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They start swapping nightmares to soothe the sting of them.
Cody, voice sounding out stronger than he feels in the pre-dawn grey, tells of Utapau.
“Still alive,” Obi-Wan answers, a hand reaching for Cody’s in the sheets.
Obi-Wan tells, soft and shaking against the headboard, of Mandalore, only it’s Cody whose body Maul’s blade rends like butter.
“Still whole,” Cody confirms, and, when Obi-Wan’s trembling refuses to ebb, lifts the hem of his sleep shirt and presses Obi-Wan’s palm against his belly to prove it.
“They’re still out there,” Cody keens in winter, damp with sweat and shivering. “So many. I lost them. I failed them. I’m failing them even now.”
“The fate of the vode cannot rest on the shoulders of one man,” Obi-Wan reasons, but it’s the wrong thing to say. His words puff out into cold air of the room. His hand lies heavy between Cody’s quaking shoulder blades. “We’ll find them,” he tries again, and Cody’s grief quells.
There’s a dream that Obi-Wan finds hard to talk about. It wriggles in between them in the bed, a third party, an uninvited guest worming into the space even as their bodies press so close it would be easy to forget they were ever separate.
Cody knows that asking will bear no fruit even though their bedfellow eats Obi-Wan alive. It visits him again and again; screaming and sweat-damp he wakes, thrashing. Howling. Cody’s arms cage his mania as best they can, but Obi-Wan’s terror gets into Cody’s bones and frightens him too. He holds Obi-Wan and rocks him until the suns burn away the ghosts, night after night. He doesn’t know what Obi-Wan sees, and guessing is worse.
A sandstorm swallows the sky for five days. They are well-prepared, with food and water and the hatches battened down, but as accustomed to occupying themselves as they are, boredom’s claws are quick and slide under the skin with ease. They’re panting on their backs on the bed, one day-evening-night, when Obi-Wan finally says, “I turned from the light.”
There’s an imperfection in the ceiling, and Cody’s eyes follow the crinkled ridge of it back and forth. If he speaks, if he moves, Obi-Wan’s courage will leave him.
“I became so afraid,” he goes on, “so angry, at the misfortune the Force kept leaving at my feet. So tired of loving and losing that it was better if I had nothing to lose or to love.”
The flaw in the ceiling is superficial, Cody decides. Nothing will come falling onto their heads while they are unaware.
“You tried to stop me. You followed me all the way to Mustafar and- and in my, in my fury with you, I-,” Obi-Wan falters. Cody can hear his teeth squeaking as his jaw grinds; when he speaks again his voice is very small. “It almost made sense, seeing it from the other side.” A bitter laugh, barely more than a breath. “How dare you tell me I was wrong? That keeping you safe wasn’t worth everything.”
Cody’s voice cracks. “It frightens you because you believe that anyway.”
The sound of Obi-Wan turning his head on the pillow to look at Cody slithers out into the beat that follows. Cody can’t meet his eye. “Every night before you found me again I saw this version of my failure play out,” Obi-Wan goes on. “For a time, I convinced myself it had become the truth. That you were gone. That you would never find me because I made it so that you couldn’t. Easier, not to worry about losing you if you were already gone.”
“I’m here,” Cody says thickly to the ceiling. “I did find you. You didn’t stray from the light.”
Fingers weave between Cody’s. “Your light,” Obi-Wan says, “and I am so grateful for its warmth.”
Cody turns his head. Shuffles closer, curves his hand against Obi-Wan’s wind-chafed cheek. “You worry,” he says, nose pressed to Obi-Wan’s, “that you’re going to be left in the dark again.”
“It’s going to unravel me, Cody, if I’m not careful.”
“Let me bear your worry,” Cody suggests. “My shoulders are broad enough to carry it for a while.” He tries a smile, but it falls short. Obi-Wan’s fingers trail over the scar that sickles around his eye. There’s little Cody can do to defang this fear, he can only be here, and keep being here with Obi-Wan until Obi-Wan starts believing it’s for good.
That maybe the Force has decided to throw them both a bone.
“You always took on too much,” Obi-Wan says, and his smile is more successful.
“I just want you to have a good night’s sleep.”
“Such small dreams you have, my darling.”
Cody tilts his chin up and Obi-Wan’s fingers fan out against his cheek. Their tongues are slow and easy, the knot of their legs tight and tightening. Not even the Force could pull them from each other’s orbit now.
“I used to dream of this,” Obi-Wan murmurs against Cody’s mouth, desperately fond, “during the war. Kissing you. Seemed so silly at the time. Impossible.”
The lines around Cody’s eyes crease. “Just kissing?”
“Small dreams,” Obi-Wan says, and Cody pulls him close for more.