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It isn’t supposed to be this easy, Obi-Wan doesn’t think. It hasn’t been; unlikely it will ever be.
Obviously it’s not really like he has a lot for a frame of reference. His first ‘crush’, for a lack of better word, that he can remember… it was twofold. And it has turned out to be one, in a sense, because when one collapsed the other couldn’t stand. It wasn’t easy because it wasn’t difficult either, it merely was not. Gone before he could hold it at all. Her eyes are like starlight and his laughter is rain; they look at each others and the impossibilities fall away, they simply will do what they set out to. This is truth. This is the basis of reality. This is…
His second so-called ‘crush’ went, all considered, much easier. Because Quinlan never doubted him at all, because turns out the cocky shadow-to-be padawan of the legendary investigator feels every day like he’s about to fall from his family’s grace. Because Quinlan got it before Obi-Wan could, and Quinlan got even the part of it that was clutching and clawing at your family to keep them all together. To make the choice to be around and help and want and rely on. Maybe that was why it was so very messy same as it was easy; it couldn’t be screwed up, truly, even when it was aggravating and frustrating and hurtful and the myriad of things two teenagers could be to each other. And, through the thick of it, Obi-Wan’s taught and Quinlan’s learned. It ends well in that it didn’t end. Quinlan’s called him so many things, spanning the full spectrum from extremely disrespectful to aggravatingly flowery, and he’s returned the favour full force, and they’ve, ultimately, laughed about it.
They call each other family, because otherwise there isn’t really a word for the kind of things Obi-Wan ties himself to these people with.
It has seemed so much easier with Satine, before it abruptly stopped, because Obi-Wan realised one day that he could hold the semblance, but it would trickle away before Satine would have had enough of it. Because he recited Twenty-twenty-twenty and in his mind only anxiety lived. And he was a coward for it, and Satine has let him know, and she was not wrong. We could be happy, two eighteen-year-olds said to each other, and Obi-Wan heard, we could also not. And the thought of the future was only logistics, and the thought of them was never there. It was only of her. It had always been; Obi-Wan’s figured he’d always loved that way. Loved the art that is a person whole and complete and beautiful, strong and quick and resilient with the story they’re tracing into the universe’s history, and for a moment he could watch. To most, he might as well have never loved at all.
Anakin has called him “perfect Jedi stock” in a specific voice, and it’s… just a notch on the long ladder that was their descent. His padawan has apologised, of course – he once did know where a line was. Obi-Wan has known his sentiment; maybe it has changed, because everything has changed, irreversibly, but he knew, once. That it must be easy for him to be a Jedi. A part of their decade-long misunderstanding, of Obi-Wan not wanting to make it seem complicated, like he himself was struggling, wanting his padawan to have a teacher who has answers, and Anakin wanting… maybe an entirely different family. Maybe, for this family to be what he wants, instead of just a family that was offered to him. Maybe for his real family, that was taken from him. They’ve both wanted so desperately to be family to each others, to be brothers, but they’ve meant different things when speaking the word.
Obi-Wan feels, sometimes, like he’s never spoken the same language as anybody else. The feeling’s always coupled with guilt, because many people have learned, for his sake, understood his language even if they don’t speak it. And, well, if one is to speak of legacy… He doesn’t know if this is worth knowing. Worth a record.
He’s supposed to teach his language and be thankful anyone even learned. It’s supposed to take years, it’s supposed to be messy and frustrating and a bit of a joke. He’s supposed to accept that some people won’t learn. He has, at the very least, come to accept it.
It’s not supposed to be easy.
It wasn’t, from a point of view, is an angle Obi-Wan could argue from, if he wants to play opposition. For one, there’s been a war and a chain of command between him and Cody. Well, now, does he mean that as a barrier, or as something they have? Fraternising is an extremely interesting, complex, wretched, and nigh all-powerful legal term, while at the same time in many sense he and Cody do only have this war and this command in common. They’re complementary if one likes to give in to flattery, and simply very different if one doesn’t. He with his insomnia, and Cody with his ability to nap anywhere then be alert at a moment’s notice. He with his tea rituals, and Cody with his acceptance of caf no matter the way it comes. He with his lies and obfuscation and logic loopholes, and Cody with his straight back and simple truths that anyone can project any additional meanings on. He with his claws and teeths sunk into his family, clinging to doing good, clinging to their gaze looking towards the same future, and Cody who has simply accepted that he’s a sham. That he’d do horrible, terrible things to keep his siblings going, while also being the one to send them into battles. That he has no self to lose, but he will lose it regardless.
On the flip side of this, is that this common point they have with nobody else. Cody has not seen much of the world at all, and his position in the GAR was rather unique, and Obi-Wan… the pool of people willing to speak his language is already limited. He already knows he will only sink his teeth deeper into his duties with the Order, with his family – he’s already made the choice – but nonetheless he fears the roads with be much longer, the going rougher, because he’ll come out of this war a different person. Worse. Readier to just push everything over, because that’ll make for a simpler puzzle. Just that much harder to be patient with.
It was why he asked Cody, officially, after Umbara, after Cody told him about the way he thought himself selfish, the way he made the war make sense to his siblings, made them feel welcome, gave them structures, the way he loved them all just so they could be sent out and die to unimaginable horrors. The way he needed anyone he loved to, for once, not be sent to their death by his own hands. Obi-Wan has asked him, then, about the choice to love. To simply choose someone and take care of them.
“You hate being coddled,” Cody’s said in reply.
“I am what is known in many languages as a hypocrite,” Obi-Wan’s said. “And, well, I’m rather ready to dish out as much as I take, for this.”
Because the truth, that Cody’s known already, the man was keener of eye than a bloodakk when it suited him, was that Obi-Wan had made the same desperate choice. He’s needed to be a good person to someone, he’s needed to do good and see it change something, anything, or he would lose his mind.
And Cody… he’s loved Cody already. In the sense of the word that his language affords it. Cody, who is steady and reliable and can seemingly be anyone, anything his siblings needed. Cody, who professed that his only talent was drawing a perfectly straight line, and proceeded to demonstrate it on the ground in front of them that day. Cody, who eats what his siblings eat and drinks what’s available and takes his time in the ‘fresher to shave and upkeep his regulation haircut and sleeps as a pastime. Cody, who runs through seventy possibilities in three seconds down to a hundredth margin, who tears metal bones apart with his bare hands. Cody, who thinks there’s nothing inside him, who gets to keep nothing, and still fights on because someone needs him, always. Cody, who Obi-Wan doesn’t think he can’t love, because it wouldn’t make sense. How does one not love sunlight?
Cody, who makes the choice to love, every day of his life. It wasn’t supposed to be so simple – they were supposed to be on different sides, in this. Obi-Wan doesn’t know why; it has always seemed to be the case. It’s supposed to be a game of charade and you learn to forgive each other for guessing wrong. He was afraid, for some time, that it was only so simple because he’s wished it to be so. Cody’s laughed at him for it.
“I really can just choose to love someone else tomorrow,” he’s said, half-sarcastically, that day in their shared office on the Vigilance. “Heard Ventress was spotted in helmet, I bet that’s hot. Or, I don’t know. Maybe I can cure Count Dooku of being a rich asshole and aim for a bountiful divorce.”
Obi-Wan’s swatted at him with a datapad. “Don’t make plans you don’t intend to follow through with,” he’s said. He’s thought, then, that Quinlan and Cody would be rather scary together.
“You aren’t even letting me keep with the plans I want to follow through with,” Cody’s replied. “You get what a choice is, General? I’ve been getting the impression that you do.”
Obi-Wan does. It was just… unimaginable. That they’ve sat down and talked about the logistics. That they’ve moved office together, and reminded each other to eat, and carried each other from battles, and peeled each other off their chair to haul to bed, and snitched on each other to medics, and made each other drinks, and shared bed and weighed each other down so sleep could come at all, and shared work, and shared space, and shared time, and shared, and shared, shared, shared. Shared kindness, so they could be. Shared the war, so they could change together. Without translation. Without charade.
He was, perhaps, if he could be the kind of person who doesn’t talk circles around nothing for once, always a bit afraid of when the end would come. The moment the war stopped being there between them, both killing them slowly and linking them together. Maybe it means he was attached; that’s his punishment to bear, or give away to the Force. He’s been afraid before. He’s learned, eventually, the beats of it, and how to dance. How to keep moving, and let the fear find its reassurance in the Force instead of in himself.
He’s learned, too, the beats of grief. After Tup’s, after the four months of yet even more unimaginable horrors, after the incident at the Chancellor’s office, after Anakin turned out to be someone he didn’t know, at all, and after they’ve taken turn crying in each other’s arms anyway, because one may or may not hate one’s family, but one always loves them. After the monster of grief, he’s forgotten the fear, for a moment.
The temporary arrangement while peace talk was once again pushed was either the barrack or the Temple for the troops, and a not insignificant number chose to stay in the Temple. Obi-Wan’s arrived back home with Cody, wrung out in ways he was surprise he hadn’t known in his thirty-something years of being himself. Cody walked with him, equally exhausted, but wearing it with admirable patience.
“Well, I anticipate being needed early tomorrow for more circus shows,” Obi-Wan said, when they came near the master quarters. “It will be some time yet before any of us are allowed out of the Senate’s immediate eyesight, so you will have at least a week of free time. Spend it joyfully and horribly.”
“Cleaning my blaster in the hallway while yawning, got it,” Cody said, and didn’t take the left turn that would take him down where the Temple was stashing temporary vode quarters.
Obi-Wan’s heart found somewhere the spare energy to beat a bit faster, and he rued it as he said, “If you want me to rescind my enabling, you’ll have to put more heart into it than that.”
Cody looked at him, his eyes twinkling – lights reflect so beautifully from his bright, dark eyes – and only shrugged. “I’ll think of something tomorrow.”
They arrived at his quarter. He used Anakin’s old padawan room’s ‘fresher, Cody used his. He laid down in bed, and Cody fell in next to him. They’ve both gotten a water shower, Obi-Wan idly remarked, Cody’s still damp head pushed up into the crook of his shoulder. He smelled the stock soap handed out by quartermasters, the baseline-human-appropriate lime scent of it.
It was so easy, Obi-Wan thought. Ought it be so easy?
“Early day tomorrow,” Cody said, and threw an arm over Obi-Wan’s chest. Obi-Wan made to pat it, but eventually his hand only rested on it. Cody was warm. Cody always ran a bit hot.
He turned his head and found Cody’s. He pressed a kiss into his hair.
He slept.