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Niephim is a cold and lonely planet just outside the Republic border. There's very little notable about it except for its enormous granite mountains and the farmers who raise some of the rarest wools in the galaxy. It's not the kind of place anyone expects to find a highly wanted criminal, but then again, that's what makes it a good place for that.
Cody climbs the mountain slowly, listening to the crunch of gravel beneath his boots. He has no guarantee that Obi-Wan is here--the man certainly wasn't at any of the last three planets he tried, but Cody has what the Jedi might consider a feeling about this one. Step by step, he ascends the steep mountain paths worn smooth by animal herds over the years and tries not to think too hard about what happens next.
Maybe Rex is right. Maybe he's really gone around the bend now--five years of devotion to a man who had abandoned them all without so much a goodbye note. Cody can't rest until he gets his answers, but what words could possibly make all of it worth it? No matter what Organa or Boil or so many other people still believe after all this time, that maybe Obi-Wan was still somehow in the right, how could any explanation justify the hurt and the betrayal and the countless lives lost? Even Obi-Wan's famous silver tongue can't erase the funeral pyres Cody has built, can't repair the lives he shattered into pieces with a simple stab of a knife. It would be kinder to let it all go. To live and let live, and realize that Obi-Wan simply wasn't the man Cody always thought he was, to close that book for good and move on with his life...but he can't. Not for Obi-Wan.
In the final leg of a torturous and fruitless journey to uncover the truth of that fateful day, Cody wants one last miracle.
It's nearly sunset when he reaches the end of the path. A few large wooly creatures mill around peacefully, chewing grass. One of them is 212th gold, the exact shade of Cody's scarf. Cody's heart leaps into his throat.
There is a cottage cut into the mountain wall, with a little greenhouse next to it. It's small and unassuming, again not at all where Cody would expect to find a criminal with a bounty of 23 million credits, dead or alive, but perhaps it is the right kind of place to find an old Jedi who no longer has a home to return to. He steps up to the door and knocks sharply, and the sound echoes in the open space.
He waits a few minutes, then a few minutes more. It feels like a lifetime.
And then...footsteps.
The door creaks open and a man stands in the doorway. His hair has grown long and unkempt and his skin shows marks of weathering the mountain air but his eyes...his eyes are the same.
"Obi-Wan," Cody says, and his voice doesn't shake.
The man looks at him, and for a terrifying moment Cody fears that he will simply shut the door without a word. The man takes a deep breath and smiles slightly. "Cody," he says. "It's been a long time. Why don't you come in?"
Obi-Wan's mountain cottage is small, but lived-in. It's not messy, per se, but objects are strewn about, handmade blankets and pottery and piles of hand-spun yarn. There isn't a single datapad or piece of paperwork, or any technology more advanced than an electric light, for that matter. It's so different from what Cody remembers of Obi-Wan's living space that he nearly feels lost. Is this really even the same man?
"Sit down," Obi-Wan says gently. His voice is more soft-spoken than Cody's ever heard it, not even the slightest hint of authority in it. "I'm sure you're tired after climbing the mountain. I'll get some tea for us."
"I'm not here for tea," Cody says.
Obi-Wan looks up at him. His eyes seem to flicker eerily in the faded lamplight. "I know you aren't. But would it be too much for an old man to ask for a last cup of tea with a friend?"
"It's only been five years since we last met," Cody says. "There's no need to exaggerate."
Obi-Wan rubs his beard. "Only five years? Really? It's so easy to lose track of time here. It felt like longer."
With that, Obi-Wan slips into the adjacent room to make some tea. Cody closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. This is as far as he could ever be from a battlefield, yet his heart is pounding like he's a nervous cadet on the first day of live fire exercise.
"Here," Obi-Wan says, trundling back in with a small tray. He hands a mug to Cody before settling down in a chair of his own. There's something grating about how slowly he goes through all the motions, like he's got all the time in the world. Obi-Wan blows on the tea, then drinks. "That's good. Nowhere near the kinds of tea I used to have at the Temple, but we all must make sacrifices sometimes."
Cody takes a sip. He has no opinion on the quality of the tea, except that it tastes and smells nothing like the tea they had once shared in the war. It's just as well. That time is gone.
Cody sets his mug down. "Have you been here this whole time?"
Obi-Wan hums. "For most of it, yes. I spent a little while with Hondo, but piracy didn't appeal to me very much. After that, the simplest solution was to hide, so...here I am."
"Hondo?" Cody asks incredulously. "You conspired with Hondo?"
"'Conspired' is a strong word. I needed a way out of the Core and I didn't exactly have many options, considering I had just murdered the Supreme Chancellor," Obi-Wan replies, as if destabilizing the Republic is as natural as the weather. "How are you, these days, Cody? Are you living in the Temple?"
Cody grits his teeth. "Is this really the time for small talk?"
"There won't be any other time," Obi-Wan says. "Indulge me this small kindness, please."
Cody takes a deep breath. He doesn't owe anything to this man, not anymore, but he can't bring himself to throw it all in Obi-Wan's face like he deserves. It's true, after all. It's unlikely they'll ever meet again after this.
He tells Obi-Wan about his life at the Temple. He tells Obi-Wan about working with Padawans and researching for missions and about his brothers who stayed in the Temple and those who moved on to other places. Obi-Wan listens to it all without comment--his expression doesn't even change.
"Are you satisfied?" Cody asks.
Obi-Wan nods. "The Jedi are alive, and you and your bothers are at peace with them. Yes, I'm satisfied."
Cody squints at Obi-Wan. "That's all you wanted? To hear that everyone isn't dead? That's your best-case scenario?"
"It means more than you realize," Obi-Wan says. "It means I have no regrets."
"What--" Cody clenches his fists. "You thought that everyone was going to die and you decided to kill Palpatine anyways?"
"No, that's not--"
"We did die! Tens of thousands of us! Hundreds of your own family, the Jedi! Millions of civilians! But just because not everyone died, it's all okay?" Cody roars. "We needed you, Obi-Wan. And you betrayed us. For what?"
Obi-Wan sets his mug down. "I don't expect you to forgive me, Cody."
Cody stands up. "I'm not here to forgive you. I'm here for answers."
"I'm afraid to say I have very few," Obi-Wan replies.
"Why did you do it? Were you really a Separatist spy this whole time? Did you really never care about us, about everything we went through?"
Obi-Wan looks at him a long moment. His gaze is piercing, like it's looking straight to the heart and peeling back the layers, one by one.
Cody doesn't flinch. He's come too far to not go all the way to the bitter end.
Obi-Wan takes a deep breath. "Why did you come here, Cody?"
"I told you--"
"What answer could I possibly give you that would satisfy the hunger that brought you to the ends of the galaxy?" Obi-Wan asks. "You already know there's nothing I could say that would answer the questions you want--you're an intelligent and meticulous man. If I were a traitor or had some esoteric agenda, you would have found the proof by now.
"What can I say that will finally put your heart at rest, even if it means breaking it in two? Cody, dear, my time ended the moment I decided to murder the Supreme Chancellor. You have to let me go. You have to move on. I can't do that for you," Obi-Wan says gently.
"I want--" Cody swallows back the lump in his throat. "I want the truth, Obi-Wan."
"Do you really?"
"Yes!" Cody screams. "You left us! Your men, your family, even your apprentice and you couldn't even explain why! I spent five years of my life tracking you down to some nowhere planet and you think I don't really want the truth?"
"The truth..." Obi-Wan takes a deep breath. "The truth is...I knew that killing Palpatine would destabilize the Republic. I knew that it would lead to the deaths of your brothers. I knew that it may prolong the war, and that the Republic may fall because of it."
"Why did you do it? Why would you do that to us?" Cody asks.
"I did it because I didn't care," Obi-Wan says. "To me, that price was worth it. Tens of thousands of your brothers, millions or even billions of civilians, hundreds of the Jedi...I was willing to destroy those lives to avoid the future I saw, where you and your men put your blasters to our backs and exterminated my people in an instant."
Cody sucks in a harsh breath. "You...you had a vision. You betrayed us all...because of a vision?"
"I told you it wasn't going to be the answer you wanted," Obi-Wan replies.
"You saw some stupid spice-dream where we betrayed you and you decided you had to destroy the Republic about it?" Cody demands. "Us! As if we aren't the most loyal men in the entire galaxy, after everything we've been through, you saw that we would commit genocide on you and you believed it?"
"It's not a pleasant thought for me, either," Obi-Wan says. "Up until you explained to me what was going on at the Temple I had no idea if it had occurred or not, despite my interference."
"How..." Cody takes a deep, shuddering breath. "How could you, Obi-Wan? After all those battles, all that time, all that talk about how after the war, everything would be better...how could you ever believe that we would turn against you? How could you ever believe I would turn against you?"
Obi-Wan closes his eyes. "Wouldn't you? Isn't that why you're here now, to end my life as surely as I ended your brothers'?"
Cody clenches his fists as the picture becomes clear before him. Obi-Wan isn't wrong. He had wanted the truth, and if Obi-Wan truly was the traitor everyone believed him to be, Cody would finish the job for good.
"I betrayed you and your men and my people and the Republic. I murdered an innocent old man and there is nothing I can say to justify it," Obi-Wan says. "I'm sorry, Cody. I'm sorry your brothers died due to my actions, but I don't regret the choices I made. If I had to do it again, I would. Your lives were worth less than my vision of the Jedi's death. That is the truth."
Cody feels brittle, frozen in place, and the words hit him like a hammer. The truth is, Obi-Wan didn't care. After everything that had happened in the war, the tears and sweat and blood, after Cody had given everything to be what this man, his General, wanted, all it took was a slightest wisp of the Force to wash it all away.
He's angry, he realizes. So what if the talks and the feelings and the fights were all real? They didn't matter. They never did, and they never would, because as much as Cody had always believed in Obi-Wan, Obi-Wan had never truly believed in him. In any of them. In the end, Obi-Wan wasn't the man Cody had thought he was. He was selfish and mercurial and thoughtless and he didn't care.
"I'll make it easy for you," Obi-Wan says. He pulls his lightsaber from his belt and hands it to Cody as easily as handing over a cup of tea. "This will be the last time."
"You're not even going to fight back?" Cody asks.
"Should I?" Obi-Wan asks. "I've been on borrowed time these last five years. I've known for a long time that I couldn't hide forever. Whether it was you or Anakin, someone would find me and end me. It seems that no matter what future comes, I am always destined to die at the hands of the ones I love."
Somehow, that only makes Cody angrier. To take death lying down, to not even try...
He steps up to Obi-Wan and aims the lightsaber. It fits in his hand the way it always did but his fingers feel awkward as they reach for the ignition.
It occurs to him that he doesn't have to do this. He could leave Obi-Wan here in this remote mountain range with his animals and sad little cottage and pretend this meeting never happened.
"Do you..." Cody licks his lip. "Do you want to die, Obi-Wan? Is that why you're doing all of this?"
"I want you to move on, Cody," Obi-Wan says. "And I know that you would never be able to rest, knowing that the man who killed so many of your brothers and feels no regret about it is still alive and free just outside the border of the Republic. Do you truly believe I deserve this small happiness I've gathered here after what I've done to you and the Republic? I am one of the most wanted criminals in the galaxy. No one would blame you for doing what you had to do. Indeed, many would say it's your duty. You have never flinched before. I don't believe you'll make a habit of it now."
Duty. Cody's duty weighs heavy on his shoulders, heavy in the cold lightsaber grasped between his fingers, heavy in the knowing gray gaze that sees him inside and out. He is not here for Obi-Wan--he never was. He's here for himself, for his brothers, for the Republic, to keep them safe and ensure that such a tragedy never happens again.
In the truest part of his heart, he doesn't want to do this. He's spent so much time looking up to Obi-Wan and chasing after his shadow that to end his life feels like destroying his memory. But his duty holds him tight like binding chains and the truth is that Obi-Wan is a traitor, and traitors must be eliminated.
He takes a long breath. "Any last words?"
Obi-Wan smiles. "I've never known a man as diligent and strong as you, and I'm glad you, of all your brothers, were my Commander. I'm honored to know you, and I'm sorry."
"Is that all?"
"No," Obi-Wan says. "Live well, Cody. That is my last command to you. Live well, and be free."
Cody nods once and presses the ignition.