox’s. He’s already dreading having to work with this kid. Not even ten years old and already full of himself. “The trainers were always making me run extra laps.”

Cody’s voice is dry and humorless, though he can’t help the way the corner of his lips twitches upwards. “I can’t imagine why.”

-

“Well hello to you too, Commander. I’ve brought you your new orders,” Sprint says, taking a step into the large office. 

Sprint is an absolute pain in Cody’s shebs. He isn’t technically part of the GAR which somehow puts him both above and below Cody depending on the day, and Sprint always takes advantage of every second he’s in charge. Like now. 

“Must be pretty bad if they’re sending me,” Cody notes with a hint of apprehension. Orders from the Senate never went well for him. After the fourth mission turned disaster, and no Jedi to back them up, Cody had stopped accepting errands from the Senate all together, even if it did keep his mind busy. “What mess have they gotten into now?”

Sprint gives his best politician’s smile and hands Cody the datapad as if it didn’t contain what was sure to be a four day headache.  

Cody flips through the mission summary quickly and then glances up to Sprint with a frown. “This is just a supply drop.” He glances back down to make sure he hasn’t missed anything. He hadn’t. “You sure you got the right one, kid?”

Sprint crosses his arms over his unarmored chest. “Yes, I got the right one, Commander. They want you to pick a team and lead the New Republic relief effort on Nal Hutta-” 

Cody doesn’t give him the chance to finish. “No.” He can’t believe this. This is exactly why he hated running errands for the Senate. 

Sprint doesn’t stop. He talks right over Cody’s interjection, waving a hand though the air. “And you’ll have to go through Nar Shaddaa first.” 

Cody barely refrains from groaning out loud, but his eye roll is enough to get his point across. He’ll be turning into Wolffe at this rate. “Absolutely not.” 

“It will be extremely dangerous so they wanted to send someone of a high enough profile that an ambitious pirate would ask for ransom instead of just killing you.” Sprint looks almost gleeful. As if giving Cody the benefits of his possible capture is the highlight of his day. It might be, actually, if the kid is stuck in his office as much as Fox was. Or maybe Sprint is just that sick in the head. Cody wouldn’t put it past him. 

Cody is a professional. He can, and will, contain himself, but he takes a moment to rub his thumb in circles over the top of the scar on his brow bone. The headache is already in full swing. 

“Why,” Cody begins, “is the Senate sending aid to the Hutts?” 

Cody never understood politics. Sure, he was good at it. He had to be. Especially working so closely with the famed Negotiator. Too often, missions were executed entirely within the halls of some important dignitary that Kenobi had been sent to schmooze. By the end of the War, Cody was as good at smiling and asking the right questions as he was at drawing battle strategies. Doesn’t mean he had to understand why. He had always been of the opinion that acting first and asking for forgiveness later was much easier. But if it means his brothers aren’t dying in droves, Cody would put on his dress uniform any day. 

This, however, does not sound like it’s going to avoid conflict, but stir up something awful instead. 

“Because the Hutts asked,” Sprint explains, moving around Cody’s desk to look out the window. It forces Cody to turn in his seat to look at him. Cody tries to not look out of the window himself but some things are unavoidable. It’s a bright clear day. The sky stretches for miles. Cody keeps his eyes fixed on Sprint’s back.

“Plenty of planets ask,” Cody points out. Sprint is avoiding the real answer. If Cody is going to send his men into dubiously allied territory, he at least wants to know the real reason.

“Yes, but not every planet has control of Hutt space or major trade routes.” Sprint turns to face Cody. He still has that irritating smirk on his face. “Come on, Commander.” He puts a hand on Cody's gold-painted pauldron, just below where a long-range antenna waits for a message on a frequency that's been silent for years. “It’s for the New Republic.”

Sprint doesn’t stumble on the word New, and Cody would bet anything that he doesn’t backtrack when he reads it on flimsi either. 

-

“Come on, Commander. It’s for the Republic!” Kenobi bumps their shoulders together, a bright smile on his face and a light in his eyes that Cody knows means nothing but trouble. 

His Jedi always takes the hard way. They can never approach the target head on. Instead, every new brilliant plan brings them through mud and slime, over cliffs and canyons, up trees and the side of a building. By the end of it, they’re covered in substances Cody didn’t want to think about. His armor has chafed in all the worst places. His blacks are soggy and damp.

But Cody follows. Through thick and thin. Always one step behind. Always covering their backs. Always at his General’s right hand. 

When they meet back up with General Skywalker, who takes one look at them, gags, and makes some quip about needing a shower, Kenobi settles down and relaxes now that their objective for the moment is complete. And when he laughs at Cody’s disgust --written so clearly in the Commander’s body language that he didn’t even need, or dare, to take off his helmet-- his eyes crinkle at the edges; his copper hair falls across his face. 

Somehow, covered in filth and scratched from underbrush and exhausted from days of fighting, Kenobi has never been more beautiful. 

-

Cody shrugs Sprint’s hand off his pauldron and turns back to the cursed datapad on his desk. 

“Do I have to put in an order for the supplies too?” Cody asks, already knowing the answer. He has to do everything around here himself.

Sprint laughs and moves towards the door. “Now you’re gettin’ it, Commander.” He swipes a handful of the sugar sweets that Cody keeps on the coffee table as he walks by. 

“Get out of my office, kid.” It’s redundant, as Sprint is already halfway out of the door, but it makes Cody feel a little better. 

When Cody is alone again, he lets his shoulders fall and rests his head in his hands on the desk. He’s getting too old for this osik. He’s sixteen. His knees pop when he stands and sleeping on the wrong side of his bunk, his bed, causes him to wake up with a crick in his neck that lasts for days. 

The war may be over, but life goes on. Cody just has to figure out exactly how he’s supposed to do that. 

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Cody knows he could wait to put in the ration order. The mission isn’t for a week and supply requests are usually filled within three days, but Cody also knows that if he waits too long the quartermaster of the Agricorps will decline his request out of pure spite. Sure the supplies would arrive on time and exactly where they were supposed to, but the rejected form would cause more paperwork for Cody and that was exactly the kind of petty move he would expect from his ori’vod. 

Cody decides to bite the bullet and punch in his personal access code for the Agricorps comm line. There’s no answer the first time. Cody grins, all teeth, and dials again. 

Fox picks up on the third ring. “What do you want?” His voice is flat and cuts with borderline hostility. 

Cody can tell Fox is in one of his moods just from the opening line, but he can’t help but push his buttons a little bit more. “How’s life as a farmer, vod?”

The sigh from Fox cuts static through the transmission but does nothing to dampen Cody’s satisfaction. “You ask that every time you call, and it never gets any funnier. Why can’t you just tell me what you want and leave me alone?” 

Cody needs to call Fox more often. Being responsible and stoic in front of subordinates all the time really cuts down on Cody’s opportunities to wind up his vode. “Because then I wouldn’t get the chance to hear you bitch at me about it.” Cody hopes Fox can hear how smug he is.

Fox doesn’t say anything in response. Cody wishes he had called through the hologram line just to see Fox’s expression. The disapproving glare and irritated twitch of his eyebrow. If Cody gets him really upset, there's the carefully controlled quirk to Fox’s lips that shows just how hard he’s trying not to laugh, or yell, or both. 

Cody gives in when he realizes he’s not going to get a rise out of Fox today. Too bad. There’s always tomorrow. “I need an order filled.”

“Now was that so hard to say, Kot’ika?”

Cody skillfully ignores the jab and starts reading off the long list of supplies needed for the massive relief effort of a densely populated moon and it’s parent planet. In Cody’s not-so-humble opinion, the Hutts don’t deserve a single crumb of what the New Republic is giving them, but unfortunately it’s not in his jurisdiction to tell those bleeding-heart senators that their plans are a load of banthashit.  

Fox is silent for a moment after Cody finishes and the distant sound of clicking is heard on the other side of the comm. “Is that all?”

“For now.” Cody sets aside the datapad. “But don’t be surprised if I get an update for you.” He settles back in his chair and stares up at the ceiling of his office. One of the ceiling tiles is starting to turn a brackish brown at the edge. He’ll need to put in a work order to get that fixed. 

“How’s living behind a desk?” 

Fox could always read Cody’s mind regardless of how far apart they are. Cody had never been able to sit still for long, even on Kamino. He always learned tactics best on a field instead of a classroom. During the War, he had usually done his paperwork while on patrol or in the mess. He was always moving, always doing something. These days the most action he sees is with whatever shiny is dumb enough to spar with him down in the training salles.

Cody huffs and rubs a hand over his eyes. “I’m enjoying it about as much as you did.” Which isn’t true at all. Fox had hated his job, but not because of the paperwork. He had hated working under Palpatine’s thumb, but the desk, the authority, the responsibility, the politics, it had all come so naturally to Fox. He had filled the position he had been thrust into with all the grace of someone who had been born for it, and he had. But Cody… 

Cody had been made for war. Not this. 

“We could always use the help out here,” Fox offers sincerely. Cody knows he could take it at any time. He could go out and actually work with his hands. He could shrug off the stress and the responsibilities of running the GAR. He could turn his back on every scrap of power he had fought tooth and nail for. He could set it all aside and fly off to Bandomeer to grow meiloorun. 

“I can’t. Some of us have better things to do than play in the dirt all day.” It’s intended to lighten the mood, but it’s closer to the truth than either of them want to acknowledge. Cody has a responsibility to the New Republic, to what’s left of the GAR, to his brothers.  

He had had a responsibility to the Jedi once too. To his Jedi. 

“Suit yourself.” Cody can hear the eye roll in Fox’s voice. “I’ll see you in a few days, vod’ika. Try not to get into too much trouble.” The comm clicks off. 

Cody is left in the dark quiet of his office. He sees his office more often than his own rooms in the barracks these days. The thrumming bass and pitched trills of Coruscanti nightlife filter up from the street below. The flashing lights and neon advertisements throw color across Cody’s white walls. The passing headlights of speeders cast uncomfortable shadows into the corners of the room. Cody didn’t realize how late it had gotten. 

How did he get here? 

Cody could retrace every step he took, every decision he made, from the very moment of the Separatist surrender to get to the position he was in. He had done so much to secure safety and stability for his brothers. He had built the Clone Repatriation Program from the ground up. He had campaigned for and supported every ounce of freedom his brothers were granted. 

Somehow he had gotten lost along the way. So caught up in making sure his brothers were safe and cared for that Cody hadn’t realized he was moving farther and farther from where he really wanted to be. Adrift in a political nightmare he has no idea how to navigate. Distanced from his closest brothers by more than just miles. Bound by duty and responsibility to keep pushing, keep fighting, years after the War had ended. 

The silence becomes oppressive against Cody’s ears. It’s cut through by the sounds of the temperature regulator hacking up air and clicking for a moment until it reaches a steady-state. It still feels too quiet. There’s no whine of hyperspace engines. There’s no bustle of droids in the hangar. There’s no blaring alarms or shouted orders. There’s no incessant chatter over the commlink in Cody’s ear. There’s no conversation held in identical voices interspersed with snorts of unique laughter. 

Cody feels like he’s missing something. On paper, He has everything he should ever want. More than he had been told a clone deserved and more than enough to survive on. He has ticked off the boxes for every basic need. It still doesn’t explain why he keeps looking for something, some one, always one step ahead.

Cody wipes a hand over his face and stands from his desk. He just needs sleep. That’s all. 

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The door to Cody’s office is slightly ajar. Cody knows he locked it before he left. There are few people in the galaxy who have authorized access, and none of them are on planet. Cody draws his blaster and presses himself against the wall, treading slowly and lightly to the doorway. It should concern him how naturally he is able to fall back onto muscle memory, how much he enjoys the adrenaline rush.

While there’s no open threat against Cody, or at least not one that he’s aware of, there was always a risk for someone in such a high powered position. He was also a clone, and even after the passing of the Clone Rights Bill, there were a lot of people who weren’t happy that the GAR was being run by one. 

Cody doesn’t end up needing to burst into his own office, because the intruder pokes his blond head around the corner and stares down Cody’s blaster barrel with only a mildly irritated expression. 

“Where have you been?” Rex asks with a raised brow, “and why are you wearing your armor?” Rex keeps talking even as he ducks back into the room. “You do realize we aren’t required to be in uniform anymore, right?” 

Cody lets out a sigh as he reholsters his blaster and follows Rex into his own office. Rex has made himself right at home, spread out on one of the couches, feet up on the coffee table, bowl of sugar sweets pulled into his lap as he shoves them into his mouth by the handful. 

“I could have shot you,” Cody grumbles and yanks the bowl away out of Rex’s sticky hands as he passes. Rex protests but doesn’t fight it. Cody heads straight for the caf machine in the corner. If he has to deal with an unplanned Rex today, he is going to need more caffeine. 

“No, you wouldn’t have,” Rex says while tucking his hands behind his head and closing his eyes as if he’s lounging in the sun. “And you didn’t answer my question.”

There’s a moment where Cody seriously contemplates throwing Rex out of the window. “Which one?” He asks, pouring the grounds into the filter. A sharp jab to a button, and the machine spits as it begins to make the second pot of the day. 

“The first one,” Rex answers helpfully. “Where were you?”

Cody takes off his helmet and sets it on his armor rack. “In a meeting.” It had been particularly dull. Not as boring as the quarterly supply and inventory reports on The Negotiator had been, but close. “The committee for firearm research and development came to report that they had nothing to report and none of the new tech has been cleared for beta testing.” 

Rex snorts and doesn’t bother to even crack an eye. “I don’t envy you.” 

The caf is dark and nearing the consistency of sludge as Cody pours it into his mug. He still uses the cheap stuff, and if Kenobi was here, Cody knows he would’ve gotten a ten minute lecture on the importance of properly made refreshments. 

“Did you need me?” Cody asks as he walks past the window to his desk. It’s another clear day, and Cody does his best not to notice. 

“Not really,” Rex shakes his head. “Just thought I’d come check on you.”

Cody scowls into his mug. “I don't need you to-”

“I know,” Rex cuts him off, opening his eyes and sitting up a little. “I was on my way home from babysitting for Anakin.” And Cody doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to the lack of a title. He certainly doesn’t understand how easily Rex says it, or the way it nearly sounds fond. Cody had never been on the best terms with Skywalker and that was just fine with him.

“You should come by sometime and see the kids. They’re getting so big now.” Rex’s eyes light up as he talks about them; his voice gone soft. “Leia tripped over one of her toys today and scraped up her knee, and Luke cried for her. It was adorable.” Rex chuckles and shakes his head fondly. 

Cody smiles a little at the idea. He would like to go eventually. He knows he’d be welcome. Senator Amidala had certainly extended the invitation enough times that Cody almost feels bad that he doesn’t drop by more than once every few months. He hasn’t seen Luke and Leia since Rex made him go to their birthday party. In another life, they might have been calling him Ba’vodu. 

A knot forms in the back of Cody’s throat, and he struggles to swallow it back down. Another life, maybe, but not this one. 

“I’m sure,” Cody says, keeping his voice as even as he can. 

They’re both quiet for a while. Cody starts on a new file while Rex taps his fingers loudly on the table. His goal is to annoy Cody into talking to him, they both know it, but Cody had learned to ignore irritating little brothers before he had even left Kamino. 

“This is boring,” Rex announces finally. “Is this really what you do all day?”

“No.” Cody doesn’t look up from his datapad. “Sometimes someone breaks into my office while I’m gone.” 

Rex rolls his eyes. “I thought being Commander in Chief would be more interesting. I don’t know how you can stand being stuck in here all day.”

There’s an edge to Rex’s voice. Something about it ticks Cody’s nerves. Maybe it’s the undercurrent of disgust or the tinge of frustration that Cody himself feels clawing at his heels every second he sits in this chair. 

“Honestly,” Rex gives an over exaggerated sigh. “You’re happy with this?” He’s just joking, Cody knows, but kriff if it didn’t hit too close to home. 

Cody doesn’t mean to snap, doesn’t mean to get upset, but something about the way Rex just waltzed in here and so easily declared the truth that Cody had kept denying every time he glanced out of the window had pushed him to an edge he wasn’t even aware he was close to. It makes Cody irrationally angry, and he isn’t even sure why. His hands clench into fists, fingernails digging into his palms, knuckles turning white. 

“Yeah? At least I’ve got a job, and I don’t depend on other people to pay for my shit.” Cody regrets the words as soon as they leave his mouth, but he can’t take them back now. 

Rex seems as surprised by the hostility as Cody is. His entire demeanor changes from teasing to defensive in a heartbeat. Ashen guilt crumbles in Cody’s throat to know that that’s his fault. 

Rex narrows his eyes and crosses his arms. “What’s your problem, vod?” The endearment spits like acid from his mouth. “Are you really going to tell me this is what you wanted to do after the War?”

-

“What do you want to do after the War?” General Kenobi asks, breathing hard as he catches his breath. The men around them clean up the last stragglers, but the battle is won; the fighting over for now. He uses the edge of his tunic to wipe dust from his saber. 

It’s a question that Kenobi has asked before and yet it still catches Cody by surprise. He had never bothered to think about it before. On Kamino, there had been no after, there had been no choice. He had never even expected to get this far, let alone survive until the end. “Me, sir?”

“Yes you, Cody. After the war. What do you want to do?”

Cody knows the real answer. He wants to be wherever his brothers are, wherever his General is. He wants to see Manda’yaim. He wants to get some beskar for his armor. He wants to wake up in the morning, grab a cup of caf instead of a blaster, and sit in the dawn light without the threat of everything being taken away from him. 

Cody looks to his General. Kenobi’s eyes are crinkled at the edges with expectation. 

Cody wants to live in a world where he’s free to put the tightness in his chest and the flutter of his heart into words. He wants to be brave enough, selfish enough, to say what he really feels. 

But he isn’t brave enough. Not today. Not when they’re both still catching their breath from the battle, and their conversation is coated with the echoes of blaster fire. 

“I’d like something simple, sir.” Is what Cody says instead of a dozen other things. “Somewhere my brothers are safe.” Cody does not say, somewhere by your side. “A cup of caf,” he continues, just to see the way Kenobi’s lips curl up in amusement and his nose crinkles on the edge. “A lothcat maybe.” 

Kenobi does finally laugh at that, and the sound sends Cody’s heart into a stutter in a way not even mortar shells could do. “You would hate having a lothcat, my dear. It would climb on top of your shelves and stress you out.”

“Then I’ll name it after you.”

-

Cody grits his teeth and turns away. His bucket is just out of arm's reach but it might’ve been a different star system for all the good it does him. He has never been able to hide from Rex anyway. With or without the helmet. 

“You didn’t have to take this job,” Rex points out, voice still stained with defensiveness. 

Cody hates the way the words cut through every flimsy excuse and lie he’s told himself. “And who else was going to do it?” Oh, Cody hates fighting with Rex. He hates the way Rex can find the core of the problem with the deadly accuracy of a blaster shot. He hates the way Rex blows past every carefully constructed wall within a few sentences. 

“I don’t know,” Rex scoffs. “Wolffe? Bacara? Ponds? It doesn’t matter.” He stands from his seat and throws his hands in the air. There’s an undercurrent of something else laced with his frustration. It takes Cody too long to realize it’s concern.

“They wanted a natborn, Rex,” Cody admits. He hadn’t told any of his brothers about the early talks during the reconstruction, or the way he had had to argue and defend their very existence to a Senate they had just won a War for. “They wanted Tarkin. I couldn’t let that happen.”   

Even still the very idea of such a man in control of his brothers sends a chill down Cody’s spine. No. He would spend the rest of his life in this office if that’s what it took.

“The War is over, Cody!” Rex snaps. “You don’t have to protect us anymore.”  

Cody sighs and shakes his head. “It’s not about that-”

“What is it then?” Rex cuts him off, striding over to stand over the desk so that Cody has to look up at him. “Why are you in this haar’chak’la office instead of out in the field? Better yet, why the kriff aren’t you at the Temple?” 

Cody stands up from his chair and slams his hands down onto the desk. “Kenobi has nothing to do with this!” 

Silence.

They glare at one another through the tension that hangs in the air. 

“Fine,” Rex growls as he grabs his jacket and keys from the table. “Believe whatever you want, vod. Just don’t take your regrets out on me.” He doesn’t even bother looking back at Cody.

Rex slams the door on his way out.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Cody has been looking forward to this night for weeks. Of course, it just also happens to fall on the night before he leaves for that dikut’la relief mission. Sprint is going to owe him so many favors for that. Regardless, he doesn’t let it put a damper on his mood. He’s dressed and ready to go nearly an hour before they’re scheduled to meet at 79’s. 

Bly, his baby brother Bly, is having a baby. Cody couldn’t be more happy for him. It had come unexpectedly, though General Secura hadn’t seemed surprised at all. Those two had been married since nearly the beginning of the War, and afterwards Bly had taken up post as Commander of the Temple Guard to stick closer to her. It had been a natural position for him to fill. Especially, since he’s soft spoken and so many of the Temple residents are still recovering from everything that had happened. 

Secura wasn’t due for a few months yet, but Bly had insisted on finding a time to get everyone together and celebrate. With everyone constantly busy, it was a miracle they had found time at all. Wolffe was taking leave from rounding up slavers in the Outer Rim and was scheduled to pick up Fox from bandomeer on his way in. Rex was supposed to come too, given he wasn’t still upset with Cody. Ponds was already on Coruscant, so that hadn’t been an issue. Thire and Gree had been a little more tricky, but Cody wasn’t above using his position to get them reassigned to the Core for a few days. It would be the first time in nearly a year that Cody had seen all of his batchmates together. 

When he arrives, Cody is waved over to a table in the corner by Wolffe. 

“Well look here,” Fox whistles as he gets closer. “A visit from the Commander in Chief of the GAR himself. How did we get so lucky?”

Cody scowls and shoves Fox over in the booth so he can sit down. 

“Am I seeing things?” Ponds rubs at his eyes and squints over the table from the other side of Wolffe. “Or is Cod’ika actually wearing real clothes? I didn’t know he owned something other than his blacks.” Thire cracks up laughing at Ponds’s shoulder. 

Cody ignores them and peers around Fox to find Bly. “Congrats, vod. You’ll be a great buir.” 

Bly smiles from ear to ear, still ecstatic even months after finding out the news. “Thanks! Aayla is more calm about all this than I am. I’ve been reading every holonovel I can get my hands on, but she just tells me the Force will handle it.” Bly reaches out to take Cody’s arm in a panicked grip, though it's more for show than reality. “Cody, the Force will not handle it.” 

Cody laughs, all too familiar with Jetii Osik. “Kenobi said that shit all the time,” he says. “I could’ve sworn he was going to give me an ulcer by the end of the War.” 

“Speaking of!” Thire cuts in. “What’s up with you two?” And the entire table’s attention shifts to Cody. 

Cody’s used to being under pressure, but the eyes of his batchmates makes him swallow uncomfortably. They had all been so sure that he and Kenobi would end up together after the War. Cody had been so sure of it too, once upon a time. 

But that had been years ago, and Cody hadn’t so much as said a single word to his old General since the last time they had crossed paths in the halls of the Senate. Cody shrugs helplessly, not sure where he had gone so wrong. “Nothing.” He tries his best to keep his tone casual, but that one word draws up a wellspring in his chest. 

If Kenobi had wanted to stay in touch, he would have. But instead they had drifted apart. So close during the War that Cody didn’t think it was even possible, and yet here they are. 

Cody had wanted so much. He had hoped for so much. He should have known better. 

Not everyone got so lucky as Bly. Regardless of what Cody had done, how important he was, what he had achieved, at the end of the day, Cody was just a clone. He was born to hold a blaster and give his life in service to the Republic. He didn’t know how to do, how to be, anything else. 

And a War which had been the sole reason for Cody’s entire existence, was only three horrible years for Kenobi. 

Cody doesn’t blame his General for not wanting to talk to him. Though he hates himself for the way he still can’t look out his own damn window. 

An uncomfortable silence spreads over the table as the reality of what Cody had said dawns on them. 

“Really?” Wolffe looks confused. “But Buir said-”

“It doesn’t matter.” Cody really does not want to hear it. He doesn’t want to talk about this. Not right now and preferably not ever. The lie is so obvious that Cody doesn’t even have to turn to see the eye roll from Fox. 

Fox opens his mouth, but before he can say a word Cody is saved by the arrival of Gree and Rex.

The topic turns back to Bly and the baby, and Cody couldn’t be more grateful. 

Rex squeezes in next to Cody while Gree pulls up a chair at the end. It's tight but they make it work; they’ve all lived in much closer quarters anyway. Rex gives Cody a look that makes Cody decide he is entirely too sober to handle anything else right now. He needs a drink. Multiple. 

He leaves and comes back with a drink for him and Rex as well as a shot for both of them. He places the glasses down on the table in front of his little brother. 

Rex glares at him but takes the peace offering without complaint. His face isn’t so pinched after he knocks back the shot. The fact that Rex doesn’t hit him tells Cody that all is forgotten, at least for tonight. For now, that’s enough. 

-

For now, it’s enough. This unspoken agreement between them. The promise for more, not yet, not now, but After. 

When Cody feels like his entire world is falling apart, after the fifth casualty report in the triple digits this month, after the loss of the last campaign, after the Senate makes a demand for better results and less funding. His hands shake and his eyes burn and he tries so hard to keep it all to himself. He’s a Field Marshall Commander. He’s supposed to have everything together. He’s supposed to be strong for his brothers. 

But he can’t. 

His entire life is slipping away from him. It still feels like they’re losing this war even as they win nearly every battle. 

When he’s alone, hiding in the training salles on the lower decks, Kenobi always seems to find him. They spar until the shaking on Cody’s hands comes from exhaustion instead of fear. They run until Cody’s trying to catch his breath from exertion instead of panic. They talk until their voices turn hoarse. 

And Cody can’t help but turn his head to the side, just an inch, and hold their foreheads together until he feels like himself again. 

They’re so close like this. A hair's breadth away. Kenobi’s eyes sparkle under the artificial lights. The shadows cast on his face highlight the edge of his cheekbones. 

Cody wants so badly to take that extra step. To find out if Kenobi’s lips are as soft as they look. To know exactly what that beard feels like against his cheek. 

But for now, this is enough.

-

After the first round of drinks, the night progresses a lot lighter. Rex doesn’t yell at him. No one mentions Kenobi. And for a while, Cody can pretend that he isn’t missing half of himself. 

“Oh!” Bly slurs somewhere between his seventh and eighth shot. “I’m retirin’!” 

Everyone turns to look at him with varying degrees of surprise. “Retired? You can’t retire, you’re sixteen!” Someone says, probably Gree, though Cody is having a hard time figuring that out because they all look so kriffin’ similar to each other. Who’s idea was it to create an army full of identical men anyway? How was anyone supposed to tell them apart? Kenobi never got their names mixed up though. Cody had always loved that about him.

“F’r the baby.” Bly nods, as serious as he possibly can be. “I was supp’sed to tell you g’ys earli’r.” 

“That’s great, vod.” Fox claps Bly on the back, the only sober one in the group. At least one of them had to be responsible. “Who’s taking your position?”

Bly shrugs and lists dangerously to the side. “I dunno.” He decides to counteract the sudden attack of gravity by burying his face into Fox’s shoulder. “Pro’bly jus’ some Jedi.” He rubs tiredly at his eyes. “Obi-W’n wanted me to f’nd someb’dy.” And something about that must’ve made Bly remember something important because he jumped to sit straight up and whirled around to look at Cody.

“Kote,” Bly points a wobbly finger across Fox’s chest. “You got a mish’n to the Hutt’s tom’r’w right?” 

Cody does not like where this is going. He narrows his eyes at Bly, trying to get his vision to stop swimming. He is both too sober for this and not sober enough if he’s right about what Bly is about to tell him. 

“Obi-W’n has a mish’n there too. He’s g’ne go with you!” 

Oh seven kriffing hells. 

Two years to get over the guy and then he’s being thrown on a mission with him right after a fight with Rex that has Cody questioning everything.

And that would be just Cody’s luck, wouldn’t it? 

Chapter Text

Obi-Wan loves the Room of a Thousand Fountains. He has come here often through the years. One of his earliest memories is learning to meditate in this room with his créchemaster.

It has changed much since then, always shifting, growing, moving. The courses of water flowed directly through the field lines of the Force in perfect harmony with each other. Every leaf, root, and flower fed off the stream here. In turn, they produced oxygen for Obi-Wan to breathe. When he exhaled, the water from his breath went back into the air and so the cycle started again. All connected. All dependent on each other. 

This has always been a place of calm when it has felt like none left in the Galaxy existed. Even during the height of the War, Obi-Wan would come down here and sit under this tree for as long as his comm allowed. Somehow, peace had been much easier to find during the War than it is now. 

I am one with the Force.

Obi-Wan lets his mind fall silent. He lets his shoulders relax, his bare feet against the soil. His lungs empty and fill with the life around him. The sound of water rushing in time with the thrum of his own heart beat. 

The Force is with me.

This corner of the garden has stayed mostly unchanged through the years. It is one of the very few constants in Obi-Wan’s life. The tree at his back was his support system when everything else felt like it was falling down around him. 

Obi-Wan had sat here in the days after Melida/Daan when his wounds, both literal and spiritual, were still open and sore. He had sat here with a broken heart after the year long mission in Mandalore. He had sat here after the death of Qui-Gon. He had sat here when taking care of Anakin proved to be too much. He had sat here during the War to find some semblance of balance. 

Now Obi-Wan sits, in the shade of a tree that was planted before even Yoda was a padawan, and tries to heal over the fracture in his heart that he has no right to. 

Obi-Wan has spent so much of his life at War that it’s hard to remember the majority of it has been spent during peacetime. He just doesn’t quite remember peace feeling quite like this. He tries to pull himself deeper into his meditation, mind running like water with the flow of the creek. The Force wraps around him, embracing him like an old friend.

“Work through the emotions, you must.” Yoda had told him. “Dismiss them, do not. Bury them, do not.” Obi-Wan has always had the most trouble with that last part. Ignoring emotions until they went away or stopped bothering him was much easier than working through them. 

Unease. A lifetime spent on the run, under Qui-Gon, and watching out for Anakin, has left Obi-Wan with a constant sense of awareness. An edge. A paranoia. Always waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

Discontent. It’s an easy emotion to identify. It’s much harder to work through. It stems from something deep rooted and unfulfilled. There’s a hole in Obi-Wan’s life. He knows what he thinks belongs there. He also knows he can’t ask for it. 

Loneliness. Obi-Wan is alone for the first time in his life. It’s a strange feeling and not one he is used to. Before the War there was Anakin, before Anakin was Qui-Gon, before Qui-Gon there was the Crèche. And so here Obi-Wan was left alone for the first time in his life, without anyone asking after him, without anyone needing him. He’s not sure how to cope with that.

There’s a disruption in his meditations. Not from a chirping comm, but a friend. 

Obi-Wan pretends to keep his eyes closed even as the grubby toddler squeals out his name. 

Happiness. Fleeting but no less fulfilling. Common and shared and amplified through the love that binds Obi-Wan to his closest friends and family. It never stays for the times that Obi-Wan is alone, but he is no less grateful for the days it brightens the Force into a blaze around him.

“Uncle Ohbee!” Grubby sticky chubby hands fumble with the loose fabric of Obi-Wan’s robe, pulling it to the side as they try to climb up into the circle of folded legs.

Obi-Wan doesn’t try to hide the smile that graces his lips. He keeps his eyes closed, looking straight ahead as if not to acknowledge the child at all, but he brushes oh so gently against the starlight presence in the Force. 

So young and already so strong. Somehow impossibly brighter when he’s with his sister. 

“Hello there, little one,” Obi-Wan says with all the ineffectual grace of one far too used to the intrusive presence of children. Luke settles easily into his Uncle’s lap, no longer needing to be told to sit still and quiet when he finds a Jedi meditating. 

Luke leans back against Obi-Wan’s chest and keeps for nearly a full minute. Obi-Wan can feel his pure childlike curiosity, the innocence, the blunt emotions that are still so straightforward at that age. Children have always made the deepest impressions in the Force. One look at the Skywalker twins and anyone could realize why. 

There’s a gentle tug on Obi-Wan’s tabards, and the Jedi obliges the request with a crooked eyebrow and peek of an eye downward. Luke is staring up at him, confusion and empathy clear in the plush pout of his lip. “Why are you sad?” 

Obi-Wan isn’t quite sure of the answer himself. Logically, he has no reason to be, but his emotions are a tangled mess in the Force that he doesn’t know how to begin to sort out. 

There is no answer to give. Or at least not one that Luke would understand. Obi-Wan doubts the words bittersweet would mean much beyond that of an overly ripe lothberry. But the child will demand an answer. Whoever said it was easier to lie to a kid had obviously never met a Force-sensitive one. 

“Sometimes people are sad without reason.” Obi-Wan has a reason. Several, actually. Identifying was only the first step. Now if only he could manage to work through them. Perhaps he’d have better luck without blond haired children that had the tendency to escape the watch of their parents. 

Luke frowns, thinking deeply for a solution to the grave issue at hand. His face lit up with a bright smile as he found the answer. “You like games?” 

Obi-Wan blinks his eyes all the way open. There was no point in resuming his mediation now. This is a much better way to spend his time anyway. He smiles and runs a hand through messy blond hair. “I do. Could you teach me one?” 

“Yeah!” Luke spins around in Obi-Wan’s lap so they’re facing each other. He puts his hands up in the air. “Like this.” 

Their hands meet in a clap as Luke shows him some rhythm and gestures that make absolutely no sense. They both laugh when Obi-Wan gets it wrong again and again. 

The Force around them sparkles in tinkling happiness and joy of childhood. Obi-Wan loves this place. He loves the memories it holds. He loves the comfort it brings him in even the darkest times. 

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Even with the Force suppressor, Obi-Wan can feel the whirlwind of Anakin’s panic from all the way down the hall, Leia’s bubbled amusement trailing just behind. He was wondering how long it would take for his former padawan to realize one of his children had wandered off. The Temple was a safe place, especially for children. There was no real danger of Luke getting into real trouble, but the Skywalker gene ran hot in both children. If anyone could manage to break some ancient artifact or unlock a hidden Jedi secret, it would be the twins. 

“Daddy coming?” Luke asks, hopping off the couch and bumbling into the kitchenette to cling to Obi-Wan’s leg. Anakin’s panic, though muffled and muted, is still a sharp sting of bitter wind. It sends a subtle creep of ice up the edge of Obi-Wan’s spine. It’s disquieting, even for a seasoned Jedi used to Anakin’s mood swings. Obi-Wan hates to imagine how it feels for Luke. 

Obi-Wan puts a reassuring hand over Luke’s hair, fingers brushing gently, rhythmically, back and forth over the base of his skull. “Yes, he is.” There’s not much Obi-Wan can do to shield him from it, especially with the Force bond binding Anakin and the twins together with the strength of a Star Destroyer’s tow rope. 

Luke is restless for a moment, and he pauses in thought about to say something else when there’s a knock on the door. 

“Master? Obi-Wan?” There’s a slight tremor in Anakin’s voice; it’s concealed, an attempt at a calm facade, but it’s not convincing anyone. 

Walking over, with Luke still glued to his leg, Obi-Wan opens the door with a gentle smile. “Breathe, Anakin. He’s right here.” 

Anakin drops to his knees and pulls Luke into his arms. Relief comes like a tidal wave and melts away the creeping cold. Obi-Wan barely manages not to get swept away in it. He had found very few things in the galaxy more intense than the separation of a parent from their child. With how often one of the twins misplaced themselves, one would think Anakin would have better control over himself. 

“You ran off,” Anakin mumbles into Luke’s hair. “You can’t do that.” His arms tighten a fraction before releasing Luke all together. 

The toddler smiles brightly, bouncing over to stand by his sister. “But Uncle Ohbee was sad.” 

Anakin stands and raises an eyebrow, looking at Obi-Wan with a concern that flickers there-and-gone. Obi-Wan feels himself flush but luckily the subject isn’t pushed. Instead, he takes a step back from the door in a silent invitation. Anakin would’ve shoved his way into the room anyway, but at least Obi-Wan can pretend he has a choice in the matter. 

Not much had changed since Anakin moved out of his old rooms. Obi-Wan hadn’t been able to bring himself to move to a single set, having spent most of his life in these quarters. It felt strange, empty, too large without someone else here. Everything about the apartment had been designed for two or even three people. The double sofa, the separate desks in the small study, the full sized fridge, and even the coat hooks by the door.  

Yet the acute awareness of space that Obi-Wan carried with him from day to day still felt too little when faced with three boisterous Skywalkers that took up more room than Obi-wan knew was possible. 

“Tea?” Obi-Wan offers. It’s an abrupt change of subject. 

It’s Leia who accepts, bounding forward and making herself known with a stamp of her foot and hands reaching up, up, for her uncle. 

Obi-Wan can’t help but chuckle and lift her up to bounce her on his hip. 

“Daddy promised me candy,” Leia announces, indignant that the promise had not already been fulfilled. Her chubby cheeks puff as she crosses her arms. 

“Oh did he?” Fondness curls at Obi-Wan’s words and tilts his lips into a smile.

“Yup.” Leia nods, carefully bound curls bouncing. “I finded Luke and I get candy,” she explains as though it was a regular occurance. Maybe it was. 

Obi-Wan shoots Anakin a fond but exasperated look. “Bribing them already?” 

“Them?” Anakin rolls his eyes and takes a step into the apartment and shuts the door behind him. “No. Just her.”

Obi-Wan laughs at that, hiking Leia higher on his hip. She was already shaping up to be quite the troublemaker. They will all dread the day she takes advantage of the way she has them wrapped around her little finger. 

Although it is Anakin’s promise, Obi-Wan is more than happy to fulfill it. He reaches over for the bowl of sugar sweets he’s always kept in his rooms, whether on board the Negotiator or the Temple. They had always been Anakin’s favorite growing up. Although the Jedi weren’t supposed to spoil their padawans, Obi-Wan could never tell Anakin ‘no’ when he had so recently come from a life where he couldn’t say ‘yes.’ It had become a habit since then to always have some on hand. 

When Anakin had taken on Ashoka, she had stolen them by the handful from Obi-Wan’s quarters. Always enough to pass out among the troopers of the 501st when she returned. Rumor had it that Rex would even remove hours of KP in exchange for one of them.

Obi-Wan himself had never developed a taste for them until well into the War, though that was almost as much Cody’s fault as his own. His former commander had always taken the time to steal a couple for the two of them and hide them away in an extra pocket on his belt. In those quiet moments just after ending a call with the council, or receiving orders from the Senate, Cody would always be there to pass a tiny wrapped candy into Obi-Wan’s hand. Something sweet when everything else was ashen bitter. 

And so the tradition continues. 

Obi-Wan holds the bowl in front of Leia’s face, letting her choose whichever one caught her eye in the bouquet of identical wrappers. 

She squeals and clumsily grabs one from the center. Anakin shuffles in close and grabs several for himself and another for Luke. No one is left out.

The Force blooms. Spreading outward from the blossoms of childlike joy and wrapping upwards until the four of them were surrounded by it. 

Mace had once described the twins as Beacons. Bright twinkling stars that burned brighter with every passing day. A clear light. A hope.

Obi-Wan’s chest twinges for the fact that Anakin can’t feel this moment. The ring on his good hand keeps him cut off from feeling the Force, though it does very little to prevent the projections of Anakin’s emotions onto others. It’s a precaution he only takes while in the Temple or in the busiest places of Coruscant. 

After the Chancellor's death, the recoil from the bond between him and Anakin breaking had left jagged wounds in Anakin’s mind and completely decimated any shields he had had. He was an open wound. An exposed nerve. A live ordinance waiting for a misstep.

Even the slightest brush of the Force had left Anakin disoriented and with a piercing headache. Only the weekly visits to the healing halls and months spent away on Naboo had returned to him what little control he now had. The Force suppressant ring was a safety measure for Anakin as much as everyone around him. 

But it often caused him to miss out on the small bright moments like this that Obi-Wan cherished so dearly. 

“Tea too?” Luke asks through a mouthful of dissolving sugar. 

Obi-Wan nods and sets aside the bowl. “Of course. Tea too.”

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

There’s a feeling of absence that comes sharply pronounced the moment the children leave. They are off to the Temple hangars where they will climb into an illegally modified speeder and giggle as they race across the Coruscanti skyline in search of their home. 

A home that is not here. 

The sudden piercing silence is a pointed reminder of exactly why Obi-Wan spends so much of  his time off-world. It is easier to deal with, easier to forget, his loneliness if he never has a spare moment to experience it. 

It’s not the healthiest of coping mechanisms, but no one has gotten too upset at Obi-Wan about it yet, and until then, he’ll keep right on ignoring it. 

Obi-Wan can’t help but think of what his former commander might say if he was here. A fond eye roll. A comment about needy Jetii. A faux-reluctance that came before indulging whatever request Obi-Wan had made. 

But Cody isn’t here. 

Obi-Wan tries not to think about that too much either. 

Instead, he busies himself with the menial tasks of getting settled for the night: a set of stretches, a rinse in the refresher, a change of clothes. Then Obi-Wan is left in the quiet of his rooms that makes the noise in his head seem so much louder. 

Obi-Wan has always had a strange relationship with sleep. It never seems to come when he wants and shows up unannounced when he doesn’t. He shoves it aside when he’s busy and can’t persuade it to come back when he’s finished. Insomnia, the healers had told him. But a label didn’t fix the problem, only addressed it. Just like everything else, it’s always much easier to identify something than it is to work through it.

A summons to the Chancellor’s office sits on his agenda for tomorrow morning. Obi-Wan knows he won’t be of much use to any negotiations they may need him for if he can’t get some rest. 

Regardless of how tired he feels, his brain won’t shut up. 

Like most nights, he’s left with a tremor in his hands that won’t go away no matter how tightly he wraps them in the blankets. He feels a yawning ache in his chest where his heart should be, and tonight it feels all the more pronounced from the swell of love and happiness he had felt during the day.

His mind races in the quiet.

Longing. Reaching out for something that isn’t there. Searching for something he’ll never find. Wanting without daring to take a step forward. Obi-Wan tries to avoid it, to redirect himself, but his thoughts always inevitably come back to Cody. 

Cody who had always radiated warmth without being oppressive. Who had glown softly like a sunset in the Force. Golden and beautiful and grounding. Whenever everything else in the galaxy had been too much, and in times like these when Obi-Wan’s mind wouldn’t shut off, all he had to do was reach out to find his ever-steady commander.

But Cody isn’t here. 

Because Cody had made a choice. One he had finally been truly free to make. 

A choice that had let him flourish into a powerful leader that his brothers needed even if it had taken him away from Obi-Wan’s side. He is worth more than being second-in-command to an old Jedi.

Still, Obi-Wan had thought, hoped maybe, that Cody would stay by his side after the War. There were times when they were alone, so close their breath was shared and their hearts beat together. Times when Cody gave an order without Obi-Wan even having to say a word. Times when it had felt they knew each other better than themselves. Times when Obi-Wan had been so sure that he had finally found someone he could give half of his soul to. 

But Cody isn’t here. 

Two years should have been more than long enough to get over a man that Obi-Wan had never even kissed, so much as dated. But maybe it was the open endedness of it all. The longing of an unasked question. The unraveling of a frayed end of rope. It’s the unending mourning of something not truly lost. 

Maybe it’s made worse by the fact that Obi-Wan knows Cody loved him. He had felt the way his commander brightened every time Obi-Wan walked into a room. He had felt the near-suffocating burst of gratitude, loyalty, pride, every time Obi-Wan had stood up for him or his brothers. He had felt the winding thread that had stitched them so closely together, a nearly invisible seam, with something deeper than a surface level infatuation but a durasteel weave that had stood strong against trial after trial.

They had been two halves of a whole. Or at least that’s what it had felt like to Obi-Wan. 

But Cody isn’t here. 

Regardless of how much they had loved each other and how much they had been through together, it hadn’t been enough in the end. Cody had chosen duty, just as he would everytime, just as Satine had. 

It’s unfair of Obi-Wan to compare the two. He knows that. Satine had been nothing like Cody. But from the perspective of a broken heart, the two feel so similar. 

Obi-Wan sighs, rolls over, and pulls the blankets over his ears as if it could do anything to drown out the noise. Eventually, sometime in the early hours of the morning, sleep finally catches up with him. 

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The senate rotunda is quiet today. There’s nothing up for vote and, unlike the previous administration, the Senators are required to spend a certain amount of days out of the year on their representative planets. Many of them seemed to be taking advantage of the off-day to fulfill that quota. 

Chancellor Organa is not fortunate enough, it seems, to share in the break. 

Obi-Wan is headed to Bail’s office when he’s stopped by a certain red-haired commander. 

“Do you have authority to be on this floor, sir?” Sprint raises an eyebrow and crosses his arms, standing resolutely in front of Obi-Wan to keep him from going any further. 

Obi-Wan smiles and holds out his datapad, already pulled up to his visitors pass. “I do this time, Commander.” He gives Sprint a moment to look it over. “Satisfied?”

Sprint hands the datapad back and then falls into step at Obi-wan’s side, acting as an escort. “If I didn’t already know you were coming, I’d be tempted to send that down to the vode in forgery.” 

Obi-Wan snorts in amusement and brings a hand up to cover the edge of his smile by stroking through his beard. “I don’t suppose you can tell me why I’m here?”

Sprint shakes his head. “They never tell me why, sir. Just who.” For Fox, it would’ve been because he was a clone. For Sprint, it’s for safety. Strange how the intention behind a protocol, identical to the old one or not, changes everything. 

They walk together for a while longer, filling the silence with idle chatter and the highlight reel of what had happened while Obi-Wan was at the Temple for the last few days. All too soon they’ve reached the Chancellor’s office, and Sprint returns to his post by the main entrance. Obi-Wan is left staring up at the doors that sit deep within an imposing archway. 

There is no Sith Lord sitting on the other side. Sometimes it takes more than a moment to remember that. Taking a breath to settle himself, Obi-Wan pushes through the doors to greet an old friend.

“Obi-Wan!” Bail greets with a smile. “Come in!” He waves Obi-Wan in through the threshold and clasps their hands together. “I’m surprised you managed to hold yourself together through that last treaty negotiation.” 

The room is spacious without feeling too grand. A finery without opulence. An expensive brandy sits in the corner framed by glasses made from local artisans. The desk is crowded by neat piles of flimsy and datapads. There is a subtle roundedness to the sharp edges that had once marked every surface of this room.

Regardless of the warmth that Bail’s friendship provides, there is still a bitter chill that creeps in under shadows. If Obi-Wan looks for long enough, he can still see the bloodstain on a rug that had long-since been incinerated. He can still hear the echoes of Orders and flat voices that linger in the very foundations of this room. So much has changed, is still changing, but the wounds this deep do not heal quickly. 

Unsettled. Like the last grains of sand pulled through an hourglass. A subsonic hum in the air. Obi-Wan knows it is nothing more than harmless impressions in the Force, and it is only that knowledge that keeps him from bolting from the room.

The Chancellor politely waits for an answer. Obi-Wan mentally shakes himself loose of the cloying sickness and forces a smile.

“Yes, well, so were they,” Obi-Wan jokes and brings up a hand to stroke through his beard. “The trandoshans weren’t entirely happy when they found I had escaped from their prison cell. Though I’m not sure what they expected when they hadn’t even bothered to disarm me.” 

Bail chuckles as he leads Obi-Wan further into the room and makes a motion towards one of the chairs in front of his desk while he finds his place behind it. “And did you enjoy your well-earned retreat at the Temple?”

“Always.” Obi-Wan does not mention the hours spent pouring over text in the archives just for want of something to do. He doesn’t mention the bounce of his leg as he sat in the early hours of the morning trying to focus. He doesn’t mention how it was becoming harder and harder to clear his mind each time he sat down for meditation. “Though I do hope you’ve called me for something interesting. The rumors I’ve been hearing about Hutt space have been concerning to say the least.” 

“Unfortunately, they're not rumors,” Bail sighs. A weight settles over his shoulders. It’s a weight that Obi-Wan knows comes with the responsibility of a decision which puts lives on the line. It is one they are both all too familiar with. 

Bail continues, “As we send more men to the outer rim to investigate sentient trafficking and slavery rings, the Hutts become more destabilized. Many of their suppliers are no longer willing to risk their business for the sake of a payday. Many have turned against the Hutts entirely because of their alliance with the New Republic.”

Obi-Wan frowns and leans forward in his seat. The pieces of information that he’s heard begin to fit together, the picture becoming clearer. “So the Hutts are withdrawing?” 

“That is their threat, yes.” Bail motions with his hand, “but I have arranged a meeting with the Grand Hutt Council to explore alternatives. We need those trade routes. We have to work with them.” 

It’s unnecessary for him to stress the gravity of the situation. They are both well aware of the consequences if the Hutts block those highways. 

“You want to send me in to find a solution,” he guesses. If they’re going to pull this off, they’re going to need The Negotiator. Obi-Wan isn’t sure if he’s still deserving of that title. 

There is real kindness and sympathy in Bail’s eyes. “I know I’m asking a lot.” It’s not an order. Obi-Wan could say no. They both know he won’t.

“No more than you’ve asked before.” Obi-Wan sighs and rubs over his brow. “Without resources from the crime syndicates, Nar Shaddaa is left defenseless. They will fall within months. The planet will starve.” 

They can’t let that happen. Not only for the loss of life, but economically the New Republic would be brought to its knees. The only way to Kessel, and the life-giving fuel it provides, is directly through Hutt controlled territory. Coruscant itself would come to a stand-still. To say ‘a lot’ depends on the success of this meeting is the understatement of the century. 

That weight now rests on Obi-Wan’s shoulders.

“We are already arranging for aid to be sent as a token of goodwill,” Bail says. “A company will be deployed to deliver and distribute the supplies regardless of if the Hutts accept your offer or not.” His hand taps on the edge of his desk in a rare tell of nervousness. 

Obi-Wan shakes his head. This is beginning to sound more and more like a dead end. “What am I authorized to offer?” 

The Jedi act independently of the New Republic. As a council member, Obi-Wan has access to all the resources they have. The Jedi, if nothing else, will not let an entire moon starve. But this is coming from the New Republic, and Obi-Wan has no real power other than as a mouthpiece. 

Bail purses his lips. “Not much. Continuing aid and support from the New Republic for Nar Shaddaa and Nal Hutta is all we can give right now. We cannot back down from our resolution to eradicate slavery, regardless of the consequences.” 

Coruscant, and all of the core worlds, benefited from the institution of slavery just as much as the outer rim did even if the perfectly moral politicians preached against it. The Republic had turned an intentionally blind eye. They had pretended not to know exactly who made their fine silks, refined their oil, fought their War.

After the reformation, Chancellor Organa’s declaration of accountability, and hardline refusal of slavery-sourced imports, had angered more than just the crime syndicates. 

Corruption had crawled its way into the highest levels of the Republic. Into the chancellorship itself. It was their responsibility to insure that would never happen again.

Obi-Wan raises an eyebrow. “Full admittance into the New Republic may sway them.” It’s not a bad idea, nor is it a good one. They’re both grasping at straws. 

The Chancellor shakes his head and steeples his hands in front of him on the desk. “They won’t accept.” 

Being part of the New Republic may guarantee safety, but it also comes with rules and regulations. They’re nearly identical to the ones the Hutts already have in place, but it is the sheer principle of being ruled by a greater power that they will refuse.

“But you should hold the position open anyway.” It may help, whatever bit, as a bartering piece. Obi-Wan will need any scrap he can get if he is going into this alone. “At the very least, a non-voting seat in the Senate.”

Bail concedes with a nod. “I would extend that offer if I wasn’t worried about more than just the Hutts. I’m sure you know there are multiple systems that have threatened withdrawal if the New Republic continues partnership with the Hutts. We are treading a thin line as it is.”

Obi-Wan sighs and shakes his head. There is no clear path forward. There is no right answer. “I will support whatever you choose to do.”

-

“I will support whatever you choose to do.” Obi-Wan can’t give Cody a real answer. This is something Cody has to decide for himself, and they both know that. 

Yet still Cody looks to Obi-Wan for direction, for advice, for council. 

It’s a big step. It will be dangerous, and if Cody choses to proceed, he would be jumping into completely uncharted territory. Not just for himself, but the entire New Republic. There is no legal precedent for this. Commander in Chief is not a position that has ever existed before. It will take Cody’s full focus and dedication. It will take him away from Obi-Wan.

“I know you will.” Cody’s voice is as steady as it has ever been, but Obi-Wan can feel the riot of emotions stirring just under the shields he had built for himself over the course of the War. He would need them going forward more than ever.  “But what do you think I should do?” Cody searches for an answer Obi-Wan will not give him. 

Because if Obi-Wan were to give his true opinion, he’d get down on his knees and beg for Cody to stay. He would offer Cody the world if it meant keeping him at his side. He would use all his famed powers of negotiation to convince Cody that here, at the Temple, was the place he belonged. 

“I think you should do what your heart tells you, my dear.” Obi-Wan selfishly hopes that maybe that’s enough. That maybe Cody’s heart will win over his mind just this once and maybe, maybe, Obi-Wan won’t wake up alone anymore. 

But Obi-Wan’s Commander has never been anything if not logical. He will always choose his brothers over everything else. He will never be able to rest until their safety is guaranteed. How can Obi-Wan keep him from that? How could he ask Cody to stay knowing he would regret every second?

This is not a choice Obi-Wan can make for Cody, and for Cody, for any clone, it’s no choice at all. 

“I should do it.” Cody nods, convincing himself of his own decision. “They need me to lead.”

Obi-Wan smiles even as his mouth goes dry and his heart crumbles in his chest. Everyone left eventually. He thought this moment would get easier.

Cody leaves with something to fight for. A new purpose. A new reason to go on. Obi-Wan lets his walk out of the door.

-

The memory rises unbidden, and Obi-Wan nearly chokes as he tries to swallow it down. He can’t think about that right now.

“I appreciate that. The trust of a High Jedi Master means much.” Bail gives him a fond smile, a real one. “The trust of a friend, I think, means more.” 

Obi-Wan is flattered that Bail thinks so highly of him. They had been through so much together. Bail had seen him at his best and at his worst. Through the throws of war and fragile peace they had built from ruins. To think, after all that, Bail still considers him a friend. Obi-Wan isn’t sure how to respond to that. 

“I will find a more permanent solution, Obi-Wan,” Bail promises. He stands from his seat in an obvious but polite dismissal. “In the meantime, I would ask that you accompany the team sent for the distribution. Perhaps you can speak some sense into Jabba before the official negotiations begin.” 

Bail gives a wry smile, and Obi-Wan responds with an eye roll. Talking sense into a Hutt. Right. Obi-Wan could sooner convince Anakin there were oceans on Tatooine. 

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Obi-Wan doesn’t bother going back to the Temple after his meeting. His visitor's pass clears him for the entire day, and he might as well make good use of it while he can. He spends hours moving from office to office, running errands, soothing tempers, helping to word important speeches. Anything to stay busy. Anything to be useful. 

The work is never done for a Jedi Master. Everyone wants his opinion and input which Obi-Wan is more than happy to give. It finally feels like things are beginning to move in the right direction, towards real peace and Light, even at the glacial pace of democracy.

Eventually, Obi-Wan is able to find a bit of time for himself to start gathering information on the current climate surrounding the Hutts and the crime syndicates. There are prisoners he needs to talk to and fugitives he needs to interrogate if he has any hope of finding leverage strong enough to sway them into cooperating. 

He has just managed to sit down with a recent report from an operative inside Crimson Dawn when he hears a familiar voice call for him. 

“Obi-Wan? Is that you?” 

Obi-Wan smiles to himself as he looks up to find his sister-in-law. Hair done up in an elaborate twist. Her dress is stunning but professional as usual. She looks sure of herself. Somehow at ease in this place of constant debate and strife. It takes a special kind of person to be able to withstand senatorial pressure and come out on the other side still so full of hope. 

Obi-Wan is thankful every day that she and Anakin ended up staying together. There were times when none of them were sure if their marriage would make it through the Dark. 

“Ah, my dear Padmé, I thought for sure you would be back on Naboo this week,” Obi-Wan greets. It’s been several weeks since he had last seen her, and he is always glad for her company. She seems to be as busy as everyone else these days. 

“That was the plan,” Padmé says as she takes the seat next to Obi-Wan. “But Mon Mothma needed my help with preparing her speech for the upcoming State of the Republic address. You know how these things are.”

Obi-Wan chuckles fondly. “Ah, yes, I can say that I definitely do. Odd how the most important things always manage to pop up unexpectedly.” 

Padme flashes him a smile with an amused tilt to her eyes. “You seem to be refreshed from your stay at the Temple.” 

Refreshed is not a word Obi-Wan would use to describe himself. Perhaps Padmé can see something that he can’t. He wishes he could find even a sliver of the contentment she’s managed to find for herself. 

The truth is too heavy to reveal here in a superficially embellished Senator’s lounge. There is a time and place for such conversations. If Obi-Wan is lucky, it will never be the right time. Instead, he keeps the smile on his face and hopes she can’t see the way it turns from genuine to plaster. 

“It may come as a surprise, but I’ve found that not being shot at is a great stress reliever.” Obi-Wan even goes so far as to add a wink. It works to distract her, or at least seems to. 

Padmé leans forward, sharing in his amusement. “I doubt that will last long, knowing you.” 

“I resent that,” Obi-Wan scoffs and turns back to his report. “Unfortunately, you may be right. The Chancellor informed me just this morning that I’m to soothe over the mess in Hutt space. I’ve been trying to prepare since then.”

“Well, if anyone can do it, it’s you.” Padmé gives him a sympathetic smile and then brightens as an idea comes to her. “Can you take a break? Come to lunch with me?” 

There’s nothing he’d love more than taking lunch with her. It would give them an opportunity to talk freely without the constraints of the rotunda and prying eyes. But there is too much to do, and a small part of Obi-Wan --no matter how much he tries to deny it-- wants only to bury himself in work until he can no longer feel the constant ache in his chest. 

“Not now.” Obi-wan apologizes. “I’ve just gotten into it.”

-

“Not now.” Whispered as a promise for later, another day, another life. It’s not a denial. Not a refusal. Just a postponement. Not with the War. Not with the restrictions on them both. Not when Cody can’t say no. 

But they’re so close. Breath shared in the space between them. Safety only found in the company of each other. Close enough to count the freckles. Close enough that the air of whispers stirs tightly kept curls. 

It would be so easy. To bridge that gap. To reach out. To acknowledge this thing that Obi-Wan knows is just on the edge of bursting, balanced on a tightrope. So easy to forget about everything else but each other. Like the War, the Order, the GAR, the regs, don’t even exist outside of Obi-Wan’s quarters. 

Obi-Wan has never felt this way. Not with anyone. Satine hadn’t understood him, hadn’t stood by him, hadn’t supported him. 

Not the way Cody did. 

It’s in the wordless nod, the passing of a cup of tea with just a dash of milk, the teasing quirk of lips that accompany the handing off of a lost lightsaber. It’s in the subtle hand motion to stand down before Cody jumped up to defend, the battle plans poured over in the early hours of the morning, the gentle coax to bed after days spent awake.

It’s the way Obi-Wan feels known and not judged, held but not restrained. Loved without condition.

And here, they don’t have to be General and Commander, Jedi and Clone. On this couch, separated by nothing but unspoken words, they’re just Obi-Wan and Cody. 

“Not now.” Yet Cody’s voice is strained even as he agrees. 

-

“If you insist.” Padmé looks over her shoulder towards the door. She pretends to think for a moment, and Obi-Wan is suddenly acutely aware of why she and Anakin get along so well. The corner of her mouth quirks upwards. “Though, if I remember correctly, Dex’s is serving the Centaxday special all of this week.”

Oh she knows how to play dirty. Obi-wan doesn’t stand a chance. The silent debate in his mind ends quickly with the thought of fresh fries and an old friend. “Keep that up, and you might end up a better negotiator than I am.” 

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The smell of grease hits them like a speeder as they walk through the front doors of the rundown restaurant. Voices filter in and out of the dull background chatter. There’s a sputter from the radiator, and the walls shake as a train passes overhead. It’s dark and a little dirty and exactly what Obi-Wan and Padmé need to get away from the stresses of politics. 

It takes Dex a moment to see them, but when he does, he gives a wave with one of his free hands. “Take a seat!” He calls. “I’ll be there in just a second!” 

The waitress droid directs them both over to a booth. Neither have time to sit for more than a second before the large besalisk is rushing over to pull them both into a hug. “Ah! Obi-Wan! I was beginning to think you were avoiding me!”  

Dex pulls back and reaches a hand up to settle on Padmé’s shoulder. “Padmé, good to see you. Good to see you. It’s been too long.” He motions them both to sit and quickly settles into the booth across from them. 

“It’s good to see you too, Dex,” Padmé says for both of them. She had grown close to Dex after the fourth or fifth time Anakin had dragged her down here. He had called it a date. She had called it a cheap excuse to eat as much as he could. 

Obi-Wan leans forward. “How have you been?”

Dex huffs and settles back, crossing his bottom set of arms over his stomach. “I’ll tell ya. Missy’s got me workin’ like a dog.” He motions towards the waitress droid that was chattering on behind the counter to some Zabrak. “This place never slows down. What of you? The kids causing any trouble?”

Padmé laughs. “Of course. Leia used the Force to steal the cookies from the top of the fridge yesterday. We’ll have to find a new place to hide them soon.” 

“Ah, but she’s practicing,” Dex jokes.

Obi-Wan rolls his eyes, remembering when Anakin had done the exact same thing. Granted he had been nine, not two. The jar had shattered on the floor when he had accidentally dropped it when he had been caught. Of course the gene for mischief would get passed down.

The door jingles as another customer comes in. 

“And what about you Obi-Wan? How come you never bring that commander of yours around anymore?” Dex asks even as he stands to head back to the kitchen.

This is exactly why Obi-Wan had initially hesitated in agreeing. Dex is better than a gundark at sensing trouble. He really does not want to talk about this, but he has to give some sort of answer. 

“Oh I’m not sure.” Obi-Wan’s shrug is anything but casual. “We just fell out of touch, Dex. He’s a very busy man.” It’s the same explanation Obi-Wan gives everyone who asks. It’s the same explanation he’s been giving himself over and over again. 

Dex raises a bushy eyebrow. “That doesn’t sound like a good excuse to me.”

Obi-Wan tries to ignore the way Padmé is watching him with sharp eyes. He keeps his focus on Dex and nothing else. “If he wants to talk to me he’ll come tell me that himself. The last thing I want is to impose where I’m not welcome.”

Anxiety. The prickling of goosebumps on the back of his neck. Eyes watching in the dark. The baring of one’s insecurities. It distorts every other sensation until Obi-Wan is straining to hear the voices of the café over the rushing in his ears. He takes one deep breath. Two. 

“Not welcome?” Dex snorts. “I don’t have to be a Jedi to see all that between you two.” 

-

“He cares for you,” Anakin points out amusedly as they stand together and look out over the ruins of the Separatist stronghold. Down below, the troops scurry from point to point, directed by the officers barking orders into the comms. Cody looks up every so often, as if to check on them, catching his General’s eye and getting a gentle nod in response. 

Obi-Wan doesn’t pretend to misunderstand what Anakin is talking about. He knows. He has known since Cody’s crush had first started to flicker in the Force between them, though it has evolved far beyond a childish crush by now. Obi-Wan is no fool. 

He is not going to take advantage of Cody either. 

Cody doesn’t have a choice, not really. The feelings he has, regardless of how genuine they may be, are born from lack of other options rather than from the freedom of expression. Nothing more than bonds made through shared hardships and trauma. 

Cody has no more choice in the matters of his heart than Obi-Wan does. And regardless of what either of them feel, or want, the fact stands that this, whatever it is, cannot be acted on.

“Your point?” Obi-Wan raises an eyebrow, folds his hands into the sleeves of his robe, and lifts his chin a little bit higher. He is a Jedi. He is a General. That would always come before anything else.

Anakin shrugs, but the smirk does not leave his face. “Just saying.” He lets that hang in the air, dragging out the silence between them for the drama of what he’s about to say next. Obi-Wan rolls his eyes. Anakin has always been insufferable when he thinks he’s uncovered someone’s secrets, particularly Obi-Wan’s. “Cody might help you… loosen up a bit.” 

The Order frowns upon murder. Obi-Wan is aware of this, though Mace might grant him an exception when he finds out why. Obi-Wan punctuates his glare with a flare of irritation across the training bond he still has with Anakin.

He does not have to explain himself to anyone, let alone his obnoxious former padawan. 

Instead of dignifying that with a response, he watches over his men from a distance. The battle is won. That is all that matters right now.

-

Dex leaves to attend to the new customer before the conversation can go any further. Obi-Wan has never been more grateful.

Padmé quickly picks up the dropped conversation with practiced ease. She keeps it light and focuses on the newest gossip in the senate, the latest petty conflict, the messy drama.

Obi-Wan listens with rapt attention as they share their meal. He stores away what might be useful and shares his own bits of information in return. He laughs at her jokes and cracks a few of his own. It’s comfortable. He’s happy to sit here with her. And thoughts of the past, of Cody, eventually retreat to the back of his mind where they belong. 

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Obi-Wan doesn’t mean to fall asleep during the council meeting. It’s just that he’s been chasing down leads trying to find any scrap of information on the Hutts for days. He’s been spending every spare minute absorbed in it. On top of that, there’s the whole mess about Bly retiring and trying to find his replacement. But the council room is quiet, it’s comfortable, it’s filled with his family. Obi-Wan feels safe, at ease, for the first time in a while. Which is, of course, when his exhaustion decides to rear its head. 

With every word his eyes get heavier and heavier. He’s sure that Mundi’s report is important. He really should pay attention. 

“Boring you, are we, Master Kenobi?” 

Obi-Wan jolts to attention, much to the amusement of the other council members. A tender ripple spreads around them in the Force, and it feels suspiciously like laughter. 

A dark flush spreads across Obi-Wan’s cheeks even as he ducks his head to hide it. He’s never been more grateful for his beard and what little coverage it gives. 

“Apologies, Master Yoda.” Obi-Wan nods in his great grandmaster's direction, and then again to Mundi. The meeting continues without further disruption, but Obi-Wan can feel the way Mace is paying sharp attention to him, and he knows Mace won’t just let that slide.

Just as predicted, Mace corners him immediately after the meeting is over. He falls into step next to Obi-Wan as they walk aimlessly down the hall. Obi-Wan can feel the concern radiating off of him. He wants to tell Mace that he has no reason to worry, but he knows that won’t work this time any better than it has before. 

Obi-Wan waits for Mace to start, but he doesn’t, and the two continue to walk down the hall side-by-side in silence. It grates on Obi-Wan’s nerves. He appreciates that Mace cares for him, but he isn’t a child in the créche that needs reminders to eat and sleep anymore. 

They pass column after column. Sunlight streaming in and casting shadows onto the carpeted floor. Obi-Wan sighs and looks over. “Can I help you, Mace?”

“You’re having trouble sleeping again,” Mace says, blunt as ever, but there is worry in his voice and a frown on his face that tells of how deeply he cares. 

Denying it is pointless. Obi-Wan tries anyway. “I’ve always had trouble. That’s nothing new. I just find myself neglecting sleep in favor of research.” But there is something more. They both know it.

Mace hums. They keep walking. They pass another column. “This is for your mission to Nal Hutta tomorrow?”

The giggling laughter of a youngling bounces off the walls and brightens the air around them. Obi-Wan nods. “I’m hoping to find something of help in the negotiations.”

There is something else that Mace wants to say. It lingers just there underneath the surface. Obi-Wan isn’t quite sure if it’s good or bad, but the longer they walk in silence the more it unnerves him. 

“I saw that Commander Cody is on the roster to lead the escort.” Mace raises an eyebrow and glances at Obi-Wan out of the corner of his eye. Probably trying to gauge his reaction. 

The way Obi-Wan throws up his shields is answer enough. 

“Oh?” Obi-Wan aims for nonchalant and falls towards strangled. 

Mace stops walking. Obi-Wan wants to just keep going and leave him standing there but he doesn’t. He stops. He does not look over. 

Obi-Wan tries to ignore the way Mace is looking at him. He tries to ignore the way his heart pounds. He is a Jedi Master. He shouldn’t be getting so worked up over something so small. It wasn’t as if they were on bad terms with each other. In fact, they had even spoken last time they had run into one another. A quick hello in the halls of the senate, neither of them having time for more. But it was something, and Obi-Wan is ashamed to admit that he has been desperately hanging onto the knowledge that Cody isn’t mad at him. 

They had grown apart. Nothing more. Nothing less. 

Why did everyone else insist on reading further into it? Why did he?

Mace sighs, apparently having felt at least a small portion of the panic climbing up Obi-Wan’s spine. He reaches out a hand. “Obi-Wan-”

“Mace.” Obi-Wan meets his eyes only to find sympathy that he doesn’t want or deserve. 

“You’re lonely.” Which is a lie. Obi-Was is not lonely. He still visits Anakin and the twins. He still talks with his créchemates. He still sees Ashoka on the weekends when they‘re both able. He has no reason to be lonely. 

Obi-Wan tells Mace as much who keeps looking at him with a knowing frown but luckily doesn’t keep pushing. Mace drops his hand, and they continue on down the hall. 

They come to the end. Obi-Wan should head left, towards the archives, in the same direction Mace is headed, but he turns right instead. They both pause before they part ways. 

“Be safe tomorrow, Obi-Wan. May the Force be with you.” Mace’s voice is sincere. 

The Force feels oddly still, as if waiting for the other shoe to drop. In Obi-Wan’s experience it has only meant trouble. 

“Always,” Obi-Wan says with a smile and walks away from Mace, keeping his eyes resolutely forward. 

Chapter Text

Cody stands alone at the bridge of his flagship looking out over the speckled horizon of Nar Shaddaa. It spins slowly below them, swinging in a wide lazy orbit around its mother planet only just visible in the distance. Her surface is marred with the deep gouges of streets and skylanes. Bright lines of artificial light crossing back and forth over one another as they trace a hexagonal boundary around her capital city. 

Nar Shaddaa is a beautiful moon from orbit. A functional replica of Coruscant on a much smaller scale. Cities built outwards until they covered every inch of surface area in concrete and durasteel, and then built upwards until the lower levels buckled under the weight of nearly 85 billion people.  

She’s rotten to the core. The roots of corruption run deeper than the city itself. Sentient trafficking, illegal experimentation, spice refineries. All looked over and unaddressed in favor of a few credits slipped into back pockets. The people are driven mad by desperation. Resorting to crime and looting for food and rent money while the flimsy government has abandoned them in all but name. 

And yet, as dangerous and wicked as her people may be, she is a key piece on the ever shifting dejarik board of galactic politics. Currently, Nar Shaddaa is defenseless and ripe for reaping.

Even from high-orbit, Cody can see a disturbing lack of atmospheric defense systems. There are no patrols, no anti-aircraft satellites, and no shields. The only thing left is a sputtering laser grid that flickers over less than an eighth of the moon. 

It has not gone unnoticed that the ground control towers have not even attempted to hail their star destroyer. 

Cody’s fingers twitch against the helmet tucked under his arm. They haven’t even landed and the situation here is already so much worse than what they had been told. 

His eyes scan the viewport as he runs through the debrief again and again in his head. This is just a relief mission, and yet it is so much more than that. There are problems here they cannot leave unaddressed. Cody feels as if he’s heading into battle again; two years younger and standing by Kenobi’s side looking out over the expanse of a soon-to-be battlefield. 

The space at his side has never felt so empty.

-

Cody stands alone at the bridge of their flagship looking out over the hazy horizon of Utapau. The dust-ball is covered in zipping separatists patrol ships like ants swept into a flurry under the shadow of a boot. The Negotiator hums under his feet. Her ion-engines are primed and ready for anything that this battle will hurl at them. 

In less than an hour, he will be sending his brothers to die. 

In less than an hour, they will be fighting one of the last battles of the War.

They had come so far. They had sacrificed so much. Cody only hopes that he will be able to look back on the decisions he’s made and find that it had all been worth it. 

“What are you thinking, Commander?”

Cody does not need to turn to see who has stepped up to his side. Kenobi stands in the space that Cody hadn’t even realized was empty until it had been filled. Now, he’s not sure how he had ever managed to live without it. 

There is so much riding on this victory. This single battle could bring the end of the War, or lead to another drawn out chase across that galaxy that could cost hundreds of more lives. None of them dare to hope for anything less.

“I think we have our work cut out for us, sir.” Cody says instead of speaking his worries into existence. They all know what can happen from a single misstep. 

“Yes, well,” Kenobi says wryly, “Grievous does love to make our lives as difficult as possible.”

Cody huffs. “He likes to make your life difficult, sir. We just get caught in the crossfire.” 

He chances a glance out of the corner of his eyes and finds an amused smile on Kenobi’s lips. Cody’s gut twists, and he turns back to look out of the viewport instead. 

Maybe if this battle went well, maybe if they won, maybe if they could end this once and for all, Cody could find the words he’s been holding for more than three years. 

The delicate thread of hope that winds around Cody’s heart is for more than just an end to this War. 

-

Cody is unceremoniously jerked back into the present by a familiar teasing voice in his ear. 

“Any particular reason why you’re so wound up, Commander?”

Waxer. He had insisted on coming along when he had found out that Kenobi was going to be working with them. Cody gets a feeling he’s going to regret approving that transfer request.

Cody doesn’t give Waxer the satisfaction of looking over to see the osik -eating grin that is sure to be on his face. “I’m not.”

“That finger you’ve been tapping on your bucket for the last ten minutes suggests otherwise.”

Force-damned scouts and their force-damned ability to pick up on everything. Waxer wouldn’t still be around if he wasn’t good at what he does; Cody just wishes he would pay more attention to his actual job instead of poking when he knows Cody can’t retaliate.

Waxer is going to continue to stand there until something happens. He’s too stubborn, and too amused, to leave it as is. Cody spares a drop of pity for Boil. The Commander sighs. He misses the days when Waxer was still a shiny, too-scared to even curse in front of his commanding officer. 

“What do you want?” It’s apparently the wrong thing to say as Waxer fluffs like a tooka that got the cream. 

“The General’s here.”

Cody turns so fast that his armor clacks together. Waxer’s grin only widens. 

“When?” Surely Cody would have noticed a ship landing in the hangar.

“About a minute ago,” Waxer says, motioning to the flashing indicator light. “Figured you’d want to be part of the welcoming party.”

Cody grumbles under his breath as he brushes past Waxer and starts towards the lift. He isn’t quite fast enough to avoid Waxer slipping through the closing doors to ride with him. 

Waxer looks Cody up and down and then grimaces at what he finds. Set shoulders and clenched teeth. A fist curled into a white-knuckled grip. “Kark, what happened between you two?” 

“Nothing.” It’s the truth. The issue is that Cody wishes it wasn’t. 

Waxer narrows his eyes but doesn’t say anything more, apparently content with what Cody isn’t saying. 

There’s no reason for Cody to be so worked up about this. The Jedi has moved on. Kenobi never had feelings for him, and if he ever did, they're long gone by now. 

And yet, Cody holds a childish hope that maybe, even if he can’t salvage what might have been, he can at least piece back together what they did have. He misses having Kenobi as a friend, a confidant. He misses having an equal, a partner, a hand to guide him when the way forward seemed impassible. 

They had worked so well together during the War. They had understood each other on a fundamental level. If nothing else, this mission is an opportunity to finally close the rift that had grown between them. Cody is not going to let that pass him by. 

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Obi-Wan is not a man who runs from confrontation. Which is exactly why he’s not hiding in his ship, regardless of what Arfour may think. 

There’s a gathering of men waiting at the base of his starfighter. He can feel their excited anxiety building upon one another. Some of their signatures feel familiar. Old friends and vets he had loved, still loves, so dearly. Others feel new, unpolished and unbroken, undoubtedly excited to meet the Jedi of whom they had heard so many exaggerated stories. 

And there’s Cody too.

Obi-Wan can spot him like a splash of color on a blank canvas. And maybe it wasn’t that his Commander was so much more than everyone else, but it was the familiarity that comes from time and trials worn together that allows the Jedi to pin-point him so easily.

Cody feels like a grip of a well worn fountain pen and the crinkled spine of a reread book. He’s the warmth that seeps from a hot cup of tea. The scent of bread just down the street from a bakery.

It’s so easy to fall into orbit around his Commander. The Commander. His very presence is grounding, anchoring, in the way he holds himself both in life and in the Force. It’s a wonder Obi-Wan had ever managed to slip away from such a gravity-well. 

Arfour chirps again, a teasing string of warbles she had most certainly learned from Artoo. 

Obi-Wan takes a deep breath to steady himself and hikes his pack a little higher on his shoulder. This was going to happen sooner or later. There was no sense in prolonging the inevitable regardless of how painful it may be. 

Wariness. Found in the shy offering and fear of the reaction. It’s the cautious suspicion looking for that which can and will go wrong. It is the pulling at Obi-Wan’s gut to run, to turn tail and hide, to fly his ship back to Coruscant. 

Obi-Wan is not a man who runs from confrontation. Either this will end well, or it won’t, and either way it’s unlikely they’ll see much of each other after this, even if Obi-Wan wishes they could.

-

Obi-Wan steps out of the gunship with all the grace of a man who had been doing it his entire life. This is not his first war. He can only hope it will be his last.

Commanding soldiers is familiar, though he wishes more than anything that it wasn’t. The heavy mantle of General is an unwelcome weight, even if it sits perfectly on Obi-Wan’s shoulders. 

The way to act, to hold oneself, to accept and give orders, to instill loyalty and inspire hope. It was all a practiced delicate dance, and Obi-Wan had learned the steps at fourteen years old. 

He had been young. Too young. And yet older then than nearly every man now under his command. 

There are rows and rows and rows of them all standing at perfect attention. Ramrod straight and barely breathing. Every helmet is looking ahead and yet every eye is on him.

Obi-Wan can feel the vast ocean of them in the Force. Each unique. Each an individual. Even now, Obi-Wan knows he will spend hours sitting with them learning their names, personalities, hobbies. 

There is one trooper set a step forward from all of the rest. The Commander. His signature is weighted, sharp, steady. His full attention is on Obi-Wan. Watching. Assessing. He is deceptively neutral through the entire introduction and debriefing, but Obi-Wan knows the Commander is judging each breath, word, and step. 

And after, the Commander stands alone as Obi-Wan approaches. Even behind the helmet, his eyes cut straight through the careful façade Obi-Wan has crafted for the men and finds him lacking. 

“CC-2224 reporting for duty, sir.” The Commander salutes. The motion sharp and crisp and completely contrary to the near dismissive mood that rolls through the Force. 

This Commander will not tolerate a single misstep or mistake. Not with the lives of his brothers on the line. Not when the fate of the war rests in their hands. 

Obi-Wan is determined not to let him down.

“Do you have a name, Commander? If you don’t mind me using it.”

Confusion. Apprehension. And then finally, the Commander takes off his helmet to meet Obi-Wan eye to eye.

“My name is Cody, sir.”

“Well then Cody, let’s get started, shall we?” Obi-Wan gives a small smile, and he feels something like cautious approval drift in the air between them. 

-

The bay doors of the star fighter take an age to open. Or at least it feels that way when Obi-Wan’s heart is thrumming in his throat.  

There’s a small gathering of men at the bottom of the ramp, just as Obi-Wan had sensed. He’s flattered that so many of them had actually wanted to see him. The Jedi had expected to be largely ignored by the troopers while he was staying on their ship, even if he had considered them his friends during the War. 

After the dust had settled and the loose ends of citizenship and treaties had been tied up, most of the clones had moved on and found lives of their own. There were the exceptions, of course, those mostly in upper command that had stayed close with their Jedi generals. Wolffe could hardly be pried from Master Koon’s side. Rex spent more time with the twins than without them. 

In the beginning, Obi-Wan had had nearly daily visits from members of Ghost company. Waxer and Boil and Numa would often come by the Temple for a visit. Crys had always sent samples of his newest experiment in baking. As time went on, and Obi-Wan admittedly spent less and less time on Coruscant, fewer and fewer of them bothered to keep up the illusion of staying in contact. The only real consistent messaging that Obi-Wan still kept with his men were the holo-cards Wooley would send from the planets he visited in the exploracorps. 

They had all found lives of their own, cobbled together from the scraps and meager stipends they had been issued. They had built a haven for themselves from the dirt that had been kicked in their faces. Obi-Wan couldn’t be happier for them. And yet-

“General Kenobi!” Waxer jumps and waves, pushing himself to the front of the group. “General!” 

Obi-Wan smiles and reaches out to grip Waxer’s finger-painted bracer. “Waxer! It’s good to see you, Lieutenant.” 

Waxer beams, smile widening as he pulls Obi-Wan in closer. “It’s Captain now, actually.” 

Obi-Wan can’t contain his huff of amusement. “Well, then congratulations.” He looks around to the others in the huddle, nodding and greeting those he knew. The shinies stare with wide eyes and the vets reach out to catch Obi-Wan’s vambrace.   

Cody stands at the edge of the group, quiet and waiting. His presence in the force is calm and steady but fizzing with an anxious static that only grows stronger as the welcoming party begins to dwindle. 

There is no a grand reunion.  There are no song birds or music. There is no instant spark of reconnection. Obi-Wan wasn’t expecting one. Instead there is a familiar uptwitch of lips and the softening of hard eyes as their gazes meet. Pieces carved and made for each other, finally fitting back together.

Nostalgia. In the wishing for a time long past. In the embers of a roaring fire. Obi-Wan wants and misses more than he ever thought possible. He lets the emotion rise and fall and drift, sharing in this one moment, before he lets it pass into the Force. 

“It’s good to see you again, Commander.” 

The paint of Cody’s armor hasn’t changed much. There are a few additions and a fresh coat, but there is still the signature starburst of his chestplate, the orange visor of the helmet held loosely in his hand, the delicate white pinstriping over the right pauldron. 

“You too, General,” Cody says, and the lines of his mouth move with a bit more weight. The wrinkles of his brow are a little deeper. The spark in his brown eyes is still as sharp as ever but he’s aged, matured. Cody wears it well, very well, Obi-Wan realizes, and then immediately wishes he hadn’t. 

“I’m hardly a General anymore, Cody,” Obi-Wan teases, and ignores the flutter of his heart when Cody raises an eyebrow in challenge. 

“Of course, sir.” 

Obi-Wan sighs, exaggerating the motion, but doesn’t bother to try again. There would be no persuading Cody after he was set. 

There’s a lapse, then, where there would not have been one before. An almost-awkward silence, neither sure where to go next. 

Obi-Wan opens his mouth to say something, anything, at the same time Cody does. Arfour saves them both with a delighted squeak as she races down the ramp to greet Waxer. 

Cody clears his throat. “Are you ready to get started, sir?” 

Obi-Wan nods and motions with his hand. “Lead the way, Commander.” 

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The bustle of the bridge is the only thing that hasn’t changed since Obi-Wan last stood here. Everything else is new, updated, and rearranged. Even the troopers have different uniforms. There are nat-borns too, mixed in among the vode and wearing the same new formal greys. 

The holotable is state-of-the-art and sits in the center of a gapped ring of transpariscreens which display the Nal Hutta system including, Obi-Wan is surprised to find, a rough timeline of the recent attacks by the crime syndicates. 

Cody stands, arms braced against the rim of the table, with his back to the viewport. The holotable is lit up to display a model of Nar Shaddaa, color coded and marked with the boundaries of the planned supply drop zones and flagged with dangerous hot spots. 

“What’s your plan, Commander?” Obi-Wan asks, stepping up to the table. The blue light of the holo highlights the tightly controlled curls of Cody’s hair and casts the curve of his scar in a cool shadow. Obi-Wan forces his focus to the diagram. 

“We’re sending gunships to the surface at each of the major spaceports. From there the supplies will be routed to the designated warehouses that the local government agreed to clear ahead of time. We will be staying a few days to oversee the proper distribution and allocation of the resources to prevent any misappropriation,” Cody recites as if he’s read the debrief a hundred times. He probably has. “All the standard stuff from when we did this during the War, General.”

If it were standard, Obi-Wan thinks, the Senate would not have sent the Commander in Chief. “Seems to be a bit below your pay grade.” 

Cody gives an amused shrug. “Anything to get out of the office, sir.” He flicks over his datapad absently, undoubtedly looking over the debrief again. “And what about you?”

Obi-Wan understands the sentiment all too well. He has taken nearly any mission he can from the council if it will get him off of Coruscant. Even this one, as messy as it seems and promises to be worse. Still, it has brought him back to Cody, and that must be worth something. 

“I’ve been sent to bring peace to the galaxy.” Obi-Wan is only half joking.

Cody pauses and looks up with a smirk twitching at the edge of his mouth. “So just another Taungsday for you then.”

Obi-Wan laughs, surprising himself as it bubbles past his lips. He had nearly forgotten how much he missed their banter. Cody’s amusement slips subtle and sly in the Force, wrapping around the two of them like no time had passed at all, like this wasn’t the first real conversation they had had with each other in months. 

“Bail seems to think I’ll be able to do it before sundown with time to spare.”

“You have my full confidence, General.” Cody has the gall to wink. Wink. The smug bastard knows just how awful negotiating with the Hutts will be. No doubt he has fully prepared to gloat when his objective turns an easy success while Obi-Wan is left with hours of bargaining and little to show for it.

“That makes one of us,” Obi-Wan drones, trying to convey as much weariness as he can. 

Dealing with the Senate was never fun, not before the War, not during, and certainly not after. On the few times Cody had accompanied the Jedi into the rotunda during the War, they had spent most of their time trading gossip about the senators and coming up with wild speculations of what they did in their freetime. It had been the most fun Obi-Wan can ever remember having in the stuffy building. 

Their eyes meet through the spinning holo of Nar Shaddaa. Mirth and amusement mirrored as Cody is likely remembering the same memory as Obi-Wan. The Force is a near-timid budding of fragile emotions, too many and too dense to name. It grows with every heartbeat they share in their fraction of silence in the noisy room.

“The mission report didn’t give much information,” Cody says, switching back to the more important matter at hand. And just like that, the moment is gone. “I understand you’re here to find a more permanent solution. What does that look like?”

Obi-Wan sighs. “I wish I knew.” He shakes his head. “I don’t have much to work with. I’m only here to insure the Hutts won’t back out of their contract with the New Republic. Anything official will be handled at a later meeting that I’ve also been sent to set up.”

Cody narrows his eyes, obviously displeased. “What have you been given to work with?” His voice has an edge, but it’s not aimed at the Jedi. As Commander in Chief, he is well aware of how much the Senate demands with what little they give.

“Not much,” Obi-Wan admits, and then shrugs as he comes to a loss. “The promise of more aid. We can’t give them a seat in the Senate.”

Cody nods. His eyes watch the holotable. Nal Hutta spins on in front of them. Nar Shaddaa orbiting her again and again and again. The planet and her moon are lit up with a tracing of the major skylanes. White lines criss crossing the shaded boundaries and flagged barriers. A hundred avenues and a thousand dead-ends. 

“Aid is a temporary solution,” Cody says.

Obi-Wan’s hand comes up to brush across his beard. “We know.” He has looked at the facts until his neck ached and eyes burned and has still come no closer to an answer than he was at the beginning.

Cody’s eyes narrow as he shifts his weight forward, leaning more heavily on his arms. “They’ll need to set up their own military, and quickly, if they want to stand a chance against the crime syndicates.” His eyes flick across the hologram, seeing what isn’t shown, pulling strategies from thin air.

“We know.”

“The Hutts won’t agree to align fully with the New Republic.”

“And we can’t offer it,” Obi-Wan sighs. Dead-end after dead-end. It’s exhausting to see Cody come to all the same conclusions he had come to himself. “More than a dozen systems have threatened withdrawal if the Hutts are annexed.”

Logically, he knows there is another solution, a better way, there has to be. Obi-Wan just can’t see it, and he’s out of time to find it.

-

Cody frowns, thinking, working the information over and over in his mind. Nar Shaddaa is defenseless, starving. She’s on the edge of a coup, and a full take over could mean the end of New Republic access to Kessel. The Hutts are weak without their alliances, and the syndicates have all but declared war on them. Nearly weekly attacks drain their control ounce by ounce. If the New Republic doesn’t step in now, all of their progress to end slavery in the outer rim would be for nothing and control of Hutt space would shift into the hands of those not so willing to bend to the subject of a higher power. 

It is easy, Cody understands, to view them as nothing more than pawns from his position of power. A wave of his hand and the entire moon would fall under New Republic control. He has the authority to send his men into every factory, every shop, every home, and put an end to the crime that has infested Nar Shaddaa. To give them peace and prosperity. To defend them against the exploits of the syndicates. 

It would be laughably easy to take control of the system. Grand Hutt Council and all. 

But Cody isn’t here to invade. He’s here to help. And rushing into cities he doesn’t know, arresting people he doesn’t understand, condemning people for a way of life he’s never been subjected to, won’t solve anything. Change, and real security, if it’s possible at all, has to come from within. 

The only way to do that is to give real change a chance to survive before it can be ripped out, root and stem, by the corrupt. 

“What if we take Nar Shaddaa?”

The ‘we’ slips accidentally from his mouth. So easy to forget that this is not their mission, their responsibility, their men. 

We will share all rises unbidden and unwelcome to the forefront of Cody’s mind. It is all he can do to keep the flush from his cheeks.

Kenobi frowns, brow furrowing, and turns to face Cody fully. “We cannot send troops into neutral territory.”

Cody shakes his head. “That’s not what I’m saying.” He points to the hologram of Nal Hutta, away from his main objective, and shifts their focus, divided as it is, completely.

Kenobi looks down at the hologram again. 

“The Hutt council sits on Nal Hutta. We can’t make them part of the New Republic, and they won’t want to join anyway.” Cody motions again to the moon, seeming almost small and unsuspecting until the moment you step foot on her surface. “But if we let Nar Shaddaa join the Senate separately, we would be able to give them aid and defense until they can sustain themselves independently.” 

“But that would split the alliance of the system. That’s asking for War,” Kenobi protests, shaking his head. 

Cody sighs and looks over at his Jedi. “They’re already at War, General,” he reasons. “The syndicates are attacking weekly. The Hutts’ defense is growing weaker.” They all know what will happen if they do nothing. They all know what will happen if the Hutts fall. 85 billion people at the mercy of the Shadow Collective.

“If we annex Nar Shaddaa,” Cody begins again, “and let the Hutts choose their senator-”

There’s a light in the Jedi’s eyes. “We’d be letting the Hutts keep their sovereignty while taking responsibility for their people.” Kenobi’s expression settles as he sees the pieces fall into place. 

“Exactly.” Cody watches the plan grow and take shape between them. It’s not ideal by any means, but it is something.

“That would insure our alliance with the Hutts and access to Kessell indefinitely,” Kenobi adds, and then chuckles in disbelief. “That's brilliant, Cody.” 

A flush creeps up the collar of Cody’s blacks at the praise. It doesn’t mean anything, he knows that, but it takes all of his willpower to force his reaction into something more appropriate. He needs to get his emotions in check and quickly. He was never this sloppy during the War.

Cody turns and catches Kenobi’s eye, leaning in as much as he dares. The rest of the bridge seemed distant before but now it falls away completely as the distance between them lessens. 

“Now it’s your job to convince them to grant Nar Shaddaa semi-independence,” Cody says, voice light and teasing.

Kenobi scoffs but doesn’t move away. His blue eyes nearly glow in the light. This close, Cody can see the flecks of gray. “I think I’d have better luck convincing them a sarlacc is docile.” 

“If anyone can, it’s you, sir.” Cody intends it to be a joke, but his voice is a little too soft, a little too sincere. Kenobi’s face twists into an unreadable expression. A deep red flush high on his cheeks. 

Kenobi straightens, and the sounds of the bridge come flooding back. Cody is acutely aware of the way Waxer is, and has been, watching them. Kenobi clears his throat, and his eyes dart towards a spare datapad. “I’ll need to make a call to the Chancellor and inform him of the updated negotiation plans.”

Cody nods, heart sinking, and says, “Of course, sir.” even as the Jedi is already moving away from the table. 

That had been… not terrible, Cody could admit, but not nearly as good as he had wanted. He had hoped for a moment, maybe, an opening, for an offer of a private conversation or even just a shared meal. A chance to talk. A chance to catch up. 

Cody lets out a sigh, and glares sharply at the sound of a giggle he hears coming from Waxer’s direction.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

When Obi-Wan returns to the bridge nearly half an hour later, the ship is a flurry of motion. Troopers are rushing into position, carrying boxes and bags and an ensemble of other packages as they load the supplies onto the gunships. It is familiar. Too familiar. Pre-battle frenzy was enough to stress-out even the most level headed jedi. 

Taking deep breaths, Obi-Wan easily lifts his shields to protect himself from the anxietyrushstress he can feel radiating from the troopers, broadcast like a beacon. The flow of it lessens as he reaches the bridge, but the calm here is more than just an illusion, close controlled and whipped into shape. Chaos has no place at the helm of a ship, and Cody does not frazzle easily. His very presence gives every one of his men something to hold onto. 

Obi-Wan watches as the Commander speaks into his comm and looks out the viewport. Gunships zip down to the surface of Nar Shaddaa in a tight formation. Fighters close rank around the moon, preparing for the worst. From high-orbit, it almost looks as though they’re preparing for a full assault. It would be overkill, maybe, for any place other than this.

As Obi-Wan gets closer, he manages to pick out bits and pieces of Cody’s conversation. Directions, orders, corrections. The Commander juggles a hundred plates at once and not a single one of them falls. They will go in. They will drop off the supplies. They will get out. No men will be lost, and this will be nothing more than a standard relief mission. 

At least, that’s what they hope for. Realistically, and Obi-Wan knowing his own luck, a hundred different things will go wrong before the end of the mission. Compounded by the fact that nothing is ever easy with the Hutts, and the outer rim is currently on the verge of collapse. Right. Just a ‘Standard Relief Mission.’

The Commander pauses when he sees Obi-Wan move up to stand at his side. He quickly finishes his directive, then clicks off his comm and turns his attention completely to Obi-Wan. 

“Yes, sir?” Cody asks, already prepared for the bad news that is sure to come from The Jedi’s mouth. 

“Nothing, Cody, I’m sorry to bother you. I just thought you would like to know I’m about to head down to Nal Hutta. I’ll be back before the end of the rotation.” It wasn’t technically necessary for Obi-Wan to tell Cody anything. They had different objectives and different missions. Their only overlap was geography and convenience. Obi-Wan isn’t even entirely sure why he had bothered to notify Cody in the first place. Maybe it’s old habits, or maybe it’s Obi-Wan’s wishful thinking that Cody might still want to be informed. That he still cares. 

Cody nods. Bucket dipping just slightly. “Yes, sir. Did you want an escort?”

The Jedi waves him off. “Oh that’s hardly necessary. I’m more than capable of handling this on my own.” 

“I know you are.” The earnestness in Cody’s voice stops any further protest that builds in Obi-Wan’s mouth. His voice is kind, almost soft, and if not for the helmet between them, Obi-Wan is sure his eyes would be filled with the intense honesty that never fails to see the very core of the Jedi.

“But do you want an escort?” Cody asks again gently. “Presenting a united front could seem more persuasive.”

“I-” Obi-Wan wants to deny it, to turn away the offer, but, kark it all, Cody’s right. “I suppose it would be helpful. But what of your men?” Cody is supposed to be leading his own mission. He couldn’t just abandon that to follow his old general around for the day. Could he?

Cody turns his back to the viewport entirely to face the Jedi. “This is a standard supply drop,” He says. “My men are more than capable of handling it on their own. If they need me, I would only be half an orbit away.” 

They both know Cody is not letting Obi-Wan go alone, even if it is not him personally who stands at Obi-Wan’s side during the meeting. During the War, Obi-Wan had been allowed to go alone a grand total of five times. After the fifth diplomatic mission, and the fifth aggressive-negotiation-turned-shoot-out, the Jedi had been practically required to have a squad of troopers around anytime he went planetside. “You make a convincing argument.”

Cody leans in, closer than necessary, closer than he should be. “Is it really an argument, General, if you were never going to say no?” 

Obi-Wan’s cheeks flush a deep red. It crawls up and tinges his ears and darkens the freckles across his nose. Cody, irritating, infuriating, obstinate Cody, pops with poorly restrained glee in the Force. 

“It’s settled then. We’ll go together.” Obi-Wan wants to protest against the sheer principle of it all, but he folds, just as Cody knew he would. “Let’s hurry then. The sooner this is over, the better.” 

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Nal Hutta smells awful. Deep crevices in the ground belch eerily green sulfuric gas into the air that leaks through the filters in Cody’s helmet. It burns the eyes and leaves a heavy gasp in every breath fighting for fresh air. The atmosphere is suffocating in its weight and heat and moisture that leaves them both sticky with sweat. It’s fitting, Cody thinks, that a species as nasty as the hutts originated on a planet that is somehow worse. 

The roots of mangrove trees arch high above them, finding purchase on patches of solid ground between the pools of stagnant brine that cover most of the planet’s surface. Half a mile ahead, the land rises above the water line and slopes into a small hill on top of which sits a misshapen bulbous building, Gardulla the Hutt’s Palace. Short stubby spires rise like fingers from the center, cut through with a sickly green light smeared foggy from the gas in the air. 

Cody has several questions; the least of which pertain to why they had to land so far away in the first place and wade through shin deep 'water' to get to the palace. He was never going to get this out of his armor. 

“Never thought I’d prefer Geonosis, General.” 

“Now don’t set your standards too high, my dear,” Kenobi begins in a voice which is entirely too sophisticated for the way his robe is covered in an unidentified slime. “We haven’t even gotten to the worst part.”

Looking around, Cody isn’t sure how this could get much worse, but he’s not about to question the Jedi. 

On the bridge, they hadn’t had much time to talk. There had been the hustle and bustle of pre-mission preparations as well as the last-minute changes to the plan. More than that, there had been dozens of bridge officers and support staff, and most importantly Waxer, within earshot, and all the things that Cody had planned to say had been shoved aside. 

But now they’re alone. It’s certainly not the backdrop Cody had imagined, but it’s possibly the only time they will have together before Kenobi gets back on his fighter and flies right through Cody’s grasp. If he wants things to change, if he wants to reach across the divide, Cody has to take the leap now, or risk letting everything fall back to the way they had been. 

There is so much that Cody wants to say, wants to ask. Two years was a long time for things to change. He wants to know the missions Kenobi has been on. The last new tea he tried. The recent chaos from the créche. 

He wants things to be the way they were during the War. When their duty could be set aside for a quiet evening, and there had been nothing but conversation that had come so easy with the uncomplicated company of someone who understood. 

And yet Cody can’t manage to find the words, rehearsed again and again, muttered into the dark of his bunk, turned over and over in his mind for days of hyperspace travel. The silence stretches between them, and neither say a word as they trudge through the muck and the mud. 

Cody can’t help the way he chances the occasional glance towards his general. Kenobi looks as unaffected by the smell as he is the murky water that dribbles over the top edges of his boots with every step. The palace draws nearer, their time draws short, Cody’s window of opportunity narrows. 

There's a dozen ways to begin and what comes out instead is, “So how’s Skywalker?” Cody blurts and then winces within the safety of his bucket. That had not been what he wanted to say. 

Kenobi seems amused at least. He can probably feel Cody’s conflict in the Force. Smug bastard. “He’s… recovering.” It takes a moment for him to find the right word. “The twins are helping him though. They give him something to focus on.”

Cody smiles at the memory of the last time he had seen the twins, Leia smashing an uncoordinated handful of icing all over Luke’s chubby cheeks. It had been quite the sight.  

There was a pause. Both of them waiting for the other to continue. Cody couldn’t afford to let the conversation drop even if it’s the furthest thing from what he wants to talk about. “And Amidala? How’s she managing with the senate and the kids?”

“Honestly, I think the senate is easy compared to chasing after those two, but she’s managing just fine. I’ll never know how she does it all.”

“She probably sleeps even less than you do, sir.” Cody relishes in the half-hearted glare he receives for the jab. As he looks back to the path, he realizes that they’re less than a quarter mile out. Cody needs to say something, anything, and quickly. 

Kenobi speaks first before Cody can fumble around the half-formed peace offering. “It’s a wonder she ever has time for those monthly dinner parties.” He shakes his head and chuckles fondly. “The twins overturned the whole table at the last one. Spilled the food everywhere. We spent half an hour just trying to get the jelly from Leia’s hair.”

Rex had told Cody about the whole thing. How it had started as a wrestling match over food and quickly devolved into a temper tantrum when Luke had used the Force to snatch a donut right from Leia’s mouth. Cody chuckles at the mental image. Now, walking in the muggy wet heat and questionable mush, he wishes he had accepted Rex’s extended invitation. 

“Rex keeps telling me to go. I-” would’ve come sooner if I had known you would be there. Cody stumbles. “I just haven’t been able to find the time.” It’s a half-hearted lie steeped in excuses and partial truths that Cody has tried so hard to make himself believe. Kenobi obviously doesn’t believe it either, but he gives a sympathetic smile anyway. 

Cody can see the entrance to the palace. The guards turn their attention. He’s out of time. 

“Maybe I can come to the next one?” Cody doesn’t mean for it to sound like a question. Kenobi doesn’t stop walking, but there’s a slip in his step, that might not be due to the slime, as he looks over to meet Cody’s eyes. 

“That…” Kenobi swallows, and his face is carefully blank. “That would be wonderful, Cody. I’m sure everyone would love to see more of you.” 

There’s so much left unsaid. So much implied in a single statement. 

Cody opens his mouth, to say what he’s not exactly sure, but the guards bellow a warning to them before he can begin. 

Cody stays quiet, letting the Jedi handle the talking as they’re escorted inside the palace. He thinks over those words again and again. It’s not what he had wanted, but it is something. Cody just has to take what he can and hope that Kenobi still has room for him in his life. 

He cannot hope for more.

Chapter Text

The palace is empty. 

It is the first thing that Obi-Wan notices as they are escorted into the foyer. There is no music, aside from the far-off thumping of a bass rift. There are no dancers, no servants, no merchants, no bounty hunters. The few guards that are on duty have been supplied with the bare minimum and even their armor is mix-matched and salvaged from scraps. 

It is a stark contrast to the last time Obi-Wan had been in these halls. It was a stretch to call his last visit pleasant, particularly since Quinlan had accompanied him, but it was certainly more lively than this. The main halls had been filled with every race of sentient. The rooms had burst with color and light and artificial smoke and music so loud it left ears ringing. 

Their steps echo in the vast silence. 

Cody says nothing as they are marched through the corridors by two of the front guards. The Commander’s signature is sharp and focused in the Force, and Obi-Wan knows from experience that he is cataloguing every detail, laying a mental map, noting every potential exit. 

He walks at Obi-Wan’s side. Not at his heel. It could be accidental, maybe, for anyone who was not Cody. Not after three years as Obi-Wan’s literal shadow, always one step behind and to the right. No. Today, he stands within arms reach, deliberately placing himself as Obi-Wan’s equal.

It is that small gesture, that single change, that gives Obi-Wan pause. He does not have time to break it apart, to interpret all the possible meanings, to find the intention. But he does notice. 

And while Cody’s mind is on the broken glass in the windows and the two left turns they’ve taken, Obi-Wan is thinking of the rules they had made for each other during the War and how each of them lose all meaning with one calculated step forward. 

It does not take them long to reach the council chambers. The thump-thump of the subwoofer had gotten progressively louder as they had walked, and now it feels almost deafening, emanating from behind two large wooden doors. The guards move to push them open, whether Obi-Wan is ready or not. 

The heads of each of the five major Hutt houses sit in a semi-circular ring, settled on a dias and framed with dramatic spotlights. The room is intricately decorated with runes and patterns carved into the natural wood which makes up the floors and walls. There is a long continuous tabletop that sits in front of the council, draped with a finely woven cloth embroidered with the crests of each house. 

In the center sits Jabba, the leader of the council, and, luckily, the most reasonable one, if reasonable is a word that could ever be used to describe a Hutt. 

Obi-Wan is fluent in huttese, a byproduct of raising and living with Anakin for so many years. The Hutts, however, are unaware of that fact, if the way they start speaking among themselves is any indication.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Cody says under his breath, hardly audible through the helmet vocoder. Obi-Wan gives him a nod sharing in the sentiment. 

Apprehension. In the shared uneasy glances. In the way the Force buzzes like a tightly coiled spring. Obi-Wan’s hand drifts down to hover by his lightsaber. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Cody do the same.

The Jedi takes a deep breath to settle himself, and then takes a step forward into the light. Cody takes it with him. 

Half a dozen Twi’lek dancers, dressed and decorated with fine gems and cloth of every color, twirl along the walls. They nearly stumble over themselves as they turn to watch what will happen. The music stops abruptly with a single raised hand from Jabba.

“Mighty Jabba, council members.” Obi-Wan bows low, a hand over his heart. “I hear you are in a bit of a tight spot.”

The Hutt gives a booming string of huttese, arms gesturing outwards to the wide room. His personal protocol droid shuffles forward and bends slightly at the waist. “The Mighty Jabba welcomes you, Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi.” There is a pointed glance in Cody’s direction, though they make no mention of him, acting as if he isn’t there at all. 

In the Force, Obi-Wan can feel Cody bristle at the offense, though he makes no outward show of it. “Ah, how rude of me.” Obi-Wan takes a step back and settles his hand on Cody’s pauldron, steadying them both. “This is the Commander in Chief of the GAR, Commander Cody.” 

Cody removes his helmet and gives a nod in greeting but makes no move further. Obi-Wan lets his hand drop and turns to better see each of the council members. 

Two of them appear by holo, though it makes little difference. It is not every day that a Jedi comes to visit, and still they radiate indifference. Help, in whatever form, matters little to the prideful, even if they are in desperate need of it. Obi-Wan had not expected this to be easy, but it is shaping up to be impossible. 

“We have come to help,” Obi-Wan begins, projecting his voice as much as he can. Posture means everything, and he straightens as much as he’s able. The council looms over it’s audience. It is intended as an intimidation tactic, but Obi-Wan has faced much worse than the ire of the power hungry. 

There is hushed huttese and wayward eyes passed between the Hutts. They sit, skeptical, but not hostile, not yet. 

Jabba leans forward, eyes narrowed. The droid translates his huttese without pause. “The Mighty Jabba asks what kind of help you are offering.”

Obi-Wan has to tread lightly. Ask for too much too quickly, and the Hutts will refuse outright. They don’t care about the people. They only want to know what will benefit them, what will secure their position. The best option, the only option, is to start with the hook and hope they bite.  

“Full support of the New Republic. Food. Aid. Planetary defense,” Obi-Wan promises. He knows it will not be enough. What can the Hutts do with food? What good are vaccines and toiletries to spice runners and slave traders? 

The flickering blue hologram of Gardulla shifts as she looks to the others. Her droid is not here, and when she speaks, the hologram translates for her. “You would not offer this without expecting something in return.”

There was always a catch. Everything comes at a price. It had been one of the first lessons Qui-Gon had taught him, only then Obi-Wan himself had been the payment. 

“The Chancellor has authorized a full annexation of Nar Shaddaa if you should choose to accept it,” Obi-Wan begins and then continues without giving them the opportunity to interject. “A seat in the Senate and all the benefits that that entails. Give Nar Shaddaa her independence and let her join the New Republic. Let us help you.” 

Each of the five Hutts raise in indignation. They conspire and complain to each other, voices biting and bitter. Even without knowing their language, Obi-Wan would be a fool to think this was going well. 

He continues on anyway. There is nothing else he can do. He shifts tactics. If you can’t bait them with the prize, scare them with the consequences.

“The Senate has supplied your people with food, but it will not last. Your rule has grown fragile. The syndicates aim to take what is yours. If you wish to keep your power, you must take action.”

Gardulla cries in outrage. Across the galaxy, her fist slams down on the surface in front of her. The hologram crackles with static at the force of it. “You claim you are here to help, and yet it is the New Republic which caused our problems to begin with! If it weren’t for you, and your moral superiority, the syndicates would not have broken off in the first place.”

Obi-Wan does not flinch. He does not waver. Her anger is expected, planned for. He flips the script again in his mind. As he opens his mouth to speak, to placate, to soothe over the offense, Cody takes one resounding step forward. Though it does not echo, it should.

“You knew our plans to end slavery,” the Commander says. His words cut through the background hum until all that is left is silence. “You were warned. You cannot blame us for your lack of preparation.”

“Lack of-” Gardulla scoffs. Her tail flicks rapidly behind her. “We had no chance! No choice!”

Cody’s eyes are shards of gunmetal. Razor edged chips of beskar. His voice is low and dangerous, threat written in every inch of the way he holds himself. “Did your slaves have a choice?” 

There is a sharp pointed tension. Every eye is trained on him.

Cody does not anger easily. He does not wage war on a whim. This is something else. Something dark and defensive. Something that speaks to his own past hurts. Something that stems from the deep instinctive need to protect.

This has never been a standard mission. This has always been personal. For every slave. For every clone. For every life held in the balance of this decision.

“The Chancellor is giving you a choice,” Obi-Wan begins cautiously, drawing the attention back to himself and the matter at hand, diverting away from raised tempers and accusations, correct though they may be. “Let your empire fall. Let Crimson Dawn and the Pykes sit in your seat, command your people, hold your power. Or. You accept our help, and keep that which belongs to you.” 

The silence stretches. The Commander’s signature is a ball of blazing heat, concentrated and refined again and again. It is in that, in his determination, his resolution, that Obi-Wan finds his counter balance. 

“We are not asking for control of Nar Shaddaa. She is still your moon and would remain that way. By creating a new-”

“No,” Jabba cuts off the Jedi. His declaration is hard and final.

Obi-Wan grits his teeth, drawing on the Force for patience and calm. “Jabba, this is-“

“No.” Jabba grumbles on, voice sharp and irritated. Offended. The protocol droid picks up the translation. “The Mighty Jabba says Nar Shaddaa is important to the stability of the Hutt Council. He says-” It continues on, but Obi-Wan isn’t listening. 

Alarm. Sudden. Sharp. Stabbing. It zips up The Jedi’s spine like pure electricity and sets every nerve on edge, every hair on end. Something, or someone, just dropped out of hyperspace. 

“-all trade is handled by-”

Obi-Wan looks over to Cody just as the Commander receives a chiming alert on his comms. A shared glance confirms the worst. 

The protocol droid is still talking. “-even this suggestion is-”

“I am sorry to interrupt,” Obi-Wan takes an urgent step forward. “But you are currently under attack.” 

No sooner have the words left his mouth than the ground shakes under their feet. Dirt falls from the rafters. Booming explosions grate against the shrill cries and panicked screams of the entertainment as they run from the room. 

Another round of artillery has Obi-Wan rolling forward and taking cover under the lip of the table. Cody ducks beside him even as he barks orders into his comms. 

Obi-Wan’s lightsaber is unlit, but held tight in his hands. Every instinct screams to run out of the room. To get a visual on the ships. To direct people to safety. But he has to stay here and protect the Hutts from whatever lies outside of those doors. More bombs drop, silent as they fall, deafening as they land. There is no telling what damage they have done, what they will do.

It is the syndicates, undoubtedly. Their primary target in the past had been Nar Shaddaa. They hadn’t dared attack the Hutt’s directly before. Something had to have shifted their focus. 

It was Cody, Obi-Wan realizes. Cody’s destroyer is holding position over the moon. They must have changed their target at the last minute, blindsided by the GAR’s presence. Quick thinking had led them here, lured by the prospect of a much bigger prize.

Obi-Wan scrambles to draw Cody’s attention, pulling him around with two fingers looped on his shoulder antenna. Another shell rattles the floorboards. He has to shout to make himself heard over the raucous panic of the room. “If your men attack those ships, we really will have a war on our hands.” 

Cody spits a curse and punches in a new frequency, broadcasting to all channels. “Hold fire! Defend our ships, but do not fire. Shields at full and hold. ” 

The bombing has stopped for the moment. The shaking tapers and settles. The screaming has devolved into yelling, even as they continue to scramble about the room. The hutts are arguing with each other, pointing fingers and laying blame. The scant few guards barricade the doors with what furniture they can find. 

Far above, there sounds the rumble of engines and the hiss of landing gear. 

-

The comm read out flicks by almost too fast for Cody to catch. So far, they haven’t lost any men. Hopefully, it will stay that way. The gunships are grounded. The scouts have been recalled. The patrols have returned to the cruiser. As far as his men report, the raiders are completely focused on Nal Hutta and have not yet engaged with any New Republic craft. 

Good. The last thing Cody wants is to be responsible for an intergalactic scandal. 

Kenobi moves to stand from the cover of the table and reaches out a hand for Cody. A tight grip on his wrist and Cody is hauled to his feet, 80 kilograms of armor and all, as if he weighs little more than a cadet. Right. Well then. He had forgotten his General could do that. 

Cody clears his throat and takes a step back. Then another for good measure. They are under attack. He should not be thinking about anything else.

It does not take long for the invaders to arrive at the doors of the council room. 

Kenobi ignites his saber and settles his weight back onto his heels in preparation. Cody does the same, raising his blaster and setting the seam of the doors within his sights. As soon as he does, Kenobi reaches up to put a hand on the muzzle of his rifle. 

“You cannot be involved, Cody,” The Jedi sighs, ready for the inevitable argument. “Stay behind me.” 

“Sir,” Cody says lowly, “all due respect-”

“Cody.” Kenobi may claim that he is no longer a General, yet with only a single look, Cody feels himself snapping to comply. 

He reholsters his rifle and takes a step back, hating every moment. Cody is defenseless, unable to fend for himself or protect his Jedi. Powerless and surrounded by enemies. Bound by politics and protocol. Cody would almost rather he be injured. It goes against everything he knows to be, everything his is. 

The doors burst open against the guards’ best effort to keep them closed. There are six at the entrance, possibly more deeper in the palace. They vary in shape and size and species but all of them are dressed in the same crisp colors. Black. Gold. Crimson.

Kenobi swings his saber above his head, feet grounded, left arm coming out in his signature defensive position. The raiders do not stop to ask questions. The shooting begins immediately in a flurry of red streaks, plasma bolts scarring the surface of the table, carbon scoring marking the carved walls, the tapestry catching in a flame that spreads more quickly than Cody can stop.

The blue of Kenobi’s lightsaber is no more than a blur as he jumps around the room to catch and deflect the worst of the assault. The blaster bolts ricochet off his blade and shoot back towards the raiders. Few of them make their mark. 

Cody crawls under the table and towards the back wall. The two Hutts present by holo have long since disconnected, and the three that remain are not happy he has inserted himself between them. Their guards huddle close, firing back over the table at the raiders through the whirl of blue. 

Kenobi is able to pick off one, and then two. He pushes them back, into the hallway, into a bottleneck to narrow the spray of their unceasing fire. It helps, but Cody knows it will not last. The moment reinforcements show up, Kenobi will be outnumbered and outgunned. 

Cody tries to think of something, anything, that will let him help his General, even indirectly. 

One of the hutts, his skin a sickly lime green and panicked eyes the color of antifreeze, slithers over to Cody. His finger jabs at Cody’s chestplate, sharp and accusing. When he speaks, it’s in basic, high pitched and grating like the scream of a busted hyperdrive.  “Do something!” 

“I can’t.” Cody snaps, straightening under the gaze of all three Hutts. “Until our offer is accepted, this is neutral space.” 

They look down on him in disgust, contempt, anger. Demanding his service while refusing to even acknowledge him as a person. They have grown fat, lazy, entitled in the blind confidence of their power. Cody wants nothing more than to leave them, to let them fall under the weight of their own mistakes. Unfortunately, he can’t. Just as he cannot act, he cannot abandon them either. His Jedi is invested, dedicated, and as long as he still stands, Cody will not leave him to stand alone. 

The one who had spoken originally, Gorga, if Cody recalls correctly, flinches as another bolt goes wide and embeds itself in the wall only inches above his head. He leans in closer, the stench of sweat and fear rolls off of the Hutt in waves. Cody is going to have to burn his blacks after all this. “Then I accept-”

“No.” Jabba cuts them off, risking blaster fire to rise a few more inches off the ground and assert his position over the other two. But Gorga is terrified, and in this moment he is more scared of Crimson Dawn than he is of Jabba. 

The third Hutt, pale almost white and adorned with a purple vest- which Cody wonders how he even managed to pull on himself past the rolls of fat and limited reach- stays huddled and quiet in Jabba’s shadow. 

Cody would like to know how the Hutt empire ever rose to power if these are the type of slugs that pieced it together. How anyone could be loyal, or afraid, of such a disgusting creature is beyond him.

“I will not die for your pride, Jabba,” Gorga says, voice shaking and eyes flicking to the fight at the door between every other word. He turns back to Cody. “On behalf of the Grand Hutt Council, I accept your offer. Good enough?”

A quick glance confirms Cody had been recording. If that wasn’t enough for the Senate, nothing would be. 

“It will have to be,” Cody says and then raises his comm. He doesn’t waste another second. “All units, eliminate hostiles, keep them away from the moon. Nar Shaddaa is now under New Republic authority.”

He raises his blaster, and joins the guards firing into the doorway. Cody moves forward, leaping over the table and landing nearly two meters down. The jolt sends a sharp pain up from the balls of his feet, through his aching back and throbbing knees, rattling his teeth in his skull. He pushes it aside for later, knowing that measly stunt will leave him sore for days. He’s getting too old for this shit. 

“Nice of you to finally join me!” Kenobi shouts over the din of battle, sparing a glance over his shoulder at Cody.

Cody hopes the Jedi is able to feel the heat of his scowl in the Force. He must, because the dikut laughs, laughs, of all things, even as the sweat begins to bead on his forehead and his copper hair sticks to the back of his neck. 

“Stay here,” Kenobi says, only slightly out of breath, and already moving. “I’m going to draw them off. Guard the Hutts.”

Before Cody can protest, his Jedi runs straight into the blaster fire, flicking off his saber as he leaps and spins over his assailants, nearly hitting the ceiling in the process, and landing behind them. He reignites his saber, smiles, and takes off running down the hall quicker than a flash.

Cody loves this stupid, reckless Jedi. 

Just as predicted, all four of them take off to follow Kenobi, and Cody is left alone, watching, waiting. He keeps his back to the wall, keeping his eyes on both sides of the hall. He sees nothing, no movement, there is only the distant sounds of firing blasters and thermal detonators.

He stands there for all of five minutes. This is pointless. Cody lets out a groan of frustration. This is no better than hiding behind the table. He looks back to the palace guards and gestures sharply. They rush to his side, no better trained than five year old cadets. Sloppy. Unprofessional. Likely the only people the Hutts could find that would still accept their credits. 

“Stay here,” Cody bites. “Guard the Hutts.” He fishes out a spare comlink from his belt and shoves it into the hands of the smallest one. “Comm me if anything happens.”

Cody takes off after his General, jogging down the hall and towards the sounds of shouting, retracing the path they had taken earlier. His General was always sure to be where the fighting was the worst. It had frustrated Cody, in the beginning of the War, chasing after a certifiably insane Jedi, hauling him back to The Negotiator after his latest stunt that had left him unable to walk or worse. 

At first, It had seemed like Kenobi had had a death wish. He never prioritized his own wellbeing, never slept for long enough, and certainly never ate enough. As time went on, Cody had realized his General was many things, but reckless wasn’t one of them, even with his own safety. He was self-sacrificing, almost to a fault, but never to the point where it would compromise his ability to lead, to do his duty, to serve others.

They had come to a mutual agreement, somewhere in the first year of the War. As long as Kenobi would promise to keep Cody informed, and not push himself past his limits, Cody would stop worrying so much about the trouble they would get into. 

Trust. Built from the promise that Kenobi could always get them out of even the bleakest situations, and Cody would always be there to support him. 

Where had that gone? Cody wonders. What had happened to that? When had their unshakable partnership dissolved into an occasional hello?

Jogging down the hallway chasing after his wayward General, Cody almost feels like he’s back in the War. This is what he had missed. Not the thrill of combat, but the camaraderie, the faith beyond all hope. 

Something shiny glints in the corner of Cody’s eye. Polished metal laying almost innocently against the wall. It stops him dead in his tracks. 

Cody sighs deeply, praying for patience from whatever gods looked after too-old clones and infuriating Jedi.

The lightsaber calls to him, a light and airy song, all high notes and delicate strength. Cody turns and clips the saber to his belt, grateful that he never managed to get over himself enough to get rid of the custom hook there. There had always been some small part of his heart that couldn’t let go, even now, always hoping it would be needed again.  

The weight of it thuds against his thigh with every step as he continues down the hall and turns the corner. He’s getting close now. Blaster fire flashes red around the next corner. 

His General is unarmed. Cody cannot spare a moment. Every second he hesitates is another second for something to go wrong. His comm buzzes endlessly with battle updates and troop movement. It will have to wait.

A deep breath. Two. He turns the corner and fires into the fray.

It’s been so long since Cody had been in active combat, yet it is easier than breathing to remember the motions, the movement, the energy. 

There are seven targets and two civilians cowering in the corner. Cody’s General moves like fluid, keeping all seven of them engaged and their attention away from the Twi’lek dancers. Outnumbered as he is, Kenobi is more than capable of holding his own, even unarmed. He uses a mix of the Force and hand-to-hand as he ducks under a punch and parries a kick with one of his own. 

They are raiders, and nothing more. Unequipped for the change in plans and unprepared for any resistance. Cody almost feels bad for them. 

Cody fires a shot, and then two. Takes out one and draws the attention of three more. 

“I thought I told you to stay with the council.” Kenobi grunts, and disarms one of his attackers, tossing the blaster aside with no small amount of disgust. Cody would ring his neck for that if his hands weren’t otherwise occupied. 

Cody grips the barrel of his blaster and swings it up to bring the stock slamming across the jaw of one, then flips it around in the same motion to fire into the gut of another. DC-15’s were not made for close range, but Cody is nothing if not resourceful. “And I thought we agreed that I was to stay with you.”

-

Cody’s legs are numb. They have been numb for hours. They will stay that way until he finally pulls himself to stand. 

He does not move. He will not move. Not for the beeping of his comm. Not for the chime of his datapad. Not even for Rex, who comes to check on him after he had missed the second meal of the day.

Cody will sit in this chair until his General wakes. Nothing short of Count Dooku could pull him from it. 

The mission had gone South. Skywalker had opened his mouth. Kenobi had paid the price. 

And now he lays, sedated but stable, injured in too many places to name, covered in bacta more than he isn’t, in a private room of the medbay. Out-of-sight of the terrified shinies and hidden away from the guilt-ridden Skywalker until he is awake enough to handle being both a General and a master. 

Until then, Cody sits by Kenobi’s side and keeps watch, protecting him from everything that lays outside of this room. 

At some point, his General wakes, eyes glassy and half-delirious from the medication. Kenobi’s first instinct is to reach out for Cody’s hand. 

“General-” Cody chokes, throat tight, eyes burning. He clutches back fiercely, holding Kenobi’s one hand in both of his own as gently as he can, all too aware of just how fragile the Jedi really is. 

“Cody,” Kenobi rasps, a painful half-smile on his face. He does not try to say more, already struggling for every shallow breath from the exertion of a single word. 

“I should’ve been there.” Cody settles his forehead to their joined hands, sagging against the bed with the weight of his relief. “I should’ve gone with you.”

“Yes.” Kenobi says, conceding without a fight, admitting to his own failings. He was unable to hold them off. He was unable to save Skywalker and himself. But if Cody had been there… If Cody was at his side where he should have been, where he belonged, maybe it all would’ve happened differently.

Cody looks up from the bedsheets. He looks directly into hazy blue eyes with as much intent as he can muster. “Next time,” he says, “I stay with you. I go where you go.”

“Always,” Kenobi rasps, eyes sagging, slipping back into unconsciousness.

Cody presses his lips to Kenobi’s split and bandaged knuckles. He lets out his breath like a prayer. A promise is a promise. Even if one of them won’t remember it.

-

With their forces divided, the rest of the raiders go down easy. Better trained than the guards Cody had left with the Hutt’s by all means, but hardly worth the pretty penny Crimson Dawn is sure to be paying them. 

Kenobi rests on the floor back against the wall, chest heaving. A quick once over lets Cody know he’s at least not majorly injured. The Commander had gotten quite familiar with the ways Kenobi held his pain, and tried to hide it. But this is no more than exhaustion. 

“Still can’t keep yourself out of trouble, General?” Cody teases as he holds out his hand for Kenobi to take. 

“It certainly keeps things interesting, my dear.” 

Kenobi smiles, and Cody’s breath hitches in his throat. No one has any right to look like that after the day they’ve had.

In the quiet that follows, the Twi’leks in the corner see their opportunity to run and take it. They dash through the main doors and out into the palace courtyard. 

Cody checks his comm. “Scouts report two transport ships and five aerial bombers. Both transports landed, one was blown as it tried to retreat, the other was too close to the palace to risk.”

“And the bombers?” Kenobi asks, breath finally returning. 

“Eliminated, sir. Though Waxer reports much of the debris was caught in Nar Shaddaa’s orbit and fell to the surface. The artillery was still live.”

Kenobi winces, but nods. “And the men?”

Cody glanced through the read-outs again. “No casualties reported, sir.”

“Well then,” Kenobi releases the tension in his frame with a drawn out sigh. His eyes flit around the room. It is quiet, too quiet maybe. “I suppose we should finish clearing the building and get back to the council. I doubt they’ll be pleased.”

“Is that an order?” Cody teases. He certainly didn’t mind following Kenobi’s lead, he had done it often enough. But Kenobi isn’t supposed to be on this mission, let alone leading it, and he certainly no longer had the authority to tell Cody what to do.

Kenobi flushes, pink staining the bridge of his nose and the tips of his ears. “Ah-” He stumbles. “I suppose not.”

It’s a rare occasion, the great negotiator at a loss for words, Cody wonders what else would cause the Jedi to trip over the words he wields as a weapon. 

Speaking of weapons. 

Cody reaches for the saber at his belt, thumb brushing over the well-worn release, and holding it out in offering. The motion is rehearsed, mission after mission ending in the same way. 

“If I hadn’t gone against your orders,” Cody drawls, “I wouldn’t have found this.”

The flush deepens and spreads down to the nape of Kenobi’s neck, his fair skin showing everything his beard tries to hide. 

“I would have gone back for it eventually,” Kenobi says, indignant, though his hands linger against Cody’s gloves as he takes the saber back. 

“Whatever you say, sir.” 

There is a moment when their eyes catch, when Cody becomes acutely aware of how much history is between them, when each breath is etched with shared moments of the past. Nothing matters but this, the scrape on Kenobi’s cheekbone, the dirt smeared across his forehead.

They had fallen so easily back into the rhythm of working together. Into being around each other. There was still awkwardness, of course, and Cody isn’t exactly sure where they stand with each other, but this, the fighting, the protecting civilians, the clearing of a building. This they could do. 

Cody wonders if this is all they can still do, or if there is more that still remains in the tattered edges of their relationship. He wants to ask. To settle the question once and for all. To find out if the Jedi wants as much as he does. 

They hold each other’s gaze for a heartbeat longer than they should. In Kenobi’s eyes, Cody finds no resentment, no judgement, no bitterness over their broken promises. Instead, he finds hope, joy, wanting.

Kenobi opens his mouth, words half formed. “Cody, I-”

The comm beeps, three sharp trills, from the guards Cody had left behind. Before Cody can brush it aside, Kenobi is already moving back to the council chambers. 

Cody sighs at the loss and falls into step behind him. The curiosity of what Kenobi was going to say eats at him the entire walk back.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

There are more raiders waiting for them when Cody and Kenobi reach the chamber doors. Only one of the guards that Cody had left behind is still standing, fighting with their back against the door latch. It is an honorable last stand, and honestly more than Cody had expected from them. He’s pleasantly surprised. He might even consider offering them a job if they can make it out of this alive. 

It doesn’t take a second for the raiders to notice them and even less to start attacking. There are more of them than Cody can count between firing and dodging and swinging, but not so many that they stand more than half a chance between him and his Jedi. 

It is all over within a matter of minutes. A nice workout, all things considered. It could’ve been worse, much worse. 

“Thank you,” Kenobi says to the guard. “I do apologize on behalf of my friend here that you were left unaccompanied.” He gives a side-eye to the Commander who tries his best not to retort. Cody will not give Kenobi the satisfaction of pulling him into a petty squabble while they’re still on duty. 

If Kenobi wants to continue this discussion later, however, Cody is more than prepared to give a lecture on being unaccompanied.  

Cody gives a nod to the guard in apology anyway. There are no bodies of the others, so they must have run off when the fighting started. Cody changes his mind; he is definitely going to hire this kid.

The doors swing open, creaking loudly on their hinges. The three hutts stand just on the other side. Jabba is not pleased. His nostrils flare and drool dribbles down the sneer of his mouth. The other two seem to cower behind him but are no less irritated. Like snippy cadets hiding behind an older brother. 

“Ah!” Kenobi greets, “I’m glad to see you are well.” He steps into the room without invitation or consideration of their irritation. Cody shakes his head fondly and follows him inside. 

“I’m also glad to hear that you accepted our offer,” Kenobi adds, coming to stand in the center of the room just behind them. Cody knows it means something, the way they are made to turn to face Kenobi. He has never been one for the subtle mind games that the Jedi plays in these meetings, but he sees the movement and knows they have won.

Cody supposes they have the syndicates to thank for that, in a way.

“Yes,” Jabba grumbles, sounding every bit as unhappy about that as Cody suspected he would be. Slowly, the three of them begin to move around to room back to their places behind the table. They slither, it’s the only word for it, and behind them trails a pale slimy residue.

“Wonderful,” Kenobi says. “Effective immediately, the New Republic will begin restoration and support of Nar Shaddaa. In a weeks time, we will hold another meeting to discuss the particulars that come with creating an independent government. Does that work for you?”

“Yes.” The three Hutts stand in the ruins of their grand council room, empty and deserted, broken and bleeding. 

The Negotiator bows. “It was a pleasure to serve you, Mighty Jabba.” He straightens, smiles, and holds out a hand in gesture. “and here’s to the wealth of Hutt Space, long may she reign.” 

As one, they turn from the room and leave. Setting the whole mess behind them, at least for now, at least until the next meeting when they had to do the whole thing over again. 

When the Jedi turns to look at Cody, it is not The Negotiator but Kenobi, only ever himself, honest and sincere, when they’re together. 

There had never been a time when Cody had fallen under the spell, had tripped into the web, of The Negotiator. Kenobi had never tried, had never been anything but genuine with him. Maybe that was why it was so easy for Cody to see through it all. To understand who the Jedi really was. 

Kenobi wears so many masks, holds so many titles, and plays so many roles. He had been Jedi Master and a member of the council. The Negotiator. High General. Cody has seen him mold himself, shifting to fit what others need of him, want of him. Never sparing a thought for himself, or his own comfort. 

Cody had seen Kenobi take off those masks, to shrug off those responsibilities, to prop himself up in an armchair with a good holonovel. He had seen Kenobi as something different, lesser than his titles and yet so much more, stripped bare of the ceremony and authority.

Cody knows Kenobi as a man who likes his tea with too much sugar, wears a thermal under his robes because of the cold, runs his fingers over the ghost of his padawan braid when he’s unsure of himself. But Cody isn’t sure if he has a right to that man anymore.

“I think we can count that as a success,” Kenobi says, wry smile and all. Cody will never understand how he can manage to be so put together, so dignified, even as they step over shards of pottery and sidestep suspicious stains on the carpet.

Cody sighs, and makes sure it’s loud enough for the vocoder of his helmet to pick up on it. Only Kenobi could make success a relative term.

The front doors are wide open. The hinges are busted and it tilts dangerously to the side, hanging on by only a few scant screws. As they step through, Cody is sure to keep himself between Kenobi and crumbling awning.

The air outside of the palace is not much better than inside, if only improved by the movement which gives it some degree of ‘freshness.’ The scent, however, is much worse. Cody doesn’t hesitate a moment in pinging their gunship. He wants off of this planet as soon as possible. 

“We need to check in on Nar Shaddaa,” Cody says to Kenobi as he sends another ping. The first had gone unanswered. 

“Yes, the fourth quadrant, preferably,” Kenobi says, reaching up to brush through his beard as he looks up at the moon above them. “They’re facing us and would’ve gotten the worst of it.”

Cody agrees. The comm log had said the same thing. 

The second ping bounces back. No Signal. Cody frowns and looks up along the horizon. They had parked just over half a mile out. Thirty degrees North Northeast. He turns and looks behind him, up at the palace. Large holes and scoring from the bombing mark the entire surface. The worst of it, it seems, sits on the Northern side.

“General,” Cody sighs. “Any chance you can sense if our ship is still there?”

Kenobi frowns, glancing over at Cody, then following his line of sight and putting the pieces together himself. 

“Hmm,” He says, “It seems we may need a new ship.” 

If Cody didn’t know better he’d say that the Jedi is amused. But he couldn’t be, because if he was, Cody was going to make him reimburse the GAR for damages. Cody might do it anyway. Just to be safe. 

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

They stand together in comfortable silence as they wait for the gunship to pick them up outside of the palace. Cody reads over the first of the reports that filter in from the battle. Their victory had been won only by Cody’s foresight to bring a fully manned star destroyer. At the time, the Senate had complained it was overkill. Now, Cody only regrets not arguing for more. 

Out of the corner of his eye, Cody watches as Kenobi glances down at the returned saber in his hand and then over at Cody’s beltline. “You still have it,” he says. The corner of his mouth ticks upwards.

Cody isn’t sure he can handle turning to face his General fully. “The clip?” Cody asks, though he already knows what Kenobi is referencing. “Of course I do, General. I half-expected to find your saber laying in the streets of Coruscant, sir.”

Kenobi rolls his eyes. “I would never be so irresponsible,” He scoffs, as if it wasn’t entirely plausible, and then he pauses, weighing his next words. “And it’s Obi-Wan, Cody, please. I’m not your superior anymore.”

-

“You are allowed to call me Obi-Wan, you know. When it’s just you and me. I think we’ve reached that point.”

Cody hums in thought. He turns the page on his datapad; the holonovel borrowed from Obi-Wan’s own personal database. It is an old anthology of traditional Mandalorian poems, history, culture. Things that Obi-Wan knows that Cody wants to be a part of, wants to have a right to, even as he sits knowing no Mandalorian would accept the vode as one of their own. 

“Hmm. No.” Cody’s lips twitch upwards and then back down in a fight against his own amusement. “The regs state that a commander has to save his General from five near death experiences first. I’ve only saved you from three.”

Obi-Wan chuckles despite himself. “Then, I’ll have to do my best to meet that quota.”

Cody, still, does not look up from his datapad. “And you’ll blame it on Skywalker afterwards, sir?”

“Of course, my dear.” Obi-Wan sets his chin in his hand, resting his elbow on the arm of his chair. He knows he must look like a love sick fool and can’t find it in himself to care. “I do have a reputation to uphold, after all.”

Cody loses his battle. His laughter is worth any near-death experience that Obi-Wan may face if only to hear it again. 

-

There’s a quick and biting tension of things unsaid. Of the weight that a single name holds. It’s more than that, and they both know it. 

Kenobi offers equal footing. Cody finally has the freedom to take it. 

“Alright,” Cody huffs. “ Obi-Wan.” The name feels right, even though he’s never said it before. It fits in an unseen gap and brings them that much closer to the line they had drawn in the sand so long ago.

The air between them turns in the silence that follows. It would be so easy to lean in that extra step, to tilt his head up just a fraction. He should move. He should do something.

The old Cody would have left it there, would have searched for any excuse to get away from the weight that blooms in his chest and the pull in his gut to be closer. The old Cody would have cleared his throat and checked his comm and barked at the closest vod as a distraction. 

Instead, the space between them shrinks, closed by the subtle shift forward, the gravitational pull, the simmer of tension. 

Cody does not pull away, and he does not wait for his chance to slip by. He lifts his helmet and meets those horizon blue eyes without a barrier between them. The edge of Kenobi’s tongue darts out to wet his lips, and Cody’s entire body shifts forward.

They’re so close. On the precipice of what is and what was and what might be. Less than a step from falling. 

Kenobi, Obi-Wan, looks away, eyes down, but he doesn’t move, doesn’t push Cody out of his space. 

“Cody, I-”

Cody brings a hand up and cups the Jedi’s cheek to tilt his head up. He can’t hear the denial. He can’t hear Obi-Wan talk himself out of this again. He can’t let this go. 

His thumb brushes soft and gentle over the edge of his Jedi’s cheekbone, and Cody wishes more than anything he had taken his gloves off too. 

“Can I kiss you?”

Obi-Wan’s voice is breathy, nearly a gasp as he says, “Please.” 

The first is no more than a brush of lips, a ghost of a touch. The second is a pull and a push and a crash. It is years of wanting finally culminating into one moment.

Cody couldn’t hold himself back if he wanted to. He makes a sound, low in his throat, hands clutching at Obi-Wan arms to pull him closer, to get rid of every inch between them, to never let go. 

Obi-Wan sinks into it, warm and willing and giving under Cody’s touch. His hands come up, to hold Cody’s cheek, to brush a finger over his scar. 

The Jedi pulls back, and for one horrible gut-sinking moment, Cody thinks he’s ruined the whole thing.

Obi-Wan tilts his head forward to bring their foreheads together, breath slow and even, brilliant blue eyes closed in the overwhelming flood of it all. Cody’s hand clutches at the nape of Obi-Wan’s neck, eyes drinking in every inch of the Jedi’s face. 

Cody had thought once, that he had memorized every line and every freckle. That he could recreate the curve of his face and the tuck of his jaw. He knows now how wrong he had been, that a lifetime of this would never be enough to learn the way Obi-Wan’s hands cling to his armor like a lifeline. 

The comm chirps, and they pull away from each other hastily as the gunship lands in front of them. If the moment wasn’t gone before, it certainly is now, as the bay doors open to reveal that the ship is full of troopers. The quick ride to Nar Shaddaa is by no means quiet, not with so many vode excited to see a Jedi, but no more words are exchanged between them.

They stand close enough that their shoulders bump with every jostle of turbulence. Cody doesn’t need words for the way Obi-Wan leans into him for stability. He doesn’t need words for the blush that spreads across Obi-Wan cheeks with each glance he steals only to find Cody is already watching him. 

They can talk about the kiss later, when they’re not surrounded by brothers. And maybe, maybe, Cody will be lucky enough to steal another. 

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Dust hovers, suspended and floating in the air and covering the world in a glossy haze. The streets and walkways have been mostly abandoned for cover during the fight. There is no more than a scattering of pedestrians running to and fro as they scavenge what little they can from the wreckage of smoking syndicate ships and shopping sacks dropped in the dash for shelter. 

It is difficult to see more than a hundred meters in any direction, and Cody is struggling to keep an eye on all of his men as they move along the streets. This place is dangerous even in the tentative post-battle silence. Every minute they’re out of his sight is another minute that someone could go missing. 

Kenobi, Obi-Wan, that’s going to take some time to get used to, walks with Cody as they move up the street. The only sound between them is the background chatter of the comms. It’s easy. Familiar. There’s no one that Cody would rather have at his side. 

More people begin to filter out into the traffic lanes. Cody watches his HUD for any irregular patterns, ready to pull back at a moment's notice. 

Every squad was exactly where they were supposed to be. Squads Besh through Forn were overseeing the last of the supply drop. Grek through Krenth were patrolling the border of each sector. There were a dozen scout ships searching the planet for any remaining signs of syndicate forces, though with how deeply the city ran, they would likely have better luck walking the streets. Cody mutters another curse for his lack of resources. 

“The Force is at peace.”

Cody looks over to see Obi-Wan walking at a lazy pace, eyes half closed, and wearing a smile so faint it’s only noticeable from the years they’ve known each other. 

“Here?” Cody says in teasing disbelief. “In this place?” His eyes never leave Obi-Wan’s face, tracing the way his eyebrows draw up just slightly, the way the lights shine through the dusty haze of the air leaving a halo around copper hair. 

Mesh’la, Cody thinks, and has always thought, even with the new bruise blooming on his cheek bone. 

“Yes.” Obi-Wan peaks out of the corner of his eye to see Cody staring. His smile becomes a little more pronounced. “Our intervention stabilized something.”

“Something good or something bad?” 

Obi-Wan shrugs, graceful in the way his cloak holds to his collar, the movement like fluid across his shoulders. “Only time will tell. But nothing more will happen today.”

Cody has never understood the Force and likely never will, but he does understand Obi-Wan. If there was something wrong, the Jedi wouldn’t be so relaxed. Cody does not trust the whims of an omnipotent and uninvolved higher power, but he does trust Obi-Wan’s intuition. If his Jedi said there was no danger, Cody would bet his life on it, he has before. 

When Cody looks back to his HUD, nothing has changed, and something in his gut settles that had been on edge since they came out of hyperspace. 

As they walk, Obi-Wan stops to talk with civilians along the way. Some of them are grateful, others wary, a few hostile. Each one is important to him. Cody has no doubt that each of their opinions are carefully stored somewhere and will be brought back up for consideration at a later time when they are building the structure for a new government. Always trying to please everyone. Always trying his best to do the most good for the most people. 

Cody had nearly forgotten what it was like to see Obi-Wan doing what he was always meant for. 

-

Ryloth is brutal. The Techno Union had stripped nearly everything from a planet that was once so rich with life. The population is in ruins. Even with the Separatist defeat, the people despair for a future that seems so far out of reach when they have been left with nothing. 

Cody directs his men. He pushes relief supplies to the areas that need them most, keeps a constant rotation of brothers on patrol, and calls in medical backup in triple haste from the closest medistation, but there is only so much Cody can do to help those who have lost everything. 

The General moves from camp to camp. He spends hours talking and laughing and mourning and grieving with the refugees that have poured in from every part of the razed planet. Kenobi folds himself effortlessly into the huddles that form around the glowing campfires that dot the open field. He stays with each group until they feel lighter, act brighter, and then he moves onto the next. And the next. And the next. 

Cody watches him for hours. He has seen his General tear through legions of droids, cutting through them like no more than warm butter. He has seen his General leap over cliffs and flip onto moving star fighters. Cody has never seen his General do anything like this.

The Jedi grows a little heavier with every group that he leaves until the burden he has taken from them becomes too much for him to carry alone. He drops down, exhausted, to sit at Cody’s side. They are away from the mass of chattering troopers and civilians. Set far enough for privacy and close enough to intervene if necessary. 

“Is that what the Jedi do?” Cody asks. “When you’re not leading a war?” 

Kenobi settles down into the dirt, legs folded underneath himself. His eyes droop with every word. “Do what, my dear Commander?”

“That.” Cody sweeps his hand out in a gesture to the campfires that now held more laughing faces than sad ones. “Talk to people. Help them.”

“Hmm, yes, I suppose it is,” Kenobi hums, and then falls into a light meditation between one slow breath and the next. 

Cody sits at his side and holds a vigil. For the people of Ryloth. For his men. For his General. 

-

Obi-Wan returns to Cody’s side. His ever-patient commander waiting diligently as Obi-Wan stopped to talk to the locals. It’s good to be with him again, to be by his side, to feel the loyalty that runs so deep between them. 

There is more that Obi-Wan senses in the Force of Cody’s signature. Deep and unerring. Strengthened with time rather than dimmed. More than just loyalty. 

Cody is still in love with him. 

It’s a revelation that Obi-Wan did not expect to have on this mission. He had prepared for awkwardness, for regret, for resentment, even for anger. 

But Obi-Wan had not prepared for the burst of warmth and fond amusement that had accompanied the return of his lightsaber. He had not prepared for the clip that still remained on Cody’s belt. He had not prepared for that kiss, the desperate hands and hitching breath. He had not prepared for the way Cody kept stealing glances at him, soft tenderness spilling in waves from his Force signature until it seeped into everything around them. 

There’s a spark of determination there too. An intentional push that keeps them close together. It had taken Obi-Wan longer than he’d like to admit to realize Cody had wanted to go with him to Nal Hutta, had wanted to protect him even when it wasn’t needed. As if the Commander couldn’t stand to be away from Obi-Wan for a moment more than necessary. 

Obi-Wan had been so sure that Cody had moved on, had forgotten about him, that he had nearly missed what was so obvious from the moment he had stepped onto the ship. 

Cody is still in love with him.

It’s a second chance. A dream made real of a life they had never gotten to have with each other. All the pieces in motion and lined up for this one opportunity. 

And it’s like the time spent apart had never happened. And the hours upon hours that Obi-Wan spent meditating on whatever this is between them add up to nothing in the face of a wry smirk, the crinkle of a scar, and an outstretched hand that will always be there to help him find his footing.

The revelation steals the very breath from Obi-Wan’s lungs and stops his feet in their tracks. 

He is still in love with Cody. 

He has always been in love with Cody. 

From the moment they met and it in every shared glance. In every battlefield and post-mission debrief. 

Before there had been too much between them, too many things keeping them tied to duty and honor and respect. But now-

Now Obi-Wan looks up into the face of the man he loves, who loves him in return, and he can’t think of a single reason why they shouldn’t act on what is between them. 

“You alright?” Cody asks, concern written in the furrow of his brow and the hand that instinctively reaches out. 

Love. It’s in the subtle warmth that spreads over every inch of Obi-Wan’s skin. Heated by the sunrise of Cody’s signature. Obi-Wan wants nothing more than to spend the rest of his life basking in it.

“Yes,” Obi-Wan answers, a smile spreading across his face. “Quite.” He wants to reach out to take Cody’s offered hand and hold it in his own. But Obi-Wan doesn’t. Not when they’re on an open street and surrounded by troopers that are no less ready to gossip than they were during the War. 

“There’s a tea shop,” Obi-Wan begins. “Just up the road. I’d like to see if it survived. Do you want to come with me?” He offers, and hopes that Cody can understand what he really means. 

-

“A tea shop?” Cody asks, confused. It’s such a sudden change of direction. He’s not sure what to do with the implication that Obi-Wan had not just been here before, but had frequented this place often enough to know the streets and the restaurants. 

“Yes,” Obi-Wan hums, and starts moving even though Cody doesn’t remember agreeing. He follows along anyway, as he always has, as he always will. “They serve a blend you can’t find anywhere else. It’s good, you’ll like it.”

Cody has several ideas of what might be in said blend, but he says nothing, sure that Obi-Wan would only assert the shop owners ‘upstanding moral character’ and denounce such ‘unethical business practices.’

The shop, as it turns out, is not far down the street at all. Only two blocks south. It’s even within their perimeter, and Cody can relax a little more knowing his men are watching their backs. 

From the outside, the shop looks like any other. Flashing neon signs to attract customers, barred windows, a touch of greenery by the door. The billboard just above declares the shop as The Golden Fluttery. It's certainly original. Cody will give them that. 

Obi-Wan knocks before he opens the door, though it’s not needed as it swings open, unlocked, on his first try. Cody follows him cautiously. 

From the inside, Cody can see that this shop is not like any other. It’s incredibly fancy. Expensive in the haphazard way of someone who has too much money and too little idea of what to do with it. There’s gold plating on the table legs, opal beading on the shelves, raw cut gemstones hanging from a delicate handmade chandelier. Decadent, in a way that is nowhere close to homely and instead drenched in excess. Desperate, Cody thinks, to prove a point, to spend as many credits as possible. 

“Rula!” the Jedi greets, waving a hand to the human woman sweeping behind the counter. 

She immediately brightens and sets her broom aside. “Obi-Wan!” the woman, Rula, says, as she makes her way around the bar. She is an older woman, mid 50’s if Cody had to guess, but he’s never been good with nat-born ages. Her hair is a dark natural brown without a hint of grey, her skin honeyed and golden if only a little wrinkled around the sharp brown eyes. When she smiles, there is a bite to her grin and an edge to her teeth. 

Rula ushers them to a booth, one of many in the café, too plush and coated in fine burgundy velvet. “It’s been too long. You’ll make a woman old waiting around for you to show up.”

Obi-Wan chuckles good-naturedly and takes the hand she offers, even going so far as to leave a kiss on the back of it. “If it was up to me, I would never be anywhere else.” 

Cody stands back and watches the whole interaction, overwhelmingly curious as to who this woman is and how they met. There is a story here. Multiple. And Cody wants nothing more than to spend his days listening to Obi-Wan tell him every one.

“Yes, and you’d make us all crazy with your nonsense.” Rula pulls her hand away and looks towards Cody, sizing him up as she turns. When she speaks, her tone is much more guarded, her smile closed off. “Who’s this?”  

Obi-Wan puts a hand on Cody’s shoulder, a parallel to a similar introduction he had made only hours ago though it feels like lifetime. “This is my dear friend Cody. He’s quite trustworthy, I can assure you.”

Cody doesn’t ask why Obi-Wan felt the need to add that, nor does he ask why he had omitted Cody’s position as head of the GAR. 

Rula continues to eye Cody for a moment, before she decides to accept Obi-Wan on his word, and offers her hand. 

Cody takes it, and shakes it firmly, feeling the calluses on her hand that are a mirror of his own, of every brother. It only raises more questions. He likes her, he decides, and the secrets she holds. 

“I hope you don’t expect a kiss from me as well, ma’am,” Cody jokes, and succeeds in pulling a snort from her. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Obi-Wan cover a smile.

Rula pulls her hand away and motions for them to sit. “You two are trouble. Don’t break anything,” she says sternly, and Cody has no doubt the punishment would be as bad as anything Alpha-17 could come up with. 

Cody sits, and then sinks ridiculously low into the cushions. For all the luxury in this shop, Rula seems out of place, the scratch on a polished surface. 

“It’s her wife’s shop,” Obi-Wan answers the unasked question. “Tusi picks out the decor.”

Cody looks around again, eyes catching on the glittering decorative bulbs of fine silver that dangle from the ceiling. “It’s… unique.” It’s the only thing that Cody can find to say. This whole place was unique. There is a layer of something else, though, that Cody isn’t quite seeing, behind the smoke show of opulence. He knows it’s there. He just can’t quite put his finger on it. 

Rula makes herself busy preparing something behind the counter. “Did you order?” Cody asks, looking back to Obi-Wan. 

“No,” Obi-Wan shakes his head. “Rula makes me whatever she feels like. Spikes it, if she’s particularly spiteful. Only Tusi asks what I want.” Obi-Wan puts his elbow up on the table and sets his chin in his hands, looking over at Cody, eyes mischievous. 

Oh, this whole thing was planned from the start, from the moment Obi-Wan suggested quadrant four. Cody should’ve known. It’s a game, and Obi-Wan is waiting for Cody to catch on, to over turn the clue, to piece together the puzzle. 

Cody frowns and looks around, determined to win. It had been so long since Cody had seen Obi-Wan so relaxed and even longer since he had seen the Jedi nearly playful like this. 

It’s a tea shop. At least that is its proclaimed purpose. The shop itself sits in the midlevels, on a dark and seedy part of town, set in the back where it would blend in with every other shop that sits on this row. The store to the left sells blasters and ammunition. The store to the right sells blackmarket exotic animals. Who would come down here for tea? Who on Nar Shaddaa even drinks tea?

Without a customer base, they had to have been getting their money from somewhere. Either Tusi was obscenely wealthy with nothing better to do than spend it all on a passion project to upcycle a bad part of the city. Or-

Cody whips around to face his General who still grinning boyishly, eyes light with glee. 

“You brought me,” Cody hisses, keeping his voice low, “the Commander in Chief, to a money laundering tea shop? Sir?”  

Obi-Wan is completely unrepentant as he smiles, leaning back in his seat and looking around the shop. “It would seem so.” The Jedi looks back to Cody, raising an eyebrow. “And don’t call me sir while we’re on a date.”

Cody’s mind comes to a screeching halt. 

A date? A date.  

Is that what this was?

The kiss could be excused, could be brushed aside as the adrenaline from the battle, swept under the rug and hidden as a mistake. 

But a date?

Obi-Wan hides his amusement behind his hand. 

Rula sets down their teas, takes one look between the two of them, scoffs, and then turns to go back to the bar. 

Obi-Wan clears his throat and picks up his cup, holding it close to his nose, letting the steam curl in front of his face and the heat seep into his ever-cold hands. He says nothing, looking down into the murky waters of what might be tea, giving Cody the moment he so desperately needs to gather his whirlwind of thoughts.

Cody doesn’t touch his cup. He lets it sit, forgotten, as he searches Obi-Wan’s face for answers that aren’t there. 

Why? Why now? Why not before? Why had they let this go on for so long if they had both wanted the same thing? 

Cody would do anything to keep the distance from growing between them again. To keep away the ache of loneliness from clawing at his heels until he was drowning in it. 

Even the offering, the suggestion that this really is a date, that it’s something more hurts in a way that Cody never expected it to. It hurts in knowing how much time was lost, how many sleepless nights wasted, how many tears spent. It hurts in the frustration, the cowardice, the anger at himself for letting it all go. 

It’s the lack of closure. It’s the subtle parting of ways like a thread pulled slowly from its hem. It’s the gravitational pull and the inevitable orbit around each other. It’s the unaddressed lurch that Cody feels at the sound of a laugh from across the room or the sleepy blink that accompanies the unconscious curl of exhausted hands around a hot cup of tea.

It’s the memories that Cody had clung to just as fiercely as he tried to forget them, and now Obi-Wan is right in front of him and it all comes back with the force of a crashing gunship.

Ultimately, it’s Cody who has to extend the offer, who has to accept what is given and return it in the same. Cody, who has had time to grow, to find himself, to discover what it means to choose when you have more than one option, to understand what it means to want when you don’t lack anything you need.

It’s Cody who brushes the past aside and takes the first step forward. He slides his hand across the table and waits, hopes. 

-

The olive branch comes in the form of a cleared throat, a shuffle of weight in a sign of unsureness that Obi-Wan had never seen in his unfailing Commander. In an outstretched hand that sits, palm up, halfway across the table. An open invitation, and one that Obi-Wan takes without hesitation.

It comes in the tentative question that speaks to an offer of something more, something much deeper. Something that depends entirely on Obi-Wan’s ability to read between the lines, to see what Cody is truly throwing into the open air and for Obi-Wan to catch it before it shatters on the ground between them.

“You know, you should think about taking an escort with you on your missions. If you plan on causing a fuss on every planet, you’ll need someone to watch your back.” Cody squeezes their joined hands, and keeps every drop of attention on the man in front of him, everything hanging on his response. 

Anticipation. Something like hope, but a little hotter, a little more wild, a little more impulsive, whirls around and around them in the Force like a spinning top too close to the edge. It’s all Obi-Wan can do to not let himself get swept away in it. To not let the sudden starburst of emotion show on his face. 

His free hand comes up to his beard in a very dignified manner that is not at all concealing the small twitch of his lips that betrays what he feels. “You think I need a baby-sitter.”

Cody is much less reserved than Obi-Wan is. Or maybe it’s just that he likes to throw it back at the Jedi’s face. Or maybe it’s that he’s just never bothered to hide his poking teases, much to Obi-Wan’s chagrin. Cody gives his best smirk, a bit of teeth, a bit of edge in his eyes that promises something even more sarcastic than whatever came before, punctuated by a tap to their twined fingers. “You said it sir, not me.”

There is a pause, when everything ceases to exist outside of their booth. The Force winds, weaves between them in tight spirals. Binding them together.

“Bly is retiring,” Cody continues, mood diving from teasing to mellow, eyes so open, so earnest. Vulnerable. “You’ll need someone to take his place.”

Obi-Wan always plays his cards close to his chest. Always keeps his emotions in check. But there’s a split second where Obi-Wan decides between an eye roll and a soft smile and chooses to wear his heart on his sleeve. Just this once, just for Cody. He squeezes Cody’s hand in return and knows he looks like an absolute sap when he says, “Oh? And do you have any recommendations?”

It’s the acceptance Cody has been waiting for since he stepped onto the bridge of his new command more than five years ago. It’s the first step on a new journey. One they would take together. 

“I could think of a few.” 

Cody doesn’t need to specify that he’ll put himself at the top of the list. That he will be at Obi-Wan’s side for as long as he’s wanted there. That he never plans to let anything separate them again.