Work Text:
Alpha takes a deep breath, lets it out again, gripping his little brother’s hand tightly.
Cody lies unmoving. His head faces away from him, and Alpha can’t help but wince as his eyes trail over the bruises and his swollen eye. His head is bandaged and there’s a bacta-patch secured against his left leg.
One could assume he was dead if it wasn’t for the steady rise and fall of his chest, Alpha thinks, feeling more than guilty. After all he was the one to put his little brother into such a state.
Behind Cody, through the transparisteel of the ship, he watches the Purrgils glide through space. He still isn’t any more sure what to do about them than he had been a few minutes ago when they jumped out of hyperspace and almost crashed right into their small ship, but it seems like Alpha got lucky for once in his damn life—The purrgils have no interest in disturbing them. All they do is float. There’s ten of them, two smaller ones and one that seems especially big, and Alpha does think they’re beautiful, in a way.
But Alpha had never been the kind of man to really have the time or interest to appreciate beauty like that. The purrgils are in the way. In every way, actually. They’re surrounding the entire ship and Alpha wouldn’t dare to start the engine again now, so he’s just been matching the animals—Float. Slowly float.
It’s not like there’s a fucking Sith after him and his brother or anything.
So, maybe, maybe Alpha is losing his nerves, because it had been difficult enough to steal a ship that includes a damn surgery station, get onto the emperors ship, kidnap his brainwashed brother (and Cody put on such a show, really, Alpha would have been proud if it wasn’t his nose that was now broken), put said unconscious brother into said spaceship, get them both to a temporary safe place in the middle of space where he could let the droid perform the surgery safely and to get that damn chip out of Cody’s head.
Now there’s a horde of huge space creatures making it impossible to get away from here. Alpha’s going insane.
Just when he thinks it can’t get worse, one of the things reaches out with one of its tentacles, and touches the ship.
“Hey!” Alpha calls out, even when he knows the things can’t hear him. And if they could he doubts they’d listen, anyway.
The ship shakes. Alpha stumbles away from Cody’s still form and to the door, cursing, and he thinks that maybe he’ll be able to rip the tentacle away with enough force—
“What’s’oin on?”
Alpha snaps his head back around. For a moment the purrgils are completely forgotten.
“Cody.”
Cody blinks, and for a moment he looks confused, as if he doesn’t understand where he is. Then his eyes wander up to Alpha. There’s recognition in his features, and then he smiles softly. It’s real . It’s so real that it takes all of Alpha’s efforts not to run up to him and embrace him in a hug and never let go.
Then his eye falls onto the tentacle wrapping itself across the other side of the transparisteel.
“I’ll be right there, sorry, I’ve got to get that thing off,” Alpha babbles, turns back again, proceeding to push open the door.
“No, stop.”
“What?”
“Don’t,” Cody says, his eyes only halfway open but still watching the purrgils outside with something akin to wonder. The exact same way he sometimes watched the Alphas train when he was younger, Alpha notes. “They’re not gonna hurt us. They’re peaceful.”
“They’re pests.”
“We once encountered a swarm, it’s fine. Let them do their thing.”
“Let them do their—“ Alpha stops, sighs. “Vod’ika, I know you just woke up but we don’t have the time to let them do their thing. Empire troops might be on our tails at this very moment.”
Cody looks at him. He’s still smiling. “Wait a moment, vod. Come sit.”
“You’ve gone insane.”
Cody laughs. “I promise I’m not.”
Alpha hesitates another moment. Then he stalks over, sits down on the end of Cody’s cod, stares outside. The tentacle is still obscuring about a fifth of the view. There’s an eye looking through the glass.
“Kenobi was there when we got into contact with a dozen of them,” Cody then says. “You know how Kenobi is, obviously, but—He wasn’t the best with animals, I don’t think they even liked him very much, but I guess it was still the usual Jedi stuff.” Cody huffs a laugh as he’s carefully sitting up. “When we got surrounded by the purrgils one of them just kind of…took us in. Maybe it thought it was helping us. Kenobi didn’t use the force, or at least he said he didn’t, but the purrgil brought us into hyperspace with it, in their own way—there’s a name for it but I can’t remember. Anyway, it let us go and they went on their way. We had three extra hours of travel time because they spit us out somewhere entirely else from where we needed to go but we got somewhere, at least, and that somewhere is completely unpredictable.” He pauses, dangles one of his legs off of the cot. Alpha is eyeing him warily, ready to catch him in case the tiredness catches up with him, especially because the shock apparently hasn't yet. He’s in no rush to bring any of that up, though—Cody can repress it for now if he wants to.
“That’s what we want, don’t we? Somewhere completely unpredictable. The purrgil is taking us with it, and I say we probably should take that opportunity.”
Alpha thinks the purrgil might be looking at him. “That makes no sense. Why is it doing that?”
“I don’t know.”
A pause. Then:
“You came for me.”
Cody’s sitting next to him now, his head lying on Alpha’s shoulder. His voice is quiet as he speaks, and it takes Alpha by surprise, because Cody had by far never been someone to talk quietly. “I didn’t think anyone would. I didn’t even know if you were still alive.”
A tunnel-like mass of stars stretches around the ship, and there’s a small thump as they jump into hyperspace. The eye outside moves upwards, replaced by another tentacle, and Alpha puts an arm around Cody’s shoulder.
“Yeah, well, someone had to get you. I’m your ori’vod , kid, of course that was going to be my job.”
“I’m not a kid, Alpha. I’m eighteen.”
“You’re a kid to me, Cody, always have been and always will be. I’m never going to see you as anything else than the cadet who woke me at three AM because you threw up.”
“That—Why do you keep bringing that up? It’s been so long.”
“Yeah,” Alpha says, and his voice comes out hoarse. He clears his throat. It’s not what Cody meant, but he can’t help but think that yeah, it has been too long. Alpha hasn’t seen Cody up close in years.
He squeezes his shoulder, and Cody looks up at him.
“I’m sorry no one came sooner,” Alpha says. His voice is uncharacteristic for him, he can tell. But if he’s feeling a little weird—who can blame him? He’s got his brother back. That’s a not thing to happen often these days.
“You were pretty close to Vader a lot of the time,” he adds because he feels like he needs to offer Cody some kind of explanation on why it took years , but he regrets bringing this up at all when Cody’s smile freezes and falls.
Cody nods, nods again. “I’m not blaming anyone. It’s just…” he trails off. Starts anew. “How long were you…how long was that thing…?”
“Mine didn’t work,” Alpha says. “No one was sure why. It’s out, though.”
“Oh.”
“There’s others who know what it’s like, Cody. We’re gonna go to them once the empire isn’t directly behind us.”
Cody stares at him. “There’s others?” he says, almost breathlessly, and something tugs at his lips. “Who? I know that clones disappeared, but I never knew who got saved and who…”
“You’ll see.”
Cody nods again. Alpha isn’t sure if the expression on his face is relief of fear.
And Alpha looks at Cody, his little brother, a kid he watched grow up, and something inside of him snaps. He wraps his other arm around Cody, too, pulls him close against him, and Cody had never been an overly affectionate person but being in the control of a chip inside of your brain for three years would probably explain why Cody immediately hugs him back, exhaling sharply.
“We’re getting you home,” Alpha says. If Cody says something he doesn’t hear it. “You’re going to be okay, vod’ika.”
Cody mutters something into the nape of Alpha’s neck.
“Didn’t catch that, sorry.”
“Sorry about your nose,” Cody mumbles, slightly louder. Alpha chuckles.
“It’s fine. Sorry about your eye.”
“I’ll be alright.”
Outside, the stars pass by in a stream. An enormous eye looks through the glass and Alpha finds that it looks almost kind, not malicious, just gentle and warm.