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Chapter Text

Marshal Commander Cody of the 212th battalion of the Imperial Armed Forces has pawned his armour for a few credits. Laid out the pieces before a seedy-looking merchant in the dim lower levels. Even haggled over the price, like a common scrapper. And he cannot even muster the dignity to feel ashamed for it. Scarcely has half a rotation passed since he had thrown all his honour to the wind and abandoned his post. But already he is learning that if he is to survive, there is little room for anything in his mind other than pragmatism and a healthy paranoia. Nonetheless, his guilt and doubt still try to muscle in on the edges. Once again, he imagines his holofile, the bold red labels that would by now be plastered across every data signature: AWOL. Deserter. Enemy of The Empire.

It had been an impulse decision, in the end. He had not woken that morning with the intent to take a torch to his entire life and flee while the ashes fell. Though if he was honest, it had been a long time coming. In his final weeks as Marshal Commander he had felt more like a pawn in a particularly brutal game of dejarik than a respected military veteran.

What he felt in himself, he could feel in his brothers, too. The lurking unease, the prickling at the back of your neck like sensing a sniper’s barrel trained on your back. And yet, on top of it, the thick blanket of haze that made those feelings impossible to face. The pains that turned their thoughts away from them the moment they tried to approach. He would march through his day, blindly carrying out orders, thankful for the brief glimpses of peace that obedience would bring. It became almost meditative at times. Though he knew it should alarm him to feel his sense of self shrink in favour of acting without thought or question, he couldn’t seem to rein himself in. But at night, in the quiet of the barracks, his mind would wander, seek out those places that made his skin crawl and set his teeth grinding. The sick human compulsion to poke at an open wound, just to feel the pain thrill on your nerves.

“Tell me something, Crosshair. This new Empire… Are we making the galaxy better?”
That wound is one of the deepest, one that has never been allowed to heal over before Cody prods at it again. But there are plenty of other scabs to pick.           

The reports all say that he is dead. He. The general. His general. Cody has had to fight especially hard against the pains in his head to even think those words. The name is still out of his reach, forbidden like so many of his memories seem to be. He knows it, knows the name as well as he knows every one of his men. It may as well be etched into his armour with every other dent and blaster strike, carved like his scars into his skin. And yet not since the moment of Order 66 has he been allowed to say it. Not to anyone, even himself. It lies somewhere stranded in a vast, swallowing desert, one littered with the memories Cody isn’t supposed to have.

“Come on, when have I ever let you down?”
A laugh, bright, bold. Such a beautiful sound to come from someone he was supposed to hate.
“Very well, the burden is on me to not destroy all the droids until you arrive.”

The night before he left for that last mission to Desix, he had lain with lips parted until he had lost track of the seconds on the chrono, trying to force his mouth around the name. No sound had come, and yet his lungs had emptied as though he had cried it out loud. Even when he read the reports –a solemn, repeated ritual under cover of night– his eyes would slide off the name like oil. He knew the facts nonetheless. Or what The Empire had decided would be the facts. His general, his traitorous, treasonous Jedi general, was dead. 
Though no body had been recovered. And reports of his fall were inconsistent at best. 

Cody had seen all the Jedi perform far more death-defying feats than surviving the battle on Utapau. Stars, his general had even been declared dead once before and returned days later with barely a scratch. His stride unbroken and the same serene smile on his face that leaves Cody with a new knife in his chest and fresh agony in his head every time he pictures it.
Desix had been the final straw. The last fistful of dirt on the grave of his faith. Faith in peace, faith in The Empire, faith in anything he or his brothers had done in the years since their creation. Governor Ames had not been the least bit surprised when the order of her execution was given; she had expected it from the start.

“Peace was never an option.”

And yet, she had softened at Cody’s words. She had let Cody wax about war and survival and deliberation ( where had he learned to negotiate like that?) and respected him enough not to shoot him when he laid down his blaster. She had wholly expected The Empire to kill her without thought or mercy, and yet, the hope of a ceasefire, of safety for her people, had been enough of a lure to let her release her hostage. A hope Cody had given her. A hope that earned her nothing more than a blaster bolt to the chest.

Perhaps he was punishing himself for his foolishness on the transport back to Coruscant, when he huddled into a corner and forced his mind where it wouldn’t go. Or maybe he had finally been given the push he needed. Aching joints lowered to the floor, muscling through the pain, he had trained his breaths deep and slow, and plunged headfirst into the roiling sea of his memory, fighting the swell to get down deep. At first he was fumbling in the dark. Grasping for something, anything solid. The screeching dissonance in his head almost drove him to abandon the task altogether. But then, a glint in the distance. Light. Solid ground. Something to latch onto, anchored far enough below the surface that the waves no longer beat quite so hard.

***

“How you do it, I do not know.”
Outside. Orange sky. Gentle breeze, slight chill. Quiet.
“I only do what needs done, sir. You’re the one the men look to for assurance.”
The laugh that follows is not right. Meek and cynical where it should be soft and melodic. Cody aches.
“Assurance, I’m afraid, that is more often an act than it is genuine, my dear.”
“Sir?”

A hand atop his, a warm weight. Is it really there? Or had Cody merely wished so hard for it that his fantasies have leached into memory?
“The war is nearing its end. I know everyone here can sense that.” A shaky intake of breath, a furtive glance stolen to the side. “I have felt something in The Force. I cannot be sure what it means, I only… I fear the end of the war may not bring the peace we hope for.”
Cody opens his mouth to speak. No words come. This is not right. A shuffle beside him. A face no longer in profile. It is hard to look him in the eyes – like staring too long into hyperspace.
“All of this to say, when I find myself at ends like this, it’s you I look to. Whenever I’m in need of something safe, something steadfast. You’re… a rock in the storm. For me, for all the men. They need you.” A pause. In reality, perhaps only a moment. In memory it is a lifetime. “...As I need you, Cody.”

Lilac sky. Quiet. The air is still. And as clear as crystal, it is there. The name laid out in memory, falling from lips that now refuse to find it.
“And you’ll have me, Obi-Wan. Always.”

***

The next morning, after scarcely little sleep, after a breakfast he hadn’t eaten and a debriefing he hadn’t listened to, he had made his choice. Silently, methodically, he had gathered his things, left his quarters, pulled his shoulders straight, and walked for the last time from the barracks. He had not paused before his feet crossed the threshold. He had not looked over his shoulder at the towering buildings, with their painted-over Republic insignias and walled-up memories. His feet took him through the streets, moving like a ghost to the nearest bank of elevators, and with a breath that felt like a death rattle, he had watched level 5127 slide up and out of view. 

For the first few hours he had managed to convince himself that he might have intended on returning. Even as all of his meagre belongings clattered in his pack with every step. Listless, he had spent some time first wandering the streets and alleys, aimlessly turning corners and weaving further into the gnarled, shadowy arms of Coruscant’s underbelly. Then, as lights flickered off in what passed for dusk on the lower levels, he slipped through the doors of a tiny speakeasy. The kind he used to reprimand his men for visiting during shore leave. The barkeep was an Ithorian, regarding Cody with shrewd black eyes when he approached the bar.
“I have all my permits in perfect order,” he had said. Even through the translator box at his throat, the bitterness is clear in his tone. Cody blinked. Then pulled a few credits from his pack to lay them on the bartop.
“I’m not here on Imperial business.”
He was met with suspicion, but less than he had expected. After only a moment’s pause, the Ithorian shrugged, and replaced the credits with a glass. 

A booth at the back was dark and secluded enough to take the edge off his fear, at least momentarily. He wasn’t likely to be spotted, and the other patrons seemed like they would be just as reluctant to meet with the Empire as Cody. It was as good a spot to rest as any. 
He had spent seventeen of his forty-two credits on spotchka before he allowed himself to regret it. Twenty-four before he could stand to think about the troopers that would soon be sent after him. And a full thirty before he could finally approach the truth: he was never going back. This departure was long overdue. And CC-2224 was a wanted man.

All of which left him with one final, looming question. He knew of clone deserters. Many, recently. Some of his closest brothers had come up on the daily reports as having slipped away in the night or disappeared during routine operations. Where they went next, how they paid their way, who they became… Cody had no hope of knowing. He was a soldier to the core of his being: his mind didn’t flex the way some of his brothers’ did. He knew little of the streets, the real world outside his insular military mindset. He knew how to plan an operation to take down a smuggler ship, not how to talk his way onto one. He turned the empty glass in his hand, tipped it up to shake out the last drops. There were pockets of anonymity down here, yes, but they were small. Unless he could get off Coruscant, he was a dead man walking. He would be found in days, and hauled back to Imperial Command to meet with some terrible fate. An example to be made to the other remaining clones, like the few captured deserters he’d seen before. The ones he’d forced himself not to look away from, for the days the Empire left their bodies in the square, just to be sure they were seen by all. 
The storm in his mind still rages, the water rising, and his chest tightens against the fear of drowning. From the depths another name rises, another he has fought to keep in his mind.

Rex is out there, somewhere. Reports had come in of his activity. They did not name him. Still, Cody knew immediately, beyond any shadow of doubt. He could recognise Rex’s strategies from a mile away: fiercely clever and confoundingly crazy in equal measure. Fluid and flexible, weaving around Imperial defences like a river, unbothered, carving its path around rocks and branches. The Empire kept it quiet, not wanting to let slip that Rex’s numbers were increasing and their activities growing bolder. Weapons shipments had disappeared. Counterfeit chain codes were distributed to fugitives. An entire Imperial Freighter had been hijacked, once. Though he knew he was supposed to feel only contempt for such treasonous actions, Cody hadn’t been able to conjure anything but pride in his brother, even before deserting. 

The Ithorian tops up his glass again, still regarding him with caution. Cody downs it in one swig. Now that he is allowed to think like a traitor, he allows himself a smile, his first in weeks, at the thought of seeing his brother again. Knowing Rex, though, finding him would be no easy feat. He was more cunning than Cody in espionage, always had been. His comms were airtight, his trails nonexistent. Making contact would be difficult. Although not quite as difficult as the other thought tugging at Cody’s mind. The other path he was swayed towards. And both were pipe dreams until he got some credits together and left this planet far behind.

So it is here that Cody finds himself. It isn’t even an argument in the end. He had expected some trepidation as he tried out the thought of selling his armour. But propriety and nostalgia are weak arguments against self-preservation. It only made sense. He is instantly recognisable in his armour. It weighs him down, and it’s worth the most by far of anything he has to sell. 

A worn-out chime rasps through the pawn shop to signal his entry, and he somewhat awkwardly weaves his way to the counter at the back. His movements are still impeded, despite stripping his upper armour off to leave only his blacks. A surly twi’lek behind the desk greets him with little more than the tilt of an eyebrow. Could be that he isn’t the first clone deserter to find their way to her. Could be her profession demands she keep an unwavering demeanour. Or, it could be the death stick dangling at the corner of her mouth. It certainly explains the haze and smell permeating the cramped space.
“Selling or buying?”
Cody sits his helmet on the bench.
“How much for the whole set?”

After a clumsy attempt at haggling, he relents on a price that seems at least halfway fair. Even throws in one of his larger blasters to sweeten the pot, only keeping the smaller, more easily-concealed pistols to himself. The twi’lek catches him off guard when she asks him for his name. She must sense his panic, the slightest twitch pulling at her mouth.
“Don’t worry yourself. I’m not going running to the Imps,” she says. “Just being polite. Like to know who I’m trading with.” Cody hadn’t thought about that. He will need a new name, something to get him through any unavoidable social situations. He thinks. For a clone, as many of them as there are, it’s hard to find a name that does not already carry a face with it. When the silence begins to grow tedious, Cody speaks.
“Dar’ruus.”

Nodding sluggishly, the twi’lek seems satisfied.
“Pleasure doing business with you, Dar’ruus.” A bag of credits hits the bench with a clink, and that’s that . He spends the first part of his pay picking up a shirt, a pair of worn pants, and a jacket. Second-hand but sturdy, some type of synthetic animal hide. Dark colours, easy to blend in. He fastens the jacket up to the neck and pulls on the hood, but still, he feels bare. Raw and exposed, like a tauntaun with newly shed skin. The twi’lek regards him with the same steady disinterest as when he’d first entered, barely moving as he approaches the counter to pay for the clothes and a few basic supplies. 

His armour still sits next to the till, not yet put away. Gingerly, he runs blaster-calloused fingers over the helmet’s top fin one last time, as if in apology. When his fingers reach the end of the once-golden, now-grey crest, he takes a long, deliberate breath. He sets his jaw and straightens his back. He raises his chin above the fog of guilt choking his lungs. He turns his back to the armour, and he does what he has always done: he puts one foot in front of the other, and trusts that the plan, whatever it may be, will catch up with him.

Chapter Text

The room is crawling with people, and yet, for the first time in his life, Cody feels fantastically, profoundly lonely. It occurs to him as he’s choking down a sorry excuse for a hot meal, the stale bread and grainy soup hardly worth the mere two credits they cost him. Once he’s muscled through a mouthful, he finds himself with mouth ajar, words lined up to spill from his lips. He’s about to make a snide comment about how it still beat their field rations, his mind reflexively believing there will be a vod beside him to hear it and snicker. Because there is always a vod beside him. Battlefield, barracks, caf, or training halls, never out of reach or earshot. Always, someone to draw a laugh from, to commiserate with. To share a weary glance with when their comms go off just five minutes after finishing a shift. Every moment of Cody’s life has been spent with the blanketing comfort of his vode swaddling him, himself a single thread in their tightly-woven tapestry. A single thread now pulled from its rightful place, frayed and undone. The seat beside him is empty. He swallows down his words, and they settle like cement in his stomach. He is alone.

When he had touched down here, it had taken an embarrassingly long moment to decipher where in the galaxy he had ended up. Leaving Coruscant, he had not exactly been in a position to be choosy about his destination. Not when he had to resort to bribing smugglers for a place in their cargo hold, wedged between bricks of uncut spice and crates that growled at him when he got too close. There were too many troopers making rounds too close to the docking bays for him to ask any questions. A crew headed far off-planet and willing to make a few easy credits off him was the best he could ask for. The trip itself had been uneventful, and the chill of the hold had been enough to occupy his mind until they finally touched down. He tried to thank the crew as he disembarked. The captain silenced him with a single hand, barely looking in his direction.
“We never saw each other. Don’t know you, you don’t know me. Get gone before you’re seen.” If nothing else, Cody could appreciate a man who eschewed small talk. Even though the trip had cost him a large portion of the credits from his armour. He wouldn’t be able to do this again if he wanted to eat.

A rusted sign on a creaking fencepost proclaimed the area as Bilbousa Bazaar, Nal Hutta. The horizon in all directions was obscured by yellow haze, the air thick with it. Its few buildings protruded from the great, gnarled roots of long-dead swamp trees. After hours huddled and trembling in the unheated hold, Cody had first welcomed the warmth outside. Too quickly, though, the humidity had sapped through to his bones, the heat turning him miserable and sluggish. By now there is sweat gathering at the nape of his neck, under his hood. Still, he does not dare remove it. The Empire’s presence is not near as strong here as on Coruscant: every other person looks like they either hunt bounties or have one on their own head, or both. Yet Cody has still had to keep his head down and make a few sharp detours to avoid being seen by the scattering of troopers about the outpost.

This feeling is not unfamiliar to Cody. Paranoia, hypervigilance. Adrenaline thrumming through his veins, first a thrill, then an unbidden exhaustion. Long stretches afield in battle have found him wearied by this very feeling, the certainty that death is lurking seconds away, a predator waiting for him to tire enough to let down his guard. It is a feeling that, shamefully, he allowed to follow him off the field, as well. He knows he is not the only one of his brothers who, long after the battle is over, still seizes up in cold dread when a civilian transport flies overhead. Not the only one to jolt at sudden noises on the holo, his hand subconsciously moving for his blaster. Still, he was never one to broach the subject to his men. To anyone. As their commander, he has –had– a duty to remain, at least outwardly, steady and unshakeable.
A rock in the storm.
But after two rotations without sleep, without a single vod whose wellbeing he could focus on instead of his own, Cody’s resolve is quickly being stretched thin. He needs a plan.
He needs Rex.

It seems an insurmountable task, and yet, if Rex is out there, there must be a path to him. A way back to his vod’ika. The one who noticed when Cody flinched at loud noises and silently laid a hand on his shoulder to ground him. The one who gently but firmly pried Cody’s fifth cup of caf from his hands and shooed him off to bed, but who would invariably protest when Cody did the same for him. There is no breath in Cody’s lungs, all of it squeezed painfully out. He cannot be alone much longer. There is no point to his survival, no point to enduring any of this, the guilt, the pain, the paranoia, if he cannot find his brother.

Pushing his half-finished meal away from him, he wonders if this is how Obi-Wan felt in the aftermath of Order 66. How long did he spend blindly running, years of careful strategy and hard-won experience drowned out by the primal instinct of a prey animal fleeing the hunt? How long before Obi-Wan was far enough away to afford the luxury of feeling this exquisite loneliness, of mourning the fact his own men were his hunters?
The soup and bread threaten to purge themselves from Cody’s stomach, and he feels cold despite the suffocating heat; how long before Obi-Wan allowed himself to realise that Cody had been the one to order open fire? It occurs dimly to Cody that, once again, he is unconsciously thinking of Obi-Wan as if he is alive. Still out there somewhere in the galaxy, soft heart still beating, kind eyes still seeing.
Good soldiers follow orders.
The words hiss in his ear, grating like sandpaper on his skin. He winces, but he had expected it, as well as the accompanying sharp ache in his head. It happens any time he dares to think about the general or the Empire in ways he is not supposed to. The pain is his punishment. Though the longer he spends away from the Empire, the more it feels that the crime for which he is being punished is changing. He supposes that is why he has allowed himself, perhaps forced himself, to let his thoughts wander more often to the past.

***

“He’s cheating. He’s won three hands in a row, he’s using the Force.”
Cody laughs. Rex has always been a sore loser. His brow is pinched, scowling at his cards as though he can scare them into changing.
“Come now, captain, let’s not demean ourselves with baseless accusations,” Obi-Wan tuts, and Cody cannot help his grin at the general’s teasing tone. “I don’t need to use the Force to beat you.” Beside him, Anakin huffs.
“You did that time on Florrum,” he chides. Obi-Wan gives a cool smirk.
“My dear, when playing sabacc with pirates, cheating is merely levelling the playing field.”
“You gambled with pirates?” Ahsoka’s mouth hangs open, grinning ear to ear. Anakin chuckles, slaps his padawan on the back.
“Someday we’ll tell you all about it.”

The hour is late, and yet a good few of the vode still gather in the rec room of the GAR barracks, making the most of their brief shore leave. Some have their own games going at other tables beside them. Others pay mild attention to Cody’s table as they carry on their own conversations. At the beginning of the war, scenes like this had been a novelty that the men of the 212^th and 501^st would flock to in droves. The gossip was passed like wildfire among their battalions and beyond: Generals Kenobi and Skywalker spent their leave slumming it with their soldiers in the barracks instead of sequestered away in the Jedi temple. It was unthinkable, at first. Incongruent with how they had been trained to regard the Jedi knights. And yet, here they were now, such a commonplace sight that most paid them no mind at all, preferring to catch up with the latest holodrama than marvel at a few friends playing a card game.

Ahsoka deals the next hand, focused intensely on the task, determined not to look like this is her first time playing. The quips and accusations continue as Rex plays his first card, though the mood stays free and easy. Cody takes a long breath and lets it out slow, just because he can. He smiles. He wins the next hand. And the next. Only after they’ve begun to disperse for the night does he confess to Rex, pulling back the sleeve of his blacks to show where he’s hidden the Ace and Demise cards. Rex knocks him on the shoulder, grinning brightly.
“Some commander you are. Setting a fine example to your men, eh?” he says, barely able to commit to his scolding tone. Cody shrugs. His brother’s amusement is infectious.
“Someone had to take the jetii down a peg. Keep his ego in check,” he says. The smile Rex gives him is smug, knowing. Cody wonders if there’s a joke he’s not in on.

Later, Cody escorts the general out of the barracks, passing through darkened halls of sleeping vode. It’s peaceful. Cody feels wired all the same.
“That was some fine playing, commander. I dare say you could hold your own even in a smuggler’s game.” Obi-Wan has his head trained forward, though his eyes dip to the side to regard Cody.
“Thank you, sir.”
“But a word of caution, if I may?”
Cody’s brow furrows. He tilts his head in a questioning nod.
“Next time you intend to cheat me, keep a close eye on the cards already played.” Obi-Wan’s composed smile grows bolder when Cody’s step falters. “Anakin played one Demise card early in the round. The other was in my hand.”

Cody opens his mouth, though he has no idea what he’s supposed to say.  Mercifully, Obi-Wan holds up a hand to assure him there is no need. He’s still smiling. It should put Cody at ease, and yet his heart only flutters faster.
“That is to say nothing of the Force. Your expression was admirably stoic, but your aura was that of a mischievous child.” Cody suddenly feels rather put out. He knows for a fact his mental defences are quite formidable.
“Anakin and Ahsoka didn’t seem to notice,” he hears himself say, trying his best not to sound indignant. Obi-Wan stops walking, turns finally to face him. For a split second, Cody feels like running, but Obi-Wan’s gaze has him transfixed.
“That’s simple, my dear. Anakin and Ahsoka don’t know you like I do.”

Cody tries with all his might to remember what happened next. But no matter what he does, all he can see is his blaster smoking in the glaring sun of Utapau.
Good soldiers follow orders.

***

Night has settled around him. Cody’s eyes are dry and bleary, and it is growing harder to suppress the yawns as they come. Yet he has neither the credits nor the safety to sleep. A point that becomes clear when two troopers pass through the cantina’s doorway, helmets in hand. They aren’t clones. They look young. Cody recognises the heaviness in their gait – they must be sweltering under their armour. Hopefully here for a drink and not to search for a fugitive clone. Nonetheless, it is time to leave. Head down and hood up, Cody slips through the crowd and out the side door, still unused to how fluid his movements are without his armour. The streets are far busier now than during daylight, allowing Cody cover as he picks a path across the bazaar to the saloon.           

It is loud inside, a band on the makeshift stage wailing out a melody that rasps on Cody’s already-fried nerves. But the saloon is full, and not with troopers; a safe place to spend the next few hours while he tries to think through his options. Tracking Rex down the old-fashioned way may as well be out of the question. As seedy as Bilbousa’s inhabitants are, he still knows better than to go asking around about people on the Empire’s most wanted list. He had ditched his commlink back on Coruscant. Even if he had kept it, any transmission was a risk too big to take lightly. Rex’s Republic-issued comm frequency had been shut down, he knew that. And his private frequency, if he hadn’t retired it, was highly likely to be monitored by the Empire. If that was his last resort, the message would need to be coded so that only Rex understood.

He is drawn from his thoughts by a commotion at the door. He readies to run, but halts when he sees that it’s a large scrapper crew pouring through the doors, all bravado and laughter as they take to filling a large portion of the saloon’s tables.
“Your round tonight. You still owe me for last week.”
“You mean when you almost got us all killed?”
“Yeah, but we made a killing after that, didn’t we?”
Cody watches with fascination at the scene, sinking low in his seat as the crew jostle each other for space in the booths and raise their voices high over the music. There is no consistency of age, species or gender among them, and yet Cody may as well be at 79’s watching his vode celebrate a victory. The simple gestures of camaraderie make him dizzy with grief and jealousy. His eyes sting with more than exhaustion.

Some time later, someone places a drink on the table in front of Cody. He looks up to find a human woman standing over him, a practiced smile on her lips.
“You look lonely.”
Cody almost laughs.
Without waiting for an invitation, the woman sits beside Cody, folding one leg over the other. She is content to carry the conversation by herself for a while. It takes Cody longer than he’d like to admit to realise that it’s a routine. Still, someone is speaking to him. There is weight on the seat beside him, real and tangible. It beats conversing with the voices in his head. He cuts her off when he finally speaks, still unable to look at her.
“Do you have a family?”
The question seems to catch her off guard, but she passes it off well.
“I do.”
“Siblings?
“Two.”
“Do you see them often?” Cody follows. The woman shrugs, looking down at her fingernails.
“Now and then. We’re not all that close, but you know. I’ll get a comm on my birthday.” She waits for a measure and then begins to ask Cody something, to change the subject, but he interjects again, forcing himself to meet her eyes.

“Tell me something about them. Growing up with them.” The woman searches his gaze, eyes narrowing. Whatever she senses behind Cody’s request, it lets her soften into the booth, contemplative as the moments drag on.
“My older sister liked to pretend she knew better about everything,” she says at last. “I think she liked feeling like she was teaching me about the world. Like she could give me guidance.” Cody says nothing, his silence urging her on. The woman sighs. “It was nice, though, sometimes. Knowing she wanted to be my protector, even if she was just as clueless as I was. She looked out for my brother and me.”
The scrappers across the room erupt into laughter at some shared joke. Under the table, Cody’s hands flex, nails digging crescent-shaped craters in his skin. The woman speaks again. Tells Cody about summers spent stealing jogan fruit with her siblings from their neighbour’s tree. About her brother breaking an arm swinging from the branches. About her sister taking the fall for it. Cody cracks. He takes the as yet untouched drink on the table and downs it in one long swig. Places a few credits in the woman’s hand to pay her back for it, and leaves the saloon.

Outside, he tries three speeders before he finds one unlocked, around the back of the saloon where the streetlamps don’t reach. His fingers work the commlink without thinking, keying in Rex’s old private frequency. It’s a risk. It’s madness, but Cody can’t take another moment of paranoid solitude. He doesn’t wait to hear if there’s a response, thanking the stars that the Cuy’val Dar taught them dadita code as he taps out each letter of the message in long and short tones.
I still keep demise up my sleeve.

In the instant after he finishes the message, Cody’s desperation gives way fully to horror and regret. What he had just done could well have sentenced both he and his brother to death, all because he had dared to sit in a saloon and ask someone about their family. But then, a crackle. The static of an open line. Someone is listening. A sharp breath is punched from Cody’s lungs. The line goes dead as quickly as it had come alive, but his message had been received. He had no way to know if it has reached its intended target, but the possibility pulses in the air like electricity, sparking life in his bones and turning his heartbeat to a sharp staccato. Somewhere out there in the galaxy, his vod’ika might have heard him.

Time seems to slow to a pathetic crawl as the minutes turn to hours, and Cody can’t shake the adrenaline from his limbs. He’s counted the stormtroopers present on the outskirts of the bazaar. There are more now, he is sure. They seem more attuned, standing at attention instead of slumped under the heat. It may be Cody’s own hypervigilance clouding his judgement. But the possibility that his message was received or intercepted by the wrong target is a dire one. His hand moves to his hip, feels for the comforting weight of his blaster in its strap. He takes note of the area’s most defensible positions, plans for the worst.
Good soldiers follow orders.
The mere thought of a firefight against the troopers is another lance in the back of his brain. He is growing unnervingly accustomed to the pain.

***

“How long has it been since you last slept?”
Cody keeps his tone purposefully soft. Rex looks like a frightened animal across the table form him, datapad clutched like a lifebuoy in hand. He does not answer.
“I… I know this has been hard on you. I know you were close. I miss him, too. But—”
“He knew something,” Rex interjects. He no longer looks afraid when his eyes raise to meet Cody’s. He looks furious. “Fives knew something, and it scared him.”
“I know, Rex. I know. But the reports say the parasite he ingested can cause paranoia and delusions. It might not all add up, but we can at least consider—”
“Kriff the blasted reports! Fives saw something on Kamino. Something to do with our inhibitor chips. Something he thought was important enough to risk coming back here to tell me and General Skywalker.”
Cody swallows thickly. He is having a hard time talking around his own questions about Fives’ death. But the thought of a conspiracy like this, of all the clones having the potential for their own minds to be turned against them, it didn’t bear thinking about. Not because it was implausible.

Because it was too plausible.

He reaches across the table, fighting a losing battle to hide the trembling in his fingers as he grips Rex’s forearm.
“None of this is fair,” he breathes, and the sudden change in his tone catches Rex’s attention. He is speaking as a brother, not a commander. “Do you hear me? None of this should have happened how it did. Not to Fives, not to any of them. But, Rex, we are still here. We are still fighting. Whether it’s for the Republic or just, kriff, just to survive.” The silence is strangling, tries to take him down with it, to stuff his next words back down his throat and gag him with them. Rex is breathing in short, quiet bursts, his head barely above water. Cody holds tighter. “I’m here, and you’re here, and our brothers are here. All of us are going to need each other to make it to the end of the war. Rex… whatever Fives died for, whatever you want to do about it… I need you to promise me it won’t take you down with it.”

They had spent the rest of that sleepless night together, eking by on caf and whatever datawork kept their minds from the black clouds gathering above. The questions, the fears, the simmering suspicion that maybe they were not the only clones who felt that their minds were not fully their own.
Good soldiers follow orders.

***

There are definitely more of them now. Stormtroopers appear as if from nowhere on the streets, white beacons in the muddy sea of brown and yellow. Cody has to make a move, and soon. Instinct tells him to break now, while hope would have him stay and wait for some sign of a reply from Rex. But what if the troopers’ presence means the worst? Cody shakes at the possibility that they have already found Rex, pinned him down with the help of his brother’s desperate, childish plea for help. He hears troopers at his right side, too close around the corner. Deftly he folds himself into a passing crowd – the scrappers from the saloon. He walks among them, on the outskirts of their group, in the liminal space where he can move unnoticed by both the crew and the troopers. Ice spreads in his veins as he passes far too close by a trio of troopers, close enough to hear their conversation.
“…trace definitely came from here.”
“They track where the other comm is yet?”
“Nah. Signal was encrypted. Then the frequency went empty once the message ended. Must’ve trashed the comm.” Cody barely resists the urge to sob with relief. It is not a confirmation that Rex heard him, but it is confirmation at least that he has not been found.

Still, the news is not all good. The Empire knows there is a fugitive here. They may not know it is him, but anyone who wanted Rex’s attention would be worth getting them up in arms. As much as it pains him, Cody is woefully outnumbered and pitifully outgunned. He has no more time to spend hoping for an answer to his call into the void. The scrappers are moving out from the centre of the bazaar towards the plains, forcing Cody to dip behind the sprawling mangrove roots to avoid being seen. There is a substantial ship idling a short distance away. Cody’s ticket out. He slips closer to it, movements cautious, mindful of his footfalls among the leaf litter to keep as quiet as possible. The crew stagnates around the clearing, moaning about the stragglers yet to catch up. He needs a way behind them onto the ship, and soon; the troopers are beginning to widen their search to the outer edges of the outpost. Distracted, Cody’s foot lands on some kind of fruit and he almost tumbles to the ground.

The fruit is palm-sized, with a hard rind. The troopers lurk closer now. Cody looks to the scrapper ship. To its crew. To the troopers. The plan that forms is reckless, but resourceful. Stupid, but non-violent. Daring to a comical degree.
He daresay Rex and Obi-Wan would both be proud of him.
The fruit leaves his palm in a high arc over the mangrove roots, Cody’s breath held in anticipation. It meets its target spectacularly. The fruit is crushed to a paste against one trooper’s helmet, leaves it dripping with thick, purple juice. Cody ducks low among the scrub. The troopers’ heads whirl around to find the source of the assault, only to see the scrapper crew as loud and boisterous as ever. Cody allows himself a grin as the troopers march over. He has his in.

The scrappers don’t take kindly to accusations, and the ensuing argument allows Cody ample time to scurry from the edge of the swamp over to the ship’s landing gear. As expected, there’s an emergency hatch in the hull directly above him. His muscles sing with use as he scales the beam up to the top strut, vanishing inside unseen. He’s grinning without realising it. The compartment is dark for the most part, but the smattering of small red and white lights hints that he’s in a room used for droid storage. They’re all inactive for now, thankfully. A small window lets weak dawn light filter through the hatch he entered from. He stays well clear of it until the altercation outside dies down, one or both parties growing tired of arguing in circles. It’s only minutes later that he hears the engine rumble to life, feels it shudder beneath him.

Nal Hutta winks at him with a thousand neon eyes as the ship raises high above the surface. Cody’s brief moment of triumph wanes. He has not found Rex, has barely managed to claw out a fraction of a chance to cling to. And as the ship jerks forward into hyperspace, he does not even know how far away from his chance he is being taken. He is still alone, still adrift, and still lost in an uncharted minefield of poisoned memories. And yet, given a single moment of respite from danger, he is already rapidly losing the fight to keep his eyes open and his mind aware. He shifts to lie curled on the cold, metal floor, cushioning his head with his hands. Maybe this attempt had not worked. But somewhere in the same inky sky Cody sails through, Rex is still fighting. And with a little luck, he might now know that his ori’vod is ready to fight with him. One final thought drifts through Cody’s mind before he is lost to the blissful refuge of sleep:
Don’t let them take you down with them.

Chapter Text

The thrusters roar like a roiling ocean around him. Beneath his feet he feels the weathered ship shuddering with the strain of hyperspace. It’s sweltering in the engine room, and coupled with the exertion of the work he is sweating profusely. And yet, this is the closest Cody has come to letting his guard down since the moment he had set foot outside the Imperial barracks. He is not in immediate danger of capture or execution. He is fed. He has slept. And, perhaps the biggest comfort of all, there is life around him, chatter and laughter, hands and minds turning together on the same task. If he closes his eyes, he can almost believe he is back on The Negotiator, among his brothers. His brief pause is interrupted when a Nautolan shoulder-checks him, passing with a crate of spare parts.
“Stay sharp, trooper!” she chides. There is a wry grin pulling at her mouth. “Not nodding off again, are you?” The claws of a now-familiar tension find their grip on Cody’s shoulders once more. Though the jab was likely meant as a joke, Cody’s face is drawn when he apologises curtly and resumes his work.

He had been dreaming before he was found in the ship’s droid hangar, his exhaustion driving him far deeper into oblivion than the short nap he’d intended. The details of the dream, of the small cottage his sleep had brought him to, are vague now, thinning like smoke. He is left with only dim impressions, and with the strangling, devastating, inexplicable grief that had pursued him from the dream to the waking world. Scarcely had he had time to acknowledge the grief, let alone question it, when he had been dragged, half-awake and stumbling, from his hiding spot to the ship’s bridge. There, shielding his bleary eyes from the oversaturated fluorescents, his mind lagged behind such that it took a few dire moments for him to remember where he was, where he had come from, and why the crew around him all looked liable to open fire at one false move. He had pleaded with himself for something eloquent to say, for an appeal that might defuse the situation. Instead, his addled brain presented him with a single recovered relic: the cottage was on a riverbank. Mossy greens and shaded, earthy hues. He can feel the dew of the grass beneath his fingers.

“Hey… You okay there, trooper?” The Nautolan stops in her trail, hefts the weight of the crate onto her hip and tilts her head. Cody thinks she had introduced herself as Rigel a few hours ago, but he isn’t confident enough to say it out loud.
“Just fine, thank you,” he replies, in the tone he used to reserve for the officers he knew were not exactly clone sympathisers. He raps his knuckles on the durasteel beside him. “Filtration systems are clean and backup thrusters are recalibrated. Need a hand with those crates?”
“You’re a machine,” replies maybe-Rigel. His mind reacts to that both as a compliment and an insult. He rolls his shoulders back, but it does nothing to loosen the claws.
“Just trying to earn my keep.”

Rigel regards him for a long moment. Cody fights the urge to avert his eyes from hers. Eventually, with a shrug, she nods to the pile of cargo and continues with her task. The silence is companionable, hauling scrap and half-gutted droids from the hold up to be sorted in the main hangar. The monotony, the exertion, the simple goal are all soothing in their own way. He even manages a sharp exhale when probably-Rigel turns to find him hauling three crates at once and muses that, “they really did breed you boys tough.”
“You sure you don’t want to join up?” she digs, the last crate hitting the floor with a resonant thud. “Someone with your work ethic, Yuboora would treat you real good.”

Standing before the crew that morning, the moments had worn on like creeping tar, his senses returning to him in an embarrassingly slow crawl. Totally surrounded. Thirty of them, at least. His head was throbbing, and he had fought through the fog to take stock: six blaster barrels trained on him, including the one digging into his back.
He had come from Nal Hutta. He had sent a message to Rex. One that may well have been received. His breath had caught in his throat. Rex might be looking for him. And yet, here he was, hurtling through hyperspace with no clue where.
“I asked for your name, son.” The voice was low, rasping like gravel and dragging around a thick outer-rim accent. Cody shifted his gaze to its source in front of him, feeling a dull pang of indignation at the epithet. Son? As though he were some lost child and not…

Well.

Another glimpse of his dream bubbles to the surface: the cottage’s façade was crumbling, decayed. His hands were raised before him, attempting to patch a splintered hole. Over his shoulder behind him, the river trickled melodically.

The crew’s captain –Yuboora, he later learned– was a sturdy, rubber-faced human. Tall, with a deep valley denting her heavy brow and a patchwork of scars and tattoos across both corded arms. Cody had searched her face for any sign of his fate, and when he found her expression impenetrable, had introduced himself simply. Yuboora repeated it like she was turning it over in her mind, testing it out.
“Dar’ruus.”
There was a long pause. A slow nod. Cody couldn’t help but admire how firmly she had held her crew in her presence.
“Well. I ain’t gonna ask you how you got in,” she had said with a sigh, “and I ain’t gonna ask why. What I do wanna know is if we’re ‘bout to get a visit from your brothers in the Empire.”
It had caught Cody off guard, but in retrospect, he couldn’t really think why. Of course he was recognisable as a clone, that much was impossible to hide. And, with an ounce of thought, Yuboora’s following explanation was obvious. Though he hadn’t much appreciated the low, wheezing laugh it had been delivered with:
“You ain’t the first runaway soldier to figure that scrappers don’t get a lotta Imperial attention.”

Once he and Rigel have the crates all moved, Cody joins the others in sorting through the scrap. It’s nice, the flow the crew falls into. It’s almost meditative, slowly transforming the haphazard scrapheap into neat piles of parts and materials. The conversation that surrounds him has him feeling a little more human, a little more grounded, despite not quite daring to contribute.
“Proximity scanner’s going off again,” one crewmate sighs when a dim alarm starts blaring from another room.
“Ignore it. You know it’s busted,” Rigel shrugs, tossing a rusted scomplink aside in the trash pile.
“Yuboora said she got it fixed at the last waystation,” the Rodian to Cody’s right protests, earning a sharp laugh from Rigel.
“She said that last month, too, and it still went off every five minutes. Drove me kriffing mad.”
“Hey, you aren’t the one whose cabin is right next to the console,” the first crewmate shoots back, smirking dryly. A few moments later, the alarm dies down.
“See? It’s nothing. Nobody’s out there, it’s just a stupid glitch.”
It’s not long before another half-joking argument breaks out, the backing track to Cody’s work. It is almost enough to keep his mind from wandering. Almost.

Cody’s first thought at the mention of clone deserters, of course, had been Rex. He had asked as much immediately, all but demanded, really, cutting off the rest of Yuboora’s speech. To his surprise, instead of reacting in anger, she had softened at his interjection. The whole crew did. The silence had been answer enough, though Yuboora had put it to words nonetheless. Neither she nor her crew had encountered Rex. They had heard whispers of a rebellion, of clones who had turned on the Empire, rumours passed to their crew from others who had taken runaway brothers into their ranks. Yet, nothing of his brother. In hindsight, Cody suspected it may have been his reaction to that news that had saved him. The cracks in his stoicism, the clench of his fists and the stuttering of his breath may just have garnered enough sympathy to sway those who had wanted to turn him over to the Empire for stowing away. It had been quickly decided after that: Cody would be put to work to earn his passage on their ship. Yuboora had even extended something of a peace offering to him once the crowd had begun to disperse.
“We’re headed to Bracca after a few stopovers,” she had told him, her eyes on the cobbled-together mass that passed for the ship’s holotable. “Good place to disappear. If that’s what you’re looking to do.”

The cottage had a garden. Cody remembers tending it reverently. Though it had grown gnarled and overrun with weeds, in its centre, untouched by the undergrowth, a single blue flower bud swayed in a gentle breeze.

Cody can’t be sure how much time has passed when he’s drawn from his hazy memories, roused by the burning of eyes at his back. Glancing up from his work, he finds most of the crew focused on the task at hand, or on their own conversations. But on the far side of the room, wedged tight into a corner, a young boy watches him. His eyes dart away the moment Cody looks up, and yet, like a skittish loth cat with its hackles up, his gaze flickers back to Cody, unable to help himself. It’s unpleasant, has Cody feeling unnervingly like a predator in his presence. While he was never good at judging natborn ages, he guesses the child can’t be more than twelve or thirteen years old, limbs long and lanky, not yet grown into. A short crop of auburn hair falls across his forehead, and the scars across his face seem to deepen with the play of the shadow as he turns away. Cody’s chest seizes, crushed down by a vice from all sides. He can’t say why he is so certain of what the boy is. Just that the realisation turns his mouth dry as Tatooine on a twin solstice.

***

He had run out of credits ages ago, and yet the drinks keep appearing on the table before him. Cody lacks both the ability and the care to question where they are coming from. Across the booth, someone (Boil?) raises another toast.
“To General Kenobi,” he declares, voice quavering. “Best damned Jedi in the GAR.” Cody barely manages to join in the chorus of, “K’oyacyi!” but he does manage to down the acrid swill in his glass before the next ten minutes fade into to a cold, empty fog, the same one he has been skirting in and out of for days now. It still doesn’t feel real. Shot down in broad daylight, and by some petty criminal who nobody had even heard of. Rako Hardeen had better pray that Cody never finds a way to track him down.

Still, it didn’t make sense. Not for their General. Not for his brilliant, cunning, powerful, infallible Obi-Wan. The man who had cheated death so many times it had become a running joke. Who could walk off blaster bolts and leap from cliffs without a single thought to how he would land, because he always landed. There had been a funeral. To absolutely no surprise at all, they had not been allowed to attend. So here he was with the 212^th, three days into their own funeral at 79’s, all of them sinking further into the maw of their grief together. Cody lets himself grow lost in it, floating at the edge of consciousness until he realises his feet are moving, sluggishly attempting to keep up with the person whose shoulder he is slung across.
“…Rex?” he mumbles. His stomach churns, but he holds it down.
“Taking you back to the barracks.”
“I’m— Sorry, I know I… But the men, we…” Cody can’t seem to get a full breath in. The arm around his waist tightens.
“It’s okay,” Rex says. “We’ll go back for them. But there’s something I think you need to see in person.”

The cold does not penetrate the thick swaddling of spotchka around his mind: Cody cannot feel a thing, despite his body shivering against the chill. He is dimly aware of wind on his face. This, and the sprawling neon blanket beneath them lets him know that they are on the rooftops of the GAR building, back on Coruscant’s uppermost level. Beside him, Rex has his gaze trained forward like they’re in a marching line, stoically refusing to show any hint of emotion. Cody’s heart plunges through his chest. His vod’ika should never have had to see him like his. He is about to apologise again when Rex nudges him around a corner, and Cody’s breath is stolen from him so harshly that it knocks him straight back into sobriety.

“I… know you must have questions,” Obi-Wan says, but he’s wrong. Cody has no questions. No words, no thoughts, nothing but the burning need that drives his feet to close the distance until he’s holding Obi-Wan in his arms, desperate to know that this is real, that he is real.
And he is.
He is warm and firm and real under Cody, and he’s bending around Cody’s touch to return his embrace, holding him just as tight and then tighter.
“You…” Cody gasps, his breath leaving him in pained rattles. “We lost you, I—I lost you, you were— I thought I’d never—” The chest beneath him rumbles with a soft laugh, and it’s like clouds parting after a storm.
“My dear Cody… Rest assured, I am not so easy to kill.”

***

The child’s resolve lasts only a few moments more, eyeing Cody down with an intense distrust, before he flees the hangar altogether. It leaves Cody reeling. Dredges up every thought and question he has been repressing for weeks.
Where is he running to? He thought he had been running to Rex, though with Rex’s comm frequency shuttered and himself thousands of kliks away from where he had sent the message, he cannot really say he’s doing much towards that goal anymore. What is his plan? He hadn’t even started with one, much less did he have one now. Every step he took, the Empire would be there to trip him up, and he isn’t sure how much longer he can keep finding his feet. He thinks of the child, of how much fear he must have endured since the end of the war. Of how many there are besides the child who understand the feeling of drowning like Cody now does.
There are other survivors out there. That is a fact.
And they had never found Obi-Wan’s body.

Is it born from wishful thinking, the twang deep in his marrow telling him that his general is out there? Foolish hope? Or something more? Something deeper; the undercurrents weaving through barren planets and splintered stars, the infinitesimal binds holding it all together? Whatever the source is of this faint, persistent thrumming, its volume is growing. Cody can no longer deny it. While his conscious mind doubts, he believes, at his very core, coiled with his every nerve, that Obi-Wan is alive. And Cody burns. He burns with the thought of how scared and alone Obi-Wan must feel. He burns under the weight of his own actions. His memories still are fractured: he cannot know the full extent, if this desperate, choking want was ever returned by his General or if he had suffered the exquisite torture in silence, but still, he burns. Burns with the need to feel that tender laughter beneath his arms again.

Suddenly unable to sit still any longer, Cody rises abruptly, walking the length of the hangar and back. They are no longer in hyperspace, yet he still feels the ship shuddering beneath him. Unless it’s just his own trembling. Out the bay window a planet looms closer, its surface and atmosphere all muddy, noxious browns. Raxus Prime, their first stopover before Bracca. Even looking at it from such a distance, Cody thinks he can feel the fetid air strangling him. Still, he itches to get off the ship. When the crew rises from their work to join Yuboora in the landing bay, he follows, the voices around him all deep and garbled like they’re underwater. He begins, whether from desperation or just delirious with how lonely he has been until now, to consider Yuboora’s offer. Imagines trying to forge a new family among the coals of the one he has lost. Trading military drills for scavenging missions. Flying under the Empire’s radar. Making himself an asset to Yuboora’s crew, someone the crew could like and trust. The rest of his life a permanent purgatory, eking out just a little more borrowed time to… to do what, exactly?

He doesn’t have time to answer the question, his thoughts shattering like glass when he sees the Imperial checkpoint outside the ship. There’s a queue of ships waiting to be inspected. Stormtroopers in blinding white armour usher each crew down their gangway and in single file through the bright lights of the checkpoint. Cody’s blood turns to ice. The whispers of the crew around him indicate they are just as surprised.
“…wasn’t here last time…”
“…better tell Aster to empty his pockets into the furnace…”
“Kark it, the one place they hadn’t gotten to yet!”
A transmission peals out over loudspeakers, ordering the newly-landed ship to disembark and lock up behind them.

A hand on his shoulder sends him fumbling for his blaster. Yuboora steadies him.
“Look, I'm real sorry. If I’d known they were here—”
“Let me back on the ship. I’ll hide in the landing gear until they pass.”
“Can’t do that, son. I unlock this ship, they’ll know something’s up.” Yuboora watches the troopers with shriek-hawk eyes.
“Your escape pod bays, then. I can climb the hull—”
“You ain’t doing that without being seen. And I… I can’t be seen with a wanted man on my ship.”
Cody’s reply dries up in his throat when he feels the muzzle of a blaster at his side.
Oh.

“Best get to running. Drop down the gangway fast enough, you might get a head start on ‘em,” Yuboora grits. The troopers move forward. Yuboora’s ship is next in line. The blighted atmosphere of Raxus Prime lets in pitifully little natural light, but the floodlights of the checkpoint wash out any potential shadows to hide in.
“Is this how you treat the rest of your crew?” Cody growls. He tries to keep his voice low and even, but there is an edge he cannot help.
“I protect my own. And a stowaway don’t make part of the crew. Not when he can take the rest of us down with him.” The rest of the crew are beginning to take notice. Cody locks eyes with Rigel, but she averts her gaze. The young boy stares daggers straight into Cody’s chest. His freckled cheeks and his scar have turned an angry red. Yuboora digs the blaster deeper into his ribs.
“Running out of time, clone.”
Cody swallows. Looks from the crew, to the checkpoint, to the troopers closing in, and wills any of it to fit into some kind of plan.

In his dream, the cottage was locked tight, unyielding against his pounding fists. Exhausted from trying to batter down the door, he had stumbled from the creaking gate to sit at the riverbank. The water moved fast and steady. Rocks and branches tried to interrupt it, to dam it, but it wove past them, unbothered. Cody had dipped his hand in and it had welcomed him, the flow cool and soothing and constant against his hand.

The checkpoint goes dark.

Its lights sputter and pop, then plunge the area into sepia darkness. An alarm rings out, and a command ordering all troopers back to base to investigate. The pressure of the blaster at his side lightens: Yuboora is just as confounded as every other person there. When the landing strip is clear of troopers, only then does Cody hear the howl of the approaching ship, small and quick and weaving deftly through the bulkers crowding the platform. He knows who it is before he sees it. Before his eyes fall on a face so similar but so different from his. His eyes so much brighter than Cody’s, the spark of mischief barely hidden under deadly precision. Cody is running. Shoving bodies aside and sprinting. Hands grip the dangling rope. He holds tight, so tight he could pierce his gloves. They’re moving again. Gaining altitude before the troopers can counterattack. Cody is climbing as quickly as he’s being lifted. Not fast enough. He is a drowning man. Lungs burning, kicking desperately for the surface, and suddenly he’s there, he’s inside the ship, he’s laughing harder than he’s ever laughed in his life, and he’s gripping Rex’s arms like one or both of them might slip away. Rex lets him, dragging Cody in so hard it’s painful when their foreheads collide. They’re both laughing now, long after the wailing alarm below fades away to nothing. Rex grins, laughter petering out to a low chuckle like the trickling of water. And Cody…

Cody breathes.

Chapter Text

Obi-Wan moves like a ribbon through wind. Fluid and graceful, slick and sharp. Beautiful and devastating. The bright Kashyyyk sun turns his tunic translucent and sets his silhouette aflame as Cody watches and awes from below. It would be a death sentence to anyone else, yet Obi-Wan makes a dance of it. He’s an artist, each gleaming blue brushstroke leaving trails of elegant carnage in its wake. Around Cody the men cheer, an orchestra raising an accompaniment to their general's display. He loses grip on his saber when a droid knocks him forward, sends it plunging to the bottom of the canyon where his men had been cornered. Cody doesn’t fret, he has no need: it doesn’t slow his general in the slightest. Droidekas are airborne, then minced to scrap metal on the rock face with a regal wave of Obi-Wan’s hand. SBDs explode into blue and orange starbursts. They’re all but ignored by their destroyer, as though their purpose is merely to provide the gust of wind that artfully ruffles Obi-Wan’s auburn hair. He’s a poet. He’s a cyclone. He’s a force of nature. He’s Obi-Wan . 

The last droid falls, tumbling gracelessly from the cliff face above. Obi-Wan descends after it to the whoops and hollers of the 212th. With impossible lightness and an ethereal calm, he meets ground, mere feet away from Cody. Close enough that Cody can see how his pale cheeks have pinked with exertion. It’s the only hint that he has expended any effort at all, and somehow it only makes him look more radiant. His breath still eluding him, Cody steps forward and presents Obi-Wan’s lightsaber to him like it’s an offering at an altar. Fingers brush with a jolt of electricity, and he isn’t ready for the look in Obi-Wan’s eyes when their gazes meet: he’s looking into a mirror, seeing his own awe and adulation reflected back at him. Obi-Wan looks at him like he’s the rising sun, like he’s the one defying odds, gravity, and logic. The smile on his face as he takes the saber lights a fire in Cody’s chest, his next words fuel to the flame.
“Wherever would I be without you?”

***

Cody and Rex stay on the floor of the transport, gripping tight to each other for longer than Cody cares to count. They’re both breathless through tears and laughter, their embrace so vigorous it’s almost violent. Cody doesn’t care: Rex could break his ribs and Cody wouldn’t blame him one bit. It’s a small eternity before either of them can speak. When they do, it’s both of them at once, their words tripping over boyish giggles, jostling and shoving each other playfully, like children.
“Where’d you get this bucket of bolts?”
“–missed you so kriffing much–”
“You looked like a maniac back there!”
“–can’t believe it’s really you –”
“You actually found me, you really–”
Both of them join for the final refrain:
“You’re here. ”

“Your message… I couldn’t believe it. Thought I’d–” Rex chokes on the last word, his smile trembling, fighting to stay on his lips. He breathes a slow breath, and finally, the giddy haze around them begins to lift. “When I heard you’d gone AWOL, I thought it was just another Empire cover-up. I… I thought they’d killed you.” Cody reaches forward again to grip Rex’s forearm. Their foreheads collide with a comforting bloom of pain, a few more seconds lost to silence as Rex’s words sink in. Cody means to speak again, he does. But he can’t seem to find enough air in his lungs for any of the things he wants to say, nor does he think his ears could stand to hear the answers to his questions. Seldom has he ever felt so weak, and the feeling grits on him, sandpaper against his skin. He shudders to imagine what his men would think of him, had they ever seen him in such a state. A man reborn, stripped of his rank, his identity taken with it. For the first time in Cody’s life, he feels nothing like a Marshal Commander. As disquieting as it is, as untethered and formless as it makes him feel, it does little to dull his joy at the familiar face before him. He may not be Marshal Commander anymore, but for the present moment, at least, he thinks he can settle for being a brother.

Eventually, Rex breaks the silence, laying his words out careful and slow in a way that pricks Cody's ears.
“Cody,” he says, low, “brother, I have to ask.” Cody’s back straightens. “Your inhibitor chip. Do you still have it?”
Memories lurch into his mind, sick and burrowing like Geonosian brain worms. Rex’s grief and panic after Fives’ death. The frantic searching for what it could all mean. Feeling it all the while deep in his bones, knowing there was something big, dark and snarling waiting for all of them just out of sight. The incoming transmission on Utapau that day, and the phantom words that had haunted him, hunted him in every quiet moment since.
Execute Order 66.
Good soldiers follow orders.
In the end, all he can do is nod. Rex stands abruptly, hand moving to the commlink on his vambrace. Beneath him, the storm-grey durasteel presses just slightly colder through his threadbare trousers.
“It’s okay. It’s going to be okay,” Rex says, though Cody can’t be sure whether it’s directed at him or himself. His brother is a restless nexu pacing the length of the hold, turning sharply on his heel as he keys in a comm frequency. Each swift switchback coils Cody’s guts tighter, wringing tension into his limbs. 
“I have a medical freighter on standby. We’ll get it removed.”

He reaches a hand out to help Cody off the floor, then leads him down the short hall to the cockpit. All the while, he speaks with another clone through the comm, arranging a rendezvous point somewhere in a system Cody isn’t familiar with. At Rex’s order, the ship’s other crewmates clear the cockpit. Thoughtful of him, Cody thinks, to give them both some time alone. Once he shakes this strange feeling from his bones he imagines he and Rex will be up half the night catching up. He takes the co-pilot’s seat as his brother sets the navicomputer, watching him work. Pale, shallow shadows roam across Rex’s face from the console lights, dipping into and deepening the lines on his brow and around his jaw, his mouth pulled to one side in focus. Once their course is laid, he releases a breath, and his shoulders lax somewhat into the worn seat behind him. Only then can Cody, too, let his aching limbs go. 

The questions begin.

It shouldn’t surprise him to learn just how vast the network is that Rex has built. He had read all The Empire’s reports on Rex’s activities, scoured them obsessively in fact, but in reality they barely scraped the surface of Rex’s operations. It seemed he had contacts everywhere, from covert agents lurking in the Coruscant underbelly to runaways-turned-pirates skirting the outer rims, Even on Nal Hutta, which, as it turned out, was the only reason Rex had been able to find Cody at all.
“Sent some men down to the bazaar where we traced your message. Had to bribe a saloon keeper to let us review their security holos, but we saw you leave with the scrapper crew,” he says. Cody nods along. Is it jealousy he feels at such a well-planned, coordinated team effort? “From there, we got in contact with a few clones in the scrapper guild, and managed to work out which crew it was and where you were headed.”
All those brothers. All living outside The Empire’s control. Just scraping by, yes, and by no means deluded enough to consider themselves safe, but out there nonetheless. Free, in a certain sense, certainly more so than they'd ever been under The Empire or The Republic. And all of them, even the ones not directly fighting, not only knew Rex, but respected his orders, trusted his advice, deferred to his command. A familiar pride swells in his chest when he hears Rex speak about it, the kind only a big brother can feel. 

It takes hours, or that’s how it feels to Cody: he hasn’t bothered to check the chrono. Rex tells him of their clone rebellion: Echo, Riyo Chuchi, all the missing or presumed dead clones that still have some fight left.
“It’s not easy going,” he admits, as though it bears saying aloud. “But we’ve managed to save a few. We’re getting stronger. Slowly.” Cody is struck dumb when Rex asks for inside information: the Kamino plot, the supposed pension plan, the rumoured clone decomissionings. The wounds of their recent past are even fresher than Cody thought, it seems: the salt of Rex’s questions stings more than he expects. He can’t bear not to be honest, though: he has no new information to share on the subjects, and in fact seems to know less than Rex himself. He had been kept even further in the dark than he’d known, moving hands passing him by in the dark corners his eyes had never adjusted to. A pawn in a game played just to kill time, to keep him busy while The Empire tightened their grip. Marshal Commander in name only, placated and too occupied with his own demons to question what was happening just out of view. The sharp breath punched from his lungs seems to fill the whole cockpit, the space around him shrinking to cage him in. The pains in his head have returned, to corral his thoughts away from where he tries to reach. Rex’s eyes are on him, he can feel it.
"It hurts, doesn't it?" he breathes. Cody doesn't reply. 

He presses his fingers into his ribs, hard. It doesn’t do enough to hold him together, tendons and sinew unspooling themselves at his nape, in his stomach, through his feet. He answers each of Rex’s questions as plainly as he knows how, despite the growing fear of what Rex will think burrowing deeper into his brain. Each sordid detail laid bare in the harsh, blinding sun of his own words. Every order he followed with unblinking obedience, every awful act overlooked with play-pretend loyalty.
“I wanted to leave. I wanted to stop, I didn’t want to do any of it.” 
He speaks of the bitter jealousy that spurned him every time another brother came up missing on the morning ledger, even as he personally recited the warrants for their capture. The jealousy, sometimes, even of the brothers whose obituaries he had read. 
“I just couldn’t stop it. Whenever I tried, I– I didn't know where else to–"
Just when he feels he will lose his words altogether, Rex’s hand alights on his shoulder, cool water on a raw burn.
“I understand, brother. I know ,” he says. “We all do.”

When his throat has turned scratchy from talking past the threat of tears, the river finally runs dry, and the questions stop, at least for the moment. Their journey is still far from over, and Cody suspects there will soon be more to talk about, once they have wrapped their minds around all they have covered so far, but for now there is peace. In the interim, Rex works a datapad at his side, brow furrowed over whatever report he’s reading. It's almost rhythmic, the way he keeps sparing glances in Cody’s direction. Every few minutes, attention shifting from the console, his head tilts over his shoulder to look surreptitiously over at his brother. Checking that Cody is still there, like they used to do before a drill test as cadets. A flicker of comfort warms Cody’s chest, fighting off the frost from deep within. It's a much-needed solace to know that Rex has felt Cody's absence just as keenly as Cody has felt Rex’s. It soothes Cody's mind, still aching from the sheer volume of information he's taken in. It’s hard not to ruminate, more on the subjects they didn’t cover than the ones they did, the unspoken questions that seem to take up more space the longer they’re left unsaid, their weight pressing on Cody’s chest as minutes scrape by.

When they finally lurch out of hyperspace, it knocks the question clean out of Cody’s lungs.
“What about the Jedi?” he blurts, and Rex’s hands freeze on the console. Both, Cody imagines, from the question itself and from how uncharacteristically fragile Cody sounds. His sigh is an answer of its own, in a way. Rex’s thoughts seem to press down on him until they drive a deep crease in his brow. Without the haloed light of hyperspace, the shadows have sharpened into a harsher relief, leaving jagged shapes carved into his face. His expression is resigned. He had been waiting for Cody to ask.
“We’ve… heard of surviving Jedi,” he says carefully. “But they’re few and far between. Most are just rumours. We’ve got almost no reliable intel on anything solid.” 
“Almost?"
A long pause follows. Cody gets the sense that Rex is debating with himself, whether or not to answer. Who is he protecting?
“Commander Tano was with you on Mandalore,” Cody presses, “wasn’t she?”
Rex nods, shakily.

“I read the reports. The venator crash… they said it killed everyone. Before they knew you were alive, your name was on that list. How–”
As weak as the shuddering breath is from beside him, it’s enough to cut Cody off. He hangs in the silence that follows, suddenly scared to even move.
“It was all Ahsoka,” he utters. His eyes won’t meet Cody’s. “Without her…”
It’s slow. It’s agonising. It’s like being frozen in carbonite piece by gut-wringing piece . But Rex tells him everything. Every nightmarish detail of escaping the crash. And all the brothers who didn’t.
“She’s out there,” Rex finally says, once the storm lets up. “She’s… not ready. Can’t join the fight, not yet. She needs time.” His voice catches, quavering on his last words, and it sends a sharp sting into the corners of Cody’s eyes, too.
“She’s just a kid.”

Seconds pass. Rex allows Cody time to try and voice the question it seems they both know comes next. It remains unsaid, but Rex answers nonetheless.
“I’m sorry, brother. We haven’t heard anything of General Kenobi.” Cody bobs his head in a nod. With searching eyes and analytical intent, Rex watches his reaction, measuring, gauging. Cody shrinks under the attention, unsure what Rex is looking to find and fearing every possible answer.
“It’s okay,” he says. “I wouldn’t have expected it.” What he had hoped , on the other hand… Suddenly as desperate to be off the topic as he had been to address it, he continues. “And General Skywalker?” Rex’s mouth twitches, head shaking.
“I used to hope…” He sighs, eyes falling to the floor between them before he meets Cody's eye. “The reports all had holes in them. Thought it might mean he’d made it out.” The cabin fills with the quiet, uneven sound of Rex's leg bouncing in his seat. “But if he had survived... he wouldn’t be hiding. He’d still be fighting with us. I’m sure of it.” Too much air leaves his lungs for so few words: there had been more he was unable, or unwilling, to say. Still, decidedly ending the discussion, he turns away from Cody and aims his gaze steadily out into the stars. 

***

Kashyyyk sings at night. An orchestra of warbling birds, howling pack animals and croaking insects. Even the wind through the forest behind lays a low, haunting melody over the velvet-soft undergrowth. It’s nothing like the stifling soundlessness of Kamino, or the driving, demanding mechanical rhythm of Coruscant. Cody leans forward, knee drawn up, to poke at the fire, embers curling triumphantly upward. Obi-Wan sits beside him, legs folded neatly into his usual meditation stance. On haphazardly scattered bedrolls, their men surround them, sleeping sound. Peace, rare and precious. Especially for Cody.
“Beautiful night.” Obi-Wan keeps his voice hushed, pitched low and gravelly. Cody turns to him. The flickering of the fire throws dappled light over Obi-Wan, glints of light and shadow showering him like golden flower petals.
“It is.”
A particularly mournful bird call sounds from somewhere behind them. 
“After the war I should like to return here,” Obi-Wan muses, “and explore it freely. There is so much history in this place. It's a shame to have to see it in such unrest."  His words are poignant, he knows, but Cody can’t take in anything beyond the first three.

“Do you think about that often?” he asks, skirting his gaze around Obi-Wan. “About… after?”
Obi-Wan shifts, sighs, leans back on his hands to tip his head to the stars. There’s a faraway look on his face, the tiny creases at the corners of his eyes growing like spring seedlings when he smiles. One of his tabards is slipping free from his shoulder, leaving a pale collarbone uncovered to the night. He does not adjust it. 
“I have already picked every old text and scroll I will study, when I finally have the time,” he says in answer. “Perhaps eventually, I will even take on another padawan. But first, I will travel. Until I find somewhere quiet and peaceful to rest.” He pauses a beat before half-heartedly adding, “Should the council allow it, of course.” Cody ponders the words, turns them over in his head like a puzzle, but still he can’t make them fit quite right in his head. The life Obi-Wan speaks of is beautiful. It’s all Cody would want for him. But he’s still trying to cut holes in his own reality to make those words fit when Obi-Wan speaks again.
“And you, Cody?” Struck dumb, Cody can only blink. Obi-Wan straightens beside him and tilts his head. “What do you want for yourself, once the war is over?”
And what can he do but be honest, when he turns to meet those dizzying blue eyes?

“I’ve never considered it,” he says, tacking an awkward “sir” to the end. “I’m a soldier. We all are. We don’t know any other way. Without this war… none of us have a purpose.”
With the look that Obi-Wan gives him, Cody may as well have shot his general in the heart. Obi-Wan's mouth falls ajar, but he stifles his instinctual reply and seems to ponder Cody’s answer deeply.
“One’s greater purpose is rarely just to be all that their creator intended,” he says finally, speaking the words like a prayer into the night. “You are more than this war, all of you. You have given so much for The Republic, but that is not your worth. You deserve more, you should want for more than this.”
Insides twisting and pulse stuttering in his fingertips, Cody tries to speak, to give the answer he knows Obi-Wan is waiting for. The fire lends him tendrils of gentle warmth, but its comfort, and Obi-Wan’s raw, solemn sincerity are formidable opponents. When it becomes clear that words are beyond him, Obi-Wan continues in his place. Ever eloquent, ever earnest, ever considerate. Cody’s brow pinches with a soft, tender, beautiful kind of pain.

“I imagine you in a cosy little place,” Obi-Wan tells him, shifting his legs and turning to face Cody fully. His cloak and tunic sway with him, leaves in a gentle breeze. “Somewhere peaceful and green. Somewhere you can make entirely your own. Your whole life, you have given everything you have to your men. It’s one of your most admirable qualities,” and oh, Cody is not ready for what Obi-Wan’s smile does to his chest, how his words reach through his ribs and wring his heartstrings to breaking, “but I want to see you take care of yourself, too. I want for you to build yourself a home. And I believe I know you well enough to know that somewhere within you, you wish for the same. ”

The stars blur when Cody looks up at them, blinking back the mist that gathers in his gaze. His pulse beats like battle drums as he takes a breath, steels his nerves, and meets Obi-Wan’s eye with the resolve of something more than a soldier.
“Do you imagine yourself there, too?”
The simple, sweet curve of Obi-Wan’s lip tears Cody into shreds, burns him to ash and pieces him back together in an instant. He sighs, soft and perfect, and leans in close. Around them, Kashyyyk’s gentle hymn reaches a soaring crescendo as Obi-Wan presses a lingering, reverent kiss to the scar below Cody’s eye.

What was it he had said next, that had sent sunbeams blooming in Cody's smile and blossoms unfurling in his chest?

***

Cody strains to finish the memory, until the now-familiar pain lances through the back of his skull. He flinches with it, lurching in his seat and drawing in a sharp breath, defences already worn down. A quick movement in the corner of his vision draws his attention, and when he looks toward it, his heart plummets through his feet. Rex’s eyes bore into Cody, wide, alert and searching. Rex tries to cover it up, to disguise it, but Cody had already seen: Rex’s hand had twitched toward his blaster. The curtain is pulled back, and the truth looms bright and terrifying behind it. 
Emptying the cockpit. Treating him so carefully. The reluctance to speak of the Jedi. The constant, furtive glances in his direction. They hadn’t been for Cody’s comfort.
Cody almost throws up on the spot.
Rex is scared of him.

He’s crushed by the weight of a dozen atmospheres as he realises fully just what his brother has been through, why he was so insistent on removing his chip as soon as possible. The rest of the journey, he can barely bring himself to breathe, determined to make himself as still and quiet as possible, desperate to keep from making things worse than they already were. He will get his chip removed, and everything will be okay. He won’t ever again have to see his brother look at him like an active landmine or a rancor set to charge.
They reach their rendezvous not a moment too soon.

Cody is brought on board, walking two steps behind Rex, nearly tripping on his feet. The waiting ship is as jerry-rigged and cobbled-together as its crew, and its medical bay is no different: all the supplies look stolen or salvaged, a far cry from the cold, pristine sterility Cody is used to seeing from medical bays. Needless to say, he’s apprehensive at the thought of surrendering his brain to the subpar equipment. But it’s easily overshadowed. For Rex. And for himself, as well. In truth, he’s been just as afraid of his mind as Rex for months now, and the thought of an end to the torment is enough to lure him through the seven Sith hells and back again. Rex explains the procedure as he half-listens, and as he’s positioning himself on the table, the doors hiss open and a medic enters. Much to Cody’s surprise, the clone’s scars and tattoos are familiar.
“...Lieutenant Finch?”
The clone above him meets his eye, then lifts his fingers to a lazy salute, grazing the winding serpent tattoo coiled at his hairline.
“Commander,” he says blithely. There’s a dry smile in his voice that just barely reaches his lips.
“You two know each other?” Rex’s voice rises, confused, from behind.
“I was decanted to the 212th,” Finch explains over his shoulder, foregoing eye contact and instead booting up and programming the surgical droid. “You know, before–”
“Before you deserted,” Cody finishes. Finch snaps his fingers into a point in Cody’s direction, giving a single, curt nod.

Tension ekes into the room, like static electricity before a storm. Cody can feel Rex’s eyes on him. He can imagine how his brother’s mind turns, mapping out every direction this could go. Possibilities like trails of water carving a fractured, splintering path through dust. It was years ago, early in his career, but Cody can remember clear as day how he had felt when he’d received the report of the lieutenant’s desertion. All that hurt and righteous anger. The confusion as strong as the scorn at how one of his own could leave their ranks. He had felt so personally betrayed, as though the desertion was a black mark over his own head. In a way, he supposes, it was: never before had he been forced to confront the possibility that he and his brothers might disagree with their programming, were capable of taking their fate into their own hands. He’d blamed Finch for the fury that followed in himself. In retrospect, he’s not so sure that that is who, or what , he was really angry at. Cody lays his head back flat on the table. A sharp breath leaves him in what could almost be mistaken for a laugh.
“Guess you were smarter than all of us in the end, huh?” is all he says. 
There is no response from any of them, each listening in their own silent reverie as water trickles past them down an unfamiliar path.
A few minutes later, Finch has finished setting up for the procedure. Rex grips Cody’s arm tight before he goes under, tells him it’s going to be alright. As darkness seeps in from the edges of his vision and Rex’s voice grows distant and muddled, Cody tries to believe him. His brother has never let him down before. 

Breathe. In. 

Black. Thick, coddling, a woollen blanket muffling all his senses. Space, empty. Cavernous. The implication of an echo. No sound. Toes edge toward a precipice. Nothing, nothing, nothing, all the way down. A perfect nothing. A mollifying nothing. A final nothing. Toes over. Falling. Peace, relief, absolution. Mercy. Silence, finally, gods almighty, silence. Light on the horizon. It’s over. Rest. It’s done. Limbs move fluid, unchained. Unbound for the first time, feather-light and rejoicing. More light, bigger, brighter. Then colour. Shape. Then sound. Voice. 

Breathe. Out. 

Cody’s eyes open in small, seeking movements, attuned to absence. To beautiful, exultant, glorious absence. For the first time since Order 66, perhaps for the first time since the moment he’d been lifted from his incubation tube, Cody’s mind is utterly and completely clear, empty. Quiet. He wallows in it, drinking in the fleeting euphoria. A split second later, he hears it. Words unburied, memory unshrouded.

“Cody, my love… I can’t imagine myself anywhere else.”

It’s only the first drop of the storm that follows, a single blade of grass in an endless, sprawling meadow. A million more memories follow in its wake: a private moment stolen together while working late, a surreptitious glance shared across the war room. A warm hand in his, holding tight but always gentle. His fingers smoothing through autumn-coloured hair. Tender words and hushed laughter. A single beam of light through a window, a single perfect morning. Waking slow, tangled in sun-warmed sheets, with the whole galaxy held sound in his arms. A whispered promise, a vow sealed with his lips against the gentle, curving valley between neck and shoulder.
His arm, heavy as stone, raising a blaster. To follow orders.

To break that vow.

Great, flowered vines grow from the cracks in Cody’s psyche, probing, pushing at his mind. Too big, many for how small he has become.
His skull splits open. A sob tears itself from his throat, rattling his chest.
With graceless limbs he pitches himself upward, only to be held down by firm hands. He tries to cry out, but all that comes is the barest whimper.
“I fired at him. I tried to– Rex, brother, I– Maker, I ordered it all .”
He feels the embrace moments before his flagging senses catch up, vision plunged into darkness when he buries his face in Rex’s shoulder.
“Breathe, vod.” He obeys without thought or question. “Just breathe. It’ll pass.”
The sight of Rex still there, still by his side, barely disguising his concern, sets a fresh, raging flood over his mind, dragging more memories like driftwood to the surface. Every traitorous thought he’d ever had before the end of the war. Every restrained conversation he’d had with his brothers, with Rex especially, over what would become of them after the war. Every time they questioned The Republic, the Chancellor, the Jedi Council. Endless, circular debates always coming to the same dead end. Wanting to escape. Not wanting to abandon their men. The chilling, horrible dread in his bones touching down on Utapau, the foreboding feeling that it was already too late.

It’s a long while before Cody regains enough sense to sit and speak. Rex does not leave his side for a moment. He’s given a ration bar and a mug of caf. It’s bitter and burned. He drinks it to the last drop. Finally, mercifully, the silence begins to feel less like oppression and more like peace, as the pounding pressure in his head abates. His mouth quirks in a dry smirk when he finally raises his voice.
“Tell me I’m not the only one who took it that badly.”
Rex’s laugh is a balm to every wound he’s ever suffered, deep, full-chested and free. Leaning forward, he slaps Cody’s back, his shoulders hanging loose, at ease.
“You took it like a champ,” he chuckles. Cody wants to sing, to jump and cry for joy like a child. He has his brother back. But still, lurking behind his relief, the rest of his revelations threaten to drag him back under.

“Come on.” Rex stands and holds a hand out to him, his smile softer now but still stubbornly bright. As though he can read Cody’s mind, he says, “I know we’ve got a lot to talk about. We’ll get to it, I promise. But you need to rest.”
The doors glide open, and Cody doesn’t hesitate before stepping back into the world as himself once more.
“We’ve got our next heading. I’ll fill you in later,” Rex says, walking in step at his side. “For now, I think some of the boys have a game of sabacc going. It'll be a good way to introduce you.” 
He cracks a wide, teasing grin in Cody’s direction.
“You still a filthy cheat?”

Chapter Text

A year on, the men still call him Commander. He has never asked them to stop, nor has he asked them why. He is yet to admit that he likes it, though.

“Commander, we’re coming in too hot.” Echo’s eyes dart lightning-quick over the console, stretching his left arm to reach across its width. His scomp is still locked to the main control socket. “Starboard thrusters are overheating, I can’t keep them under control. Don’t think they liked whatever those TIEs did.” He’s right, their approach is much too fast. Their hyperspace jump was shoddy, miscalculated in their hasty escape. They’d dropped out far too close to the Tipoca I. Their sputtering leech vessel hurtles rapidly toward the rear hangar door. Cody’s jaw tightens.

“Our best bet is burning out the main reactor core,” he says decisively. “If we kill the thrusters altogether, the ray shields on the docking bay might give us enough drag to stop. Can you do that?” He asks, raising his voice high over the howling of alarms.
“Not from here. I’d need to be in the engine room.”
“Go. I’ll man the controls.”
Echo detaches his scomp and gives Cody a sharp nod, a dutiful, “yes, sir,” before he breaks for the door. Without Echo’s guidance, the Remora is already listing, arcing gracelessly to the left. The scream of metal on metal rings from the cargo bay below, their stolen supply crates careening across the hold. Thrown into the pilot’s seat, Cody wrenches at the yoke. He tries to correct course, bracing his feet against the floor to throw his full weight behind the pull. The ship protests, groaning ominously, but begins to right itself nonetheless. A dozen flashing warnings assault Cody's eyes. The stench of smoke and leaking fuel floods his lungs. From somewhere in the chaos behind him, he hears bright, manic laughter: at least Gregor is enjoying himself.

Without warning, the ship judders violently. Some of the roaring noise sputters out. Echo has cut the engines. But by now, they’re so close to the mothership that Cody can make out the figures in the hangar. Even without the forward thrust, momentum spurs them forward at breakneck pace. The crew on the Tipoca are frantic, sprinting across the docking bay and scrambling to clear a path. 

There are less of them than there used to be. 

Still, in record time they have the arresting cables drawn to try and catch the careening ship. Cody comms in a warning signal anyway, then switches to the ship’s internal frequency.
“Boys, you still with me?”
“Still kicking, sir.”
“You think I’d miss a second of this?!”
“You might end up wishing you had,” Cody shoots back. “Hold the kriff on.” It’s all he has time for before they make their entry. 

At the speed they hit the resistance of the ray shields, they may as well have hit a duracrete wall. Cody is hurled forward into the console, the yoke jammed up under his ribs. Sharp pain blooms across his body, but he doesn’t get a moment to assess the damage before the second blow comes. Their landing gear had long since been lost in the dogfight. Without it, they rake across the hangar floor with an ear-rending screech, sparks flying like crashing waves until they hit the cables. The air is knocked clean from Cody’s lungs, though this time he manages to brace against the console instead of slamming into it. With a final, echoing metallic moan, the ship comes, mercifully, to a stop.

He’s still catching his breath when the landing crew breach the cockpit. They try to look Cody over, but he waves them off, biting back a wince of pain as he raises himself to his feet.
“I’m fine.” There's finality in his tone. Whether they believe it or not, the men relent. Cody lifts his chin, feeling steadier, and directs them to check on Echo and Gregor before turning to disembark.

Rex is waiting with folded arms when Cody descends the warped gangway. He catches Rex’s smirk as he watches on: of course Rex is the only one to notice that he's masking a limp.
“Not a bad effort,” he says, eyebrows raised and giving an appraising nod to the wrecked Remora, “but I’ve seen more spectacular landings. You’ll have to try harder than that.”
Cody snorts.
“You always held the record for most ships totalled on re-entry. ”
“I learned from the best,” Rex quips. Then, before Cody can come up with a retort, his brother turns serious. “I need you on the bridge when you’re ready.”
Another mission already, no doubt. A dire one, too, if Rex’s sudden change in demeanour is any indication. Matching his brother’s tone, Cody sets his brow and nods.
“I’ll be there.”

He allows himself only a few minutes to regain his bearings before he’s back at the Remora ’s loading bay, helping unload the stolen ration packs and medkits. He’s determined to set a good example; all the men are pulling double their weight and then some, lately.

For the first few months after Cody had joined Rex, their ranks had continued to grow. More clones by the day would turn up or be found, awakened to what they had done, to what had been done to them. Some came in no better a state than Cody had. Some worse. All of them angry and ready to fight. But these were strange new times. And this particular fight was worlds away from the Clone Wars. With the passing months, new recruits had become sparser, and old ones grew weary, disheartened. Cody can’t say he blames the ones who refuse Rex’s offer, nor those that have elected to leave the resistance. On the contrary, their network did everything they could for the brothers who wanted to leave combat. They would be given a counterfeit chain code, a new name, and safe passage to somewhere they could settle. 

There are pockets of clones scattered across the galaxy now. Eking out whatever life they could, in sleepy little farming systems or trading outposts where Imperial eyes aren’t as sharp. That is the whole point of their resistance: to ensure the wellbeing and protect the free will of their brothers. But as time went on, a steadily greater number were taking that option. Combined with those who hadn't survived their tangles with the Empire, it left them with a steadily shrinking network. Their already sparse intel and resources are stretched thinner by the day.

Halfway through unloading their haul, Gregor and Echo join Cody. They're both a little bruised and battered, but still they take readily to the task at hand.
“You both did good work back there,” Cody tells them. “None of us would have made it out without your quick thinking.” 
Chuckling, Gregor slaps them both on the back.
“Wasn’t anything but dumb luck,” he jokes. “But I’ll gamble with you any day, Commander.” He passes them both by, grabbing another crate to haul off the ship. It's taken a while for Cody to get used to this new version of Gregor. It's a far cry from the stern commando he knew all those years ago, but he's starting to find he likes the devil-may-care attitude. 

Echo, though, seems to have gone through an inverse transformation. As much care as Gregor has thrown to the wind, Echo has found and shouldered. Rex tells him it's been this way since they found him on Skako Minor. Whether it was the horrors he faced there, the challenge to his faith, or coming back to find Fives already gone, it had changed Echo. Which made Cody all the more glad when glimpses of the ARC Trooper he used to be shine through. Under Cody's praise he immediately grows two inches taller, pride pulling his shoulders back. He still looks like a cadet when he does that. Cody resists the urge to tell him so. 
“Thank you,” Echo says. “Couldn’t have done it without your lead, as always.” 

By the time Cody had been found by Rex, Echo’s former squad had already left the fight. As he understood it, the Bad Batch had never fully joined with the resistance, though they had been willing to help when they were needed. That was, until they too had decided to put their fighting days behind them and settle in some tiny, remote system. The holo-photos were beautiful, all lush plant life and clear skies. Echo had tried it. To hear him tell it, he had grown restless after only a few short weeks, and found his way back to Rex not long after.

“I’m not much for staying still,” he had offered by way of explanation. And though he hadn’t voiced it, the implication was clear: he could never have left Rex for long, not when there was work to be done. His brothers could rest, should rest, and he will never shun them for that. But somewhere deep within, he believes himself unworthy of the same mercy. A sentiment that Cody understands all too intimately. Peace and rest are luxuries. Ones Cody can’t rightly say he deserves.

He still thinks of Obi-Wan often.

The bridge is dim when Cody enters, lit only by the faint, blue glow of the auxiliary panels. There's a chill in the air that seeps through his jacket, now that he’s away from the burning Remora . Climate control is on minimal power again. Anything to save a little fuel, to postpone a costly, risky maintenance stop. Rex is there in the cold and the dark, waiting for him. Strangely, instead of a datapad with a new assignment, he holds two steaming mugs of caf. Cody frowns, a silent question. Rex gives no answer beyond jutting his head towards two seats overlooking the ship’s bow. He's not smiling, but his brow is smooth, uncreased. A creeping unease fills Cody’s chest, but he follows his brother’s lead all the same, taking the mug. Rex sits, and gestures to the chair opposite him. Cody stays standing.

“You sure you don’t need a medic review?” Rex asks him. “You look like you took a couple knocks, even before that landing.”
“Nothing I can’t walk off,” he dismisses. A raised eyebrow from Rex reminds him that it won't fly with his brother. He sighs. “Caught a blaster bolt to my leg trying to run off the TKs on the base. Just a graze. It'll be fine with some bacta.”
It’s enough to satisfy Rex. For the moment. Or, it might be. There’s a long pause that follows. It’s hard to tell what Rex is angling at when he finally speaks. His words come as if on impulse, his gaze trained out the window on the creeping tide of stars before them.

“Do you remember the time Fives and Echo tipped over the LA-AT in the Resolute’s hangar?”
The memory and the unexpected turn draw a sharp laugh from Cody. With a sip of his caf, he perches on the arm of the chair. 
“I've never seen you so angry,” he says. “Thought you were going to blast them both on the spot.”
Rex grins.
“Only reason I didn’t is because General Skywalker found the whole thing so funny.” He’s right: Cody distinctly remembers the general insisting someone take holo-photos of him with the two ARC troopers in front of the wreckage. Holos that had circulated the entire GAR within days.
“Remind me how the 501st had such a good reputation? Your boys were always one dare away from blowing each other up,” he teases, and it’s Rex’s turn to laugh.
“Like yours were any better.” He sets his mug down on the console to fold his arms. “I remember when Waxer showed up to medbay covered in scratches from the tooka he was keeping in his footlocker. Whole platoon had to get shots for three weeks, right?”

While a part of him is still wary of why Rex had brought them here, there is a bigger part of him that caves to the competition. And more to the reminder of simpler, happier times. Memory is a drug, one whose effects he leans into, letting it sap the tension from his limbs.
“You’re one to talk. Remind me, who was it who had to come save you when you picked fights with cadets twice our size on Kamino?” And there it is. Rex throws his head back, laughing with his whole chest. The memory is still strong, long ago as it was: Rex never had been able to resist snitching when an older cadet broke regulation. And he would always be there after their reprimand, with a smug grin and a taunt to rub it in. 

“Don’t just laugh,” Cody chides, though there’s a chuckle in his own voice. “We both got beat up more times than I can count. All because of you and your smart mouth.”
And of course Rex would still try to one-up him, all these years later. Of course it’s obvious where he would go next. Rex spins his chair and digs an elbow into Cody’s side.
“Least I was a cadet when I acted up. What about the night I had to cover for you because someone snuck you into his quarters at the Jedi Temple?”

As soon as the words leave Rex’s lips, he seems to think better of them. His mouth clamps shut, and his gaze locks onto Cody, searching for a fire to put out. Seconds grow heavier as they scrape by. 

Never once has Cody tried to suppress his thoughts of Obi-Wan. Not from the moment his chip had been removed. Call it penance, call it punishment. Call it an act of rebellion against an Empire that wanted him to forget. All the same, whenever a stray thought or errant memory floats to the surface, he fights against his impulses and embraces it. Holds his breath and immerses himself in it, the pain, the guilt, the grief and the anguish dissipating into his bloodstream. Sediment stirred up to cloud his mind. To cloud it with need, overwhelming need for the man he loves, the man who had loved him. For the first few months, it was unbearable, enough to stop him in his tracks and leave him fighting for air when he finally resurfaced. It pulled like a vicious undertow, the drive to leave, to go looking for his general, to find some way to make up for his atrocities. More times than he could count, the impulse had clawed and wrenched at his legs, willing him to take a shuttle from the hangar. On many a night, his brothers had had to talk him down from doing just that. 

They spoke sense when they said it was too dangerous. They were right when they warned Cody that he would be killed if he drew attention. They broke through to him when they told him his brothers needed him. 

They were wrong when they told him that General Kenobi was dead. 

Still, despite the need slowly burning him alive, it had worked. Each time Cody felt the drive to follow his instincts after Obi-Wan, he would quash them, bury them instead, deep in the dark, choking earth of memory. He would just have to bear the agony of knowing that despite his selfish desire to atone, he had to deny himself that luxury, too. For now, at least.

Over time, though, something strange had begun to happen. A slow, steady shift as the months and seasons passed. Amongst the rubble of his pain, he began to find glimmers of happiness in the memory beneath. Fragile, meek, but growing. Comfort found in a remembered embrace. Warmth to feel in an phantom smile. Small moments of fondness unmarred by pain. Tiny green seedlings after a forest fire. In time, the two warring sides had grown together. The love and the pain, the joy and the despair. Creeping vines inextricably entwined, taking root deep in the core of him. 

Cody surprises himself as much as Rex when he bursts into laughter.

“In my defence, it was a good night,” he says, his laughter renewed at Rex’s disgust. He had reacted the same way back then, too, when Cody had stumbled back to the barracks in the morning, barely-awake and tugging his blacks up over his hickeys.
“It could have gotten us both court martialed!”
“Alright, alright, you win. We’re as bad as each other. Is that what you wanted?”
Rex raises his mug in a mock-toast.
“It always is.” Despite the declaration, though, the undercurrent of tension remains. Heavy, dark clouds gather on Rex’s face the longer the silence wears on. Cody sets down his mug.
“What’s this about, Rex? Why all the memories? Why are we really here?”
Rex’s brow pinches, and the clouds break.

“We both know we can’t keep on like this much longer,” he says. He’s leaning forward now, elbows on his knees, his gaze trained intently on Cody. “We’re barely surviving , let alone fighting the Empire.”
Cody nods. Holds his tongue. Braces against the storm.
“And I know everyone who has chosen to stay is thinking the same thing,” Rex continues. “We’re clones. This is all we’re built for. Can’t say it’s much of a culture, but… it’s all we’ve got. And we're losing it.”

Cody sighs, folding his arms across his chest. Rex's words ring with unpleasant truth. It’s a pitiful birthright for the clones. Fitting, Cody supposes, for a people who never even technically had births in the first place. But the memories still hanging like mist in the air around them give a new light to Rex’s words: the clones had never settled for what little was given to them. Not from the start. In the gaps around military protocol, filling the margins between orders and regulations, the clones had forged their own identity. A persistent tide, they had worn gaps and dug crevices in the unforgiving rock of their upbringing, and they had filled those gaps like tidepools. Filled them with names instead of numbers, with stick-and-poke tattoos doled out in barracks after curfew, with bright slashes of paint proudly adorning blank armour. They had, stubborn and defiant, and in a way so few in the galaxy would ever know, made themselves a culture.

A culture that was now dying with them. Evaporating a little more every time a brother fell in battle, every time another could no longer stand to fight, every time they were separated from one of their own. Cody's voice is low when he speaks, forced to squeeze under the sudden weight on his chest. 
“So what are we going to do about it?”

There were others besides the clones, out there somewhere in the ink-black tides, resisting the Empire. That much was common knowledge. They're plastered across the holonet daily, albeit only as propaganda labelling them terrorists. Cody and Rex had encountered and even worked briefly with small cells of insurgents before.

“We've received a transmission from the Rebels.”

The Rebels. Capital ‘R.’ Their existence was undisputed. What was far more nebulous was just how many of these Rebels there were, and how unified their front was. They seemed, at least on the surface, to be splintered, disorganised and improvising. But there was always the possibility that they wanted to appear that way, to preserve the advantage of being underestimated. It seems they'll find out the truth soon enough. The transmission, Rex tells him, is from a cell they have dealt with before, on a brief extraction operation in the mid-rim. Trustworthy people, far as Cody could tell.
“They passed on a message from a contact of theirs,” Rex tells him. “Someone who wants to meet with us, says we can help each other. Soneone who asked for us by name .” Cody’s gut seizes, ice water in his veins. “They wouldn’t give me any details. Said it was too risky over comms. But whoever it is, they’re with the Rebels, and they want to talk.”

There is no discussion in the end about whether or not they should make the meeting. The same way a dying man didn’t need to debate a last-ditch treatment. A meeting is called, and Rex briefs the men. No questions from them, either. Only grim nods and a shared understanding. Rex’s words linger in the darkened halls around them, simmering in the air like static electricity. Their continued survival demands they adapt to this new, unfamiliar form of war, and quickly. Using the familiar Rebel cell as a conduit, they arrange a rendezvous point, chosen by Rex: somewhere remote, that Rex knew well but that wasn't thoroughly mapped on Imperial star charts. Despite trusting their contact, they couldn’t rule out the possibility of a trap. They take a small shuttle, only the two of them, with their men on standby as backup. Still, Cody can’t help the buzzing tension in his bones as they arrive. 

They’re ahead of schedule, at Rex’s insistence, to ensure they’ve surveyed the area and mapped out the best potential exit routes. It gives Cody time to wander the ship, make a few tune-ups and run a few diagnostics. The simple tasks help to centre his scattered mind. He’s almost finished tuning up on the life-support systems when his gaze slips to the window. The system Rex had chosen to meet in is sparse, with few planets and fewer orbiting bodies. It makes for a bleak view, one without much to draw the eye. The absence of light insteaf lets Cody see his reflection in the scratched transperisteel. When had he started looking like this? Longer hair dips closer to his forehead than it used to. Shaggy in the back, long enough almost to tie back. Creases mark his face, at his eye, between his brow - even his scar seems to have worn a deeper groove in his skin. His facial hair is too full now to be called stubble, and in its length, the colour is no longer as even as it once was. Deep-set eyes rise to meet the man in the window. He is at once a stranger and more himself than he ever has been. 

***

The moment the last trooper files out of the war room, Cody makes his move. In three short strides he bridges the distance between them, impatience turning his steps sharp, echoing off the durasteel walls. They had agreed before the briefing to stand back, to let Commander Tano take charge. That alone would have prolonged the affair, but, as usual, General Skywalker was less willing to restrain himself. Shocking. Their bickering had dragged them ten miserable minutes overtime, and eaten into the already minuscule gap they have between meetings. Still, the noise Obi-Wan makes when Cody presses him against the console makes all the waiting worth it. Obi-Wan turns within the cage of Cody’s arms, his hands falling easily into their usual places; one on Cody’s shoulder, the other cupping his cheek.

“Do you pretend to be surprised, just to humour me?” Cody asks, a smirk tugging his brow high. “I thought nothing could get past a Jedi’s intuition.” Obi-Wan laughs, a soft little hum like bees among spring blossoms. Cody wants to kiss him then and there, wants to swallow that perfect sound, but Obi-Wan speaks before he can move.
“I’m afraid this Jedi is suffering the effects of too little sleep and too much…” He trails off, nose crinkling as he looks for a fitting end to the sentence. Even exhausted, even alone with Cody, still determined to maintain his eloquence. Cody can’t help his grin.
“Too much General Skywalker?” he offers. Obi-Wan gives him a shrug and a resigned smile. 
“I found another one this morning,” he says, like a petulant child, and it takes Cody a moment to realise what they’re talking about. Once he does, he feels a laugh bubble up from deep in his chest. Again, he leans in, but Obi-Wan swats playfully at his chest before their lips meet.
“It isn’t funny!” he protests. “There’s more of them by the day.”
Cody rather reluctantly lifts one hand from Obi-Wan’s hip to comb through his hair. Sure enough, he finds a few more strands of silver among the auburn. Up this close, Cody can follow the lines worn in Obi-Wan’s brow and around his eye, deeper with his frown. He’s let his beard grow out longer than it used to be. Not that anyone aside from Cody has noticed. It, too, now has one or two greys peppered through it.
“Old man,” he teases, just for the scandalised reaction it gets from his general.

He’s never been able to understand Obi-Wan’s aversion to his own ageing. As far as the clones were concerned, it was a point of pride and a privilege to live long enough to notice signs of age. Besides, as far as Cody is concerned, Obi-Wan only looks better like this. More experienced, more refined. The lines on his face are a tapestry, a testament to years of battle, years of life . He wants to tell Obi-Wan that. To let him know that each grey hair he finds is just proof of another day that Cody falls more in love with him, that every time he smiles all Cody can think about is kissing the creases that grow at the corners of his eyes. But he’s never been as eloquent as his general. And in the moment he hesitates to look for the right words, the chance is stolen from him by the chirp of his commlink.

“Sorry,” he says instead, letting go of the air he had wanted to use to sing Obi-Wan’s praises. His head falls forward, their foreheads pressed together. “Rex is expecting me. New batch of shinies need orientation, and–”
“I understand, my love. It’s alright. I really ought to be going, too. I’m already late for a council meeting.”

Silence falls. Reality is an ambush predator, jumping at its chance, stealing the room. Cody feels its claws sharp in his sides. Heavily, he lifts himself away from the console, forcing his posture straight as Obi-Wan adjusts his robes. They are not unused to this routine of stolen seconds and unfinished conversations, always cut short by their duties. It’s unavoidable, unchangeable, as rigid and unyielding as the armour on Cody’s chest. It’s how things are. It’s how they have to be. Cody can't expect Obi-Wan to shirk his duty to the Jedi, just as Obi-Wan would never dream of keeping Cody from his men. Their love can exist only in whatever gaps the war cares to leave them. A flower growing between jagged rock faces, sparse but stubborn, stealing the raindrops that slip between the cracks and straining to snatch glimpses of sun. 

They walk to the door. For a moment, both pause, unwilling to be the one to break the seal and invite the world back in. Obi-Wan finally moves, reaching for the control panel, but Cody grabs his hand instead, making the decision in a split second. He pulls Obi-Wan in by his waist, gripping tight the thin fabric of his tunic. Whatever question was poised to spill from Obi-Wan’s parted lips is stolen when Cody kisses him, deep and driven and sure. Determined that Obi-Wan should feel him there for the rest of the day. His general softens within his arms, melting into the embrace, though his grip on Cody’s forearm is vice-like. They're both breathless when Cody finally decides his job is done. Before he pulls away, though, he chances one final kiss, quick and fleeting, to the crow’s feet at Obi-Wan’s eye. 
“You're gorgeous like this,” he says, lips ghosting across skin. “I love you like this.”

Up this close, he can feel the sharp, trembling breath Obi-Wan lets out, hot against his neck. Speechless at last. Cody grins, giving himself the indulgence of a few more seconds to bask in the sun. Then, he moves. Lifts his hand from Obi-Wan's waist. He puts a strategic foot of distance between himself and his general, clears his throat, rolls his shoulders, and opens the door to let the world pull them apart once more.

***

Proximity alarms blare, giving only a moment’s warning. Compared to the clones’ scrapyard-rescued ship, the vessel that drops out of hyperspace next to them is overwhelmingly opulent. Towering, black-tinted viewports line the sides of the yacht, reflecting Rex and Cody’s rather sorry-looking rattler back at them. There isn’t a single fleck of paint missing from the ship’s crisp, white hull. Blue streaks lance down its canopy to an impressive twinset of heavy ion thrusters. This kind of craft wouldn’t look out of place at an Old Republic gala, or orbiting the resort systems among the pleasure liners of the galactic elite.
“Who the hell are we meeting with?” Cody mumbles, drawing a chuckle from Rex as they proceed to dock with the yacht.
“Beats the kriff out of me. Set your blasters,” Rex says. “We go in calm, but be ready to cut and run.”
A quick transmission confirms their readiness to meet. The reply is given by a protocol droid, its voice oversweet and ringing with hollow cordiality. It does nothing to soothe Cody. Adrenaline pricks at his fingertips and nips at his ankles as they make their way to the airlock. Beside him, he can hear Rex’s breath, thick as his own, stubbornly even.

When the airlock opens, Cody can’t quite believe the sight they’re met with.

Senator Bail Organa greets them with a politician’s welcome, draped in rich, purple fabrics and smiling bright. Underneath the honeyed tone, his voice is no warmer than the droid's.
“Thank you for agreeing to see me,” he says, standing aside and gesturing for Rex and Cody to board his vessel. As they do, the Senator's eyes catch for a poorly-hidden moment on the blasters at Cody and Rex’s hips. “I know this type of meeting is a risk for you. I appreciate that you took the chance.”

Cody has never liked politicians. Although he knows that Senator Organa is meant to be one of the better ones, a friend to both his general and Rex’s, he still can’t stomach all the polished niceties and the intricate yet inane dances of etiquette. Still, they let the man take them on board the lavish ship and guide them down gilded halls to a secluded office on the port side. It’s small, but no less opulent than the ship’s facade. All ivory finishings and exotic potted greenery.
“I believe it goes without saying that I have brought you here to discuss matters of rebellion,” the senator says. “Matters that would see me tried and executed for treason if they fell on the wrong ears. Your utmost discretion is highly appreciated.”
Neither Rex nor Cody says a thing, beyond nodding their understanding. The senator takes the hint to move on, though it isn’t long before he’s derailed once again by his own preamble.

“It is good to see the two of you again. Not only as friends, but as two of the most respected and decorated veterans in our galaxy.”
Cody is already beginning to tune the words out, his eyes sliding out of focus. They follow the drape of the senator’s rich, indigo robes, swaying as he leans forward to brace his arms on his desk. Scarcely has Cody seen fabric with such a lustrous sheen. He tugs at a loose thread on the only jacket he’s worn for months while Senator Organa speaks on.
“Your reputations precede you, of course. Your military skill and strategic genius are unparallelled. You both have a rightful place in the history of this galaxy.”
The words come before Cody knows he’s speaking.
“Everyone in this room knows damn well there’s no place in history for us,” he says, his words sharp, jagged shards of rock. “For any of the clones.” 

There is no hint of offence or confusion in Organa’s response. He turns his gaze and regards Cody closely. Too closely. His skin crawls as the senator unpicks him at the seams. Dank farrik, Cody hates politicians. Rex, thank the stars, steps in then to take over before Cody says something he'll regret.
“All due respect, Senator? Flattery won’t help you with us,” Rex says. “Do us all a favour and let’s get to business.”
It’s enough to spur the conversation back to where it should be. Senator Organa straightens and folds his hands behind his back.
“Very well. I do concede that I owe the two of you an explanation.”

From what Senator Organa says next, it seems the Rebels are more of a united front than the clone resistance had anticipated. It’s a heartening revelation. Discrete cells, who made every effort to seem independent, working in tandem under the surface to sabotage Imperial plans. It all took a great deal of coordination, the Senator is all too willing to admit.
“I have recently found a new contact,” he tells them, “who has been an invaluable help with intelligence and logistics. I know you’ll understand that I’m not at liberty to share their identity. They have asked only to be referred to as Fulcrum.”

…Fulcrum.

The air in the room crystalises, sharp in Cody’s lungs. Immediately, instinctively, his eyes dart to his brother. Rex has done the same. His own expression is mirrored back at him, brow pinched, eyes wild.
Fulcrum, a heavily-encrypted clandestine comms channel used by General Skywalker during the war. Disseminated only to those he trusted most.

Whoever this contact was, they were more than likely a Jedi.

Obi-Wan . Alive. Alive and fighting .

Cody’s heart sings, shatters, bleeds .

“The two of you come highly recommended by Fulcrum. I have hopes you and your fellow clones might aid the Rebellion with one of its greatest needs.” The words don’t reach Cody until long after they’re said, when he finally shakes the static from his limbs and wrenches his mind out of hyperspace.
“What needs, exactly?” Rex has said in the meantime. Senator Organa looks thrilled to have been asked the right question, returning to his script.
“The Rebellion has no shortage of volunteers.” As he speaks, he steps slow and deliberate out from behind the black marble of his desk. One billowing sleeve of his robe catches on the leaf of a potted orchid in the corner. “A great many people are ready and willing to defend their families and their homes. What they lack are the skills to do so against an organised military like the Empire.”

The Senator doesn’t need to say more: Cody and Rex have both caught on now. He keeps talking anyway, of course. Politicians. 

“Alderaan is now host system to many refugees,” he says, with a sigh that tells both of his sympathy to the people and the stress of a man trying to house and feed them all. “Most come from systems now rendered unlivable due to the Empire’s reckless expansion. Their ways of life, their traditions, families, cultures, are all now lost. Likely forever.”

Cody’s hands clench at his sides. He and his brothers had never had much in common with natborns. They were separated by design. Alien to each other. What a bitter irony, to finally find common ground in their mutual destruction. 

“You want us to train your Rebels,” Cody states, eager to put an end to the bloviating. The Senator nods, eyes lowered in an impressive show of humility. Cody’s lip twitches.
“And why should these people trust the clones? After what we did?”
“Why do you trust us, for that matter?” Rex adds. “You were a friend to both our generals. You know what happened with the Jedi.”

Cody has only once stepped on an active land mine. On Ryloth. It was early in the war. Still, he will never forget the instant change when he felt the click beneath his foot. The dread. The way the air turned icy despite the beating sun. That’s how it feels when Rex mentions the Jedi. For a long, grating moment, nobody wants to speak. Nobody wants to be the one to lift their foot.

“What took place with the Jedi, it…” The Senator trails off, for once left without any flowery language to fall back on. “It was a tragedy. Neither General Skywalker nor General Kenobi deserved their fate.” As he speaks, he searches both Rex and Cody carefully. Looking for something specific in their reactions. As unversed as Cody is in politician double-speak, he makes an attempt.
“It’s impossible to fully understand, unless you saw it for yourself,” he says. “...I only feel for those who had to live on after that day.”
He can practically feel Rex urging him to stop, not to derail the situation any further. He ignores his brother.
“Yes…” Senator Organa replies carefully, “although it does help to focus on what hopes remain for the future. For the children of tomorrow.”

He’s being tested, he knows. But he does not pass. He can’t find the meaning he needs in the Senator’s veiled words, and the Senator seems to feel the same. The silence confirms as much, so Cody breaks it before it grows too much to bear.
“You haven’t answered Rex’s question,” he says. “Why do you trust us, and why should your people?” 

The Senator sighs heavily. Relief, or exhaustion? At the very least, the land mine seems to have been defused. 

“Commander, do you think there is a single refugee on Alderaan, a single Rebel in the galaxy, who has not done things they regret because of the Empire?” Rex lurches suddenly forward; for a moment, Cody worries he will have to hold him back.
“You can’t possibly compare–”
“I would never dream of it,” the Senator dismisses, with a wave of his hand. “What was done to you and your fellow clones was an atrocity of the highest order.”

The Senator knows about the inhibitor chips. It sends hot shame down the back of Cody’s neck, though he can’t quite figure why.

“The existence of your network, and the destruction of Tipoca City, are clear proof that the clones are just as much victims of the Empire’s tyranny as any citizen. Its first victims, in fact.”
He’s right, of course. It should be cathartic to Cody, to hear it out loud from someone outside the clones’ ranks. So why does it make him so angry to hear the Senator say it?
“It is true that there are some whose opinions differ from others,” he continues. “But do you really think their mistrust will continue when they see you aid the cause in such a tangible way?”
Neither Cody nor Rex has any sort of response to that. In truth, Cody is fairly sure neither of them has ever considered the natborns’ opinions for long enough to know the answer.

The Senator seems to take their silence as a victory for himself. With a translucent smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes, he steps to the door.
“I’ll let the two of you talk it over. Please, take your time.”

As the door seals behind him, Cody turns to find Rex staring out the viewport at the desolate system. His reflection is tired; his cheeks sallow, his back curled under the weight they had once shouldered with ease.
“I know you know what we have to do,” Cody finally says. But the words don’t quite make it to the man in the man in the window. 

“Why wouldn’t he tell us?” Rex’s words are barely loud enough to hear.
Cody pauses.
“Tell us wh–”
“If the Senator trusts us so much, why didn’t he just tell us that Ahsoka is Fulcrum?”

There is nothing Cody can do to mask his shock - he draws back as though Rex had struck him.
“Do you think he knows where she is? Does he know if she’s safe? If she’s back in the fight, I…” His brother turns to face him. There’s a knot pulling at his brow. His eyes flit rapid-fire across the room, hands rising from his sides without purpose. Desperate, shaken. Cody swallows thickly.
“What makes you so sure it’s her?” 
The response he sees in Rex is quickly hidden beneath a steely frown. Still, echoes of the doubt, the pity in his gaze ripple in the air around them, a pebble breaking the surface of a glassy lake. Rex has never voiced his doubts about Obi-Wan aloud. He has never needed to: he’s an open book to his brother. 

Rex had heard nothing from Commander Tano since Order 66. That was by design, of course, to protect both of them. But it went deeper than that. Though Cody cannot claim to have known Ahsoka nearly as well as Rex, he had seen enough and spoken enough of her to Obi-Wan to know what the war had taken from her. For all that the clones were bred from birth for battle, it still pained him to see her despairing over their fallen brothers in the medbay, to hear her wake screaming into the night. Part of him, and a bigger part of Rex, had let out an involuntary, traitorous sigh of relief when she left the Jedi Order. The thought of her resurfacing now, when the game has grown so much more fraught… Cody’s own thoughts on the matter are reflected clearly across Rex’s face.

He takes a breath of heavy, cloying air, too thickly perfumed by plant life, and he lays a hand on Rex’s shoulder.
“We can’t be certain who Fulcrum is,” he says softly. It’s always been easier to centre himself when he knows he has to be someone else’s solid ground. His brother meets his gaze, swallows, and nods.
“We don’t know everything we should about the Senator’s motivations. What we do know is that he isn’t being honest with us.”
“Smart, in his situation,” Rex admits in a mumble. Cody concedes with a tip of his head. He sits back on the cold marble of the Senator’s desk, and Rex does the same. They’re focusing on strategy now. Good.
“What else do we know?” he asks, and Rex’s hands curl into fists. His voice is stronger when he replies;
“This is the best option for all of us. The clones survive, his Rebellion gets its soldiers.”

The opulent room has lost some of its lustre when Cody stands, tucking one thumb into his belt.
“And while we’re working with Organa, we find out what else he’s keeping to himself. Whether he’s willing to share it or not.”
Rex raises himself to his feet, his shoulders proud once more. 

They’re ready when Senator Organa returns.