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Cody wakes to the news that the war is over.
"Which we already knew," Rex says wryly as he hovers beside the bed, radiating concern that he doesn't voice. He helps Cody sit up, bracing him as he pushes the covers away and swings his legs over the side. Cody lets him, though he doesn't need the help. His brother looks tired, but there is an air of triumph about him that not even politics can dim. "But it's only taken the Senate twelve hours to catch up; that's pretty good for them."
Rex shows him the news announcement on his datapad. There's a live feed from the Senate being broadcast as a headline on almost every platform, with reporters jumping in and summing everything up every few minutes:
Separatist Generals Dooku and Grievous are dead. Separatist leadership surrender to Republic custody on Mustafar. Jedi Temple invaded. Supreme Chancellor Palpatine dead. Supreme Chancellor Palpatine allegedly a Sith.
"Allegedly?" Cody wishes he could dredge up some incredulity, but all he's got left is weariness. It's not surprising, after three years slogging away in a doomed war, to find the Republic unable to see what's right in front of it.
"The Senate spent ages repeatedly asking General Yoda if there were other explanations for a guy being able to shoot lightning out of his hands," Rex says, rolling his eyes. He's more than earned the derision; Rex, like Cody, was there when the final confrontation happened, and they'd all seen enough of Force lightning for a lifetime. "'Allegedly' is the best we're gonna get for a while."
The war's over.
There's a strange sense of unreality to it. Cody stares down at himself - at the loose medical robe hanging off him, at his hands gripping tight to the edge of the bed. The war is over. Cody was only born because of the war. Fighting it was all he was ever raised to do, and now it's done.
He raises a hand to his forehead and peels off the dressing. He can feel Rex watching him, but doesn't look round. He touches the skin just below his hairline and finds that the incision site is tender, one neat little raised line mended with a few stitches, still sticky with bacta.
"Here," Rex says evenly, and hands him a small sealed jar.
The chip is tiny. Of course it is, it had to be. But it seems wrong, somehow, that it could be so small when it would have stolen Cody's entire life from him and turned his body into a weapon wielded by someone else's hands.
The healers want it for testing, Cody knows, before they start to carry out the surgeries on a wider scale. That's the only reason he doesn't fling the thing at the wall.
He volunteered to be the first for two reasons. First, that if experimental surgery was going to be carried out on his brothers, he would rather be the first test subject than any of them.
Second, he couldn't bear to live with the thing in his head for another second.
Even with the signal connecting the chips to each other and to Palpatine destroyed, they were still an untenable risk.
"Hey," Rex says sharply, and there are fingers on his, carefully prising them away from the jar. Cody looks down and is startled to see he's holding it so tight that his knuckles show through his skin; it's an effort to relax his hand, to let Rex take the chip away. "It's alright. It worked, you're safe."
Words clog up his throat for a moment. "Thanks," he manages eventually, and Rex just nods in gentle understanding, sets the jar down somewhere behind them, and Cody doesn't look at it again.
"What other news?" he asks. According to the datapad, he's been out for two hours. The little room is quiet, and though he can hear voices in the corridor, the general tone is calmer than when he went under. It's impossible to guess what he might have missed.
It's hard to keep his thoughts together, too. That two hours is the most sleep he's had in over two days, and he finds it hard to classify anaesthesia-induced unconsciousness as rest.
"Well, that's about all the Senate's managed to decide," Rex shrugs, "and they've been in session the whole time you were under. The army's still intact."
"They were never going to dissolve it that quickly. It'll take them a while to even believe what happened, let alone lose their biggest defence at a time of this much uncertainty."
"Yeah, I figured. But they could at least put us on official holiday. I want to sleep for a week, and I haven't spoken to a brother yet who wants to leave the temple."
Cody knows where they're coming from. "If the Senate wants us to leave, they're going to need a bigger gun than the Separatists had," he says grimly. After everything they've just been through here to save their own lives and the Jedi's, and given the rocky ground on which both their peoples still stand, Cody's only leaving this place if the Jedi are going too.
"I think they've taken the hint on that much, at least. General Yoda was quite forceful about it in his speech."
"I'm going to need the recording of that."
"Already sent it to you."
Rex, on occasion, is a very good brother.
"Anything else I should know?"
Rex smiles, then, and his face brightens. He looks suddenly younger, less battle weary. "Padmé's had the kids."
Somehow, Cody realises in that moment, he wasn't expecting good news. It startles him more than it should. "She has?"
"Yeah. Boy and a girl, just like Anakin said. She let me hold them. Shit, Cody, they're so damn small, but they're bloody loud. Kinda cute though."
"They must get that from Amidala's side. How is she?"
"Tired, but doing well. Actually, when I left, she was calling into the Senate. Two newborn babies by the bed and she's giving her own testimony about Palpatine. She terrifies me."
Cody finds himself smiling too. There's still so much fear and worry in his chest and ten thousand things he needs to do, but...
But there are two babies safe and well with their mother today because they won the war, and that's like a bright light glowing within his chest.
"And one other piece of news for you, because I know what you've really been asking, even if you're not saying it. Your General was here."
Panic freezes Cody in place. His breath catches in his chest like it's locked in carbonite. There's a reason he's in a private room even with how crowded the temple's healing rooms are, there's a reason he asked only Rex or other brothers to be around when he woke from surgery, and there's a reason the General was the last person in the galaxy he wanted to be close to him again before the chip was out.
"Breathe, Cody, it's alright. They didn't let him in. Nothing happened, it's alright, he's fine, you're both fine."
Cody's lungs spasm, and then he's breathing in, out, in, out, and the world swims back into focus.
"Rex," he says, because it's the only word he can manage, and Rex seems to understand what he cannot voice.
"He was with Padmé when the kids were born," he explains quickly. "Since Skywalker's still... Well, Padmé wanted Kenobi there. I came by after the birth, happened to mention about the surgery - yeah, I know," he says, at the look Cody shoots him. "But he was going to find out eventually. He was worried about you, he said you'd just disappeared."
There's an underlying question there, but Cody can't face it, so he takes the totally healthy route and completely ignores it. "Do you know where he went?"
Rex gives him an uncomfortably knowing look, but shakes his head. "You want me to help you look?"
Cody breathes again, slowly, deeply. Thinks. "Do they need to run any more tests?"
"I'll go find someone."
When the Jedi healers come in, alongside a good half dozen clone medics, Cody has another moment of terror, but nothing happens. There's no reaction in his brain, no terrible unavoidable urge to harm them, no whisper of traitors or good soldiers follow orders. The words have haunted him ever since Obi-Wan told them of his vision, that night when everything changed.
Instead he just sits there and answers questions about how he's feeling, and is shown scans of his brain and test results from his blood, and is told that there are no other foreign bodies in him, that he's perfectly healthy and the surgery was a complete success. He might experience headaches, and should come back if he feels unwell, and they'd appreciate an update on his health tomorrow, but they're happy to go ahead with surgeries on the next group of volunteers.
Cody has to explain that finding volunteers isn't going to be the issue. They'll have to work out a schedule to go through battalion by battalion; the men are going to be clamouring to be next.
They replace the dressing and wish him well, telling him he's free to go. Moments later, it's just him and Rex in the room again, until a padawan sticks their head round the door and offers him a shy smile.
"Hey," he says, managing to soften his voice, and the youngster enters. Well, perhaps not so young - they must be in their late teens, if he's any judge of standard ages, old enough not to have been evacuated with the younglings and younger padawans.
They're holding something, and they offer it out to Cody as they enter the room. "These are for you. If you'd like them, that is, Commander."
It's a pile of clothes. Cody looks at where Rex has stacked his armour neatly on a chair, along with the undersuit he's been wearing for days now. When he took it off it had stank of stale sweat, and his armour is dark with blood and dirt and blaster burns.
The clothes the padawan hands him are clean and soft. A shirt and trousers, loose and comfortable after the Jedi style, in rich tones of dark blue and black. There's delicate silver embroidery about the chest and cuffs. There are even boots in his size, soft things of supple leather.
He doesn't think he's ever been offered something so lovely to wear.
"Thank you," he says, through the sudden thickness in his throat. "I can bring them back later. And - call me Cody."
The padawan smiles again, brighter than before. "It's a gift, Cody," they say, and then they're gone in a blink before he can protest, that Jedi speed no less in a padawan than a master.
He should be well-used to the kindness of Jedi by now, but for a moment he sits there on the edge of the bed and thinks he might be about to cry.
"Hey," Rex says again, and Cody wonders how terrible he looks, that Rex keeps using that tone of voice on him. "You want me to hang around? Help you find Kenobi?"
The offer is sincere, Cody knows. But he also knows that there are ten places Rex wants to be at once right now, and also that Cody himself could use some time to pull the fragmented pieces of his heart back together.
"No, I'm alright."
"Cody."
"I will be alright," he concedes, kicking Rex in the shin. He's still barefoot and Rex is in his armour, so that doesn't pan out brilliantly for him. "You're in the next group of volunteers, aren't you?"
"I want it gone too. Just in case."
"I can wait with you."
Rex fixes him with a flat look. "Cody, you need to go find your General, eat something, and then pass out for twenty four hours. Wolffe, Fox and Bly are in the group with me, and I'll comm you when it's done, but you need to go and lie down before you fall over."
Which is how Cody finds himself being managed into getting dressed while Rex packs his armour into a bag and slings it over Cody's shoulder. He's not quite sure how any of it happens, but that probably supports Rex's argument, so he doesn't bring it up.
When they part ways outside the room, Cody is surprised by how quiet the healing halls are. Maybe he shouldn't be. They'd completed triage and handling all the emergency cases well before suggesting they could attempt a trial surgery. The number of Jedi healers had also been boosted extensively by the clone medics who'd arrived with the battalions that had managed to reach the temple in time, and between them they'd managed every injury with either conventional medicine or the rare but miraculous Force healing.
There were nineteen casualties. Four Jedi and fifteen clones whose bodies have been laid with honour in a quiet room in the temple, guarded now until funerary rites could be arranged. Nineteen. Each one is like a blow to the heart, but the strategist in Cody cannot help the singular thought that he thought it would be so much worse.
They both move as one, he and Rex, and haul each other into a hug. There have been so many times through the war when Cody was afraid of losing his brother, and never more acutely than this week, but there was so little time to dwell on it - and so little choice, because they were both sorely needed in all that had happened. But now he has a moment to hold tight to Rex and just feel the tangible proof that he's alive; to let himself feel the joy that both of them made it through.
He sees the same depth of gratitude in Rex's eyes. They don't voice it, because it's not their way, but Rex grips Cody's shoulder tight before they part, and offers him a true smile.
"Rest, brother," he reminds him, and then he's gone, heading down the corridor to seek his own freedom from the chips.
Cody feels odd walking through the temple in these new clothes. Even his footfalls are quieter than he expects them to be. His armour is a part of him, an expression of himself that shows - to those who can read the meaning - how he defines himself distinct from those that seem so like him. And it's the shield that's protected him his whole life.
But it's not bad to be out of it. Although he's still carrying the weight of it over his shoulder, he feels lighter, the movement of his limbs more free. Admittedly he feels naked too, exposed and vulnerable, and it's a constant struggle with himself not to pause and rearm because what if the danger hasn't really passed, what if -
It's a choice, that's the thing. A conscious choice, moment by moment, to hold onto the hope that this represents. That it really is over. That he, now, is the kind of person who can wear what he wants, go where he chooses, take whatever risks seem right to him.
He does not intend to give up his armour, but he wants to know what else is beyond it, too.
The corridors are calm, but they're not empty. He passes a few people here and there, in increasing frequency as he nears the entrance of the temple. There's a pleasant anonymity to it. For all that he's fought side by side with the Jedi for years, he's actually met very few of them; none of the faces he's passing now are familiar, but all acknowledge him with a nod and a smile that he returns. And without his armour on, he's less distinctive to other clones, and harder to recognise for anyone outside his own battalion, so he just nods at them too and settles into how freely air fills his lungs when he's just Cody.
It's a brief oasis of quiet that ends as he reaches the vast atrium that serves as both entrance hall and hub of the temple. It's a vast space, many floors high and the centre of a huge network of corridors, doorways, mezzanines and overhead walkways. To an operational mind, it's a completely impractical use of space, which is also why it fascinates Cody. It's a space that makes you consider where you are and where you need to be, and gives you an almost frightening array of choices in the matter; it's awe inspiring and beautiful, not for beauty's own sake, but because it reflects the beauty to be found in the galaxy.
Clones, Cody thinks, were not intended to have thoughts like that. They were not built to look at things and find them beautiful.
He does see risks and weak points and strategies wherever he looks. He probably always will. But he doesn't only see that. None of them do. It's why, no matter what the galaxy tells him, Cody knows he is more than what he was made to be.
The fighting was fiercest here. It's not surprising, though it does cause a pang in Cody's heart, that it's left scars.
Huge swathes of the ornate floor have been smashed to pieces, antique tiles churned into rubble and dust. The columns, which sweep up to great heights to support the ceiling like ancient stone trees holding up the sky, are scored with dark blaster burns. Some of the outer walls gape with holes, and many of the windows are smashed. The ground is treacherous with stone and shattered shards of coloured glass and the broken husks of hundreds of battle droids.
And yet this is no quiet graveyard. Sun streams in through the windows and broken walls, and it's the golden light of early morning.
Regardless of the hour, Jedi and clones are everywhere, mingled, and it seems to Cody then that they are not two separate peoples but one. Some are only passing through, perhaps seeking food or rest; they look weary but light-hearted. Others have heads bent low over data pads as they walk in serious conversation, occasionally hauling each other out of the way of obstacles. Many are at work on temporary repairs or clearing away the debris, and they seem cheerful too. Clones and padawans laugh and toss droid parts at each other; a few Jedi raise their voices in a song that seems made for these towering halls, and makes Cody think of sunrises and spring.
It was a desecration to have an army bring violence to this place. But the Jedi Order remains whole and their spirits unbroken, and Cody stands there and closes his eyes and lets himself be, for a moment, with relief so strong in his chest that he feels those unshed tears threaten again.
There are people here he knows. It's too large and busy a space to make out everyone, but he sees flashes of 212th gold and 501st blue among the other battalions, though many clones have shed their armour while they work. There are Jedi here that he recognises too - General Koon, for example, seems to have hauled a great deal of breakfast out here to cajole his men into taking a break, while General Secura is a flash of quick movement heading towards the healing rooms, presumably in search of Bly before the surgery.
But he cannot find the face he most wants to see.
It's not reassuring. It's good, certainly, that Obi-Wan isn't engaged in physical labour here when he's running on even less sleep and just as much stress as Cody. But it would take a naive soul to think this means the man is resting.
The war has not left Cody with much naivety, certainly when it comes to the habits of Jedi.
He's still trying to think of his next move when he's spotted, and not by the most opportune person.
"Commander Cody!"
Cody resists the urge to sigh only by intense force of will. "General Vos," he says, and manages to sound bland rather than exasperated, because he is a professional.
Vos approaches on lighter feet than Cody thinks is fair, given that - for all the man's deliberately lackadaisical attitude - he knows he fought as hard as any of them and must be tired too. And he doesn't look like he's so much as been to the healing rooms himself; there's dried blood on him from at least three minor wounds that Cody can see.
"Surely you can call me Quinlan now, after all we've been through together."
Cody gives him a flat look. "Can I help you with something, General Vos?"
Vos grins. Honestly, it's not that Cody doesn't like the guy per se, but he's trouble, particularly where Obi-Wan is concerned, and Obi-Wan has never needed the help finding trouble.
"I was going to ask you that. You look a little lost."
And, oddly, there is less teasing in that than Cody had expected. Instead, beyond the usual crooked grin, Vos seems more serious than usual, his eyes flicking up to the dressing on Cody's forehead.
Cody, in turn, concedes defeat silently but immediately. Vos is, after all, one of Obi-Wan's oldest friends. For some reason.
"Do you know where General Kenobi is?"
Vos does, momentarily, give him a look of smug elation, but then he frowns. "I thought he'd be with you. All things considered."
Cody decides not to explore the implications of that.
"He's not in the dining halls, I just came from there," Vos adds.
"Where are his quarters?"
Vos opens his mouth, then immediately closes it again. He appears to be thinking about something very hard, but for whatever reason, clearly elects not to say it aloud. Instead, he rattles off a floor number and room to Cody, along with a few directions.
"But he shouldn't be up there," Vos adds, and there is no trace of levity on his face now, just creases of concern around his eyes. "I checked out my rooms earlier - I'm just a floor down from him - and that whole section took damage from the laser canons. It's not safe. And the power's still out on most of the upper levels."
Cody really, really wishes any of that meant that Obi-Wan definitely wasn't up there. Some of this clearly shows on his face, because Vos gives him a very understanding grimace.
"Good point," he says. "I'll leave it in your hands, Commander. I imagine he'd rather see you than anyone else."
Cody doesn't have it within him to make even a token protest. Maybe the whole galaxy knows; maybe it's just because Vos is close to Obi-Wan. Maybe it's been painted on Cody's face for the last three years.
The war is over. None of the reasons for secrecy matter any more. Now there's just an endless unspooling possibility, a chance to find out what happens next.
Vos leaves without ceremony, offering as a goodbye just a smile that's less his usual mischief and more genuine happiness. It startles Cody enough that he doesn't say anything himself, either, and is left with the vague feeling that he should have prodded the general in the direction of the healing rooms.
Well. It probably wouldn't have made much difference if he had tried.
Shaking his head, Cody begins the journey across the temple. The idea that he could stop and help the clearup nudges at him, but he knows Rex was right; he's reaching the upper limits of his endurance, or has perhaps already sped past them. Instead, he keeps his focus, returning greetings when he's recognised but moving with enough purpose that no one stops him.
Navigating the temple is complex at the best of times, and only harder today. Cody had accepted invitations to the more public areas of the temple a few times before, and got to know its rough layout well from studying plans in the last two days. But the full depth of residential areas, indoor gardens, training rooms, meditation rooms and all the rest are unknown to him, and harder to reach than usual. Many of the lifts are non-functional; the temple's power supply had been damaged in the battle, and all the remaining resources had since been channelled into the lower floors. They're focusing them where the need is greatest: the healing rooms, dining halls, and the large spaces co-opted as communal residential quarters.
It was a good plan. He helped come up with it, after all. And it's not so bad, making his way up into the empty parts of the temple, while the sounds of conversation and recovery grow quieter below him. Even the lighting is gone in some areas, so he keeps to corridors lined with windows, and uses the stairs despite the growing feeling of shakiness in his legs.
It's strange to see any part of the temple empty. Even though he's only seen it in wartime, Cody's used to this place being full of people. It's always fascinated him, he who was raised for only one purpose. The Jedi have so many roles - warriors, peacekeepers, teachers, researchers and holders of knowledge, and carers for their young. He has also never known the place without those younglings in it, these halls without running feet and laughter, but the important thing is that the children are safe. Scattered, but safe - split into dozens of small groups led by Jedi, they'd been evacuated in secret before anything else had been agreed in that council two nights ago.
"He means to destroy us," Obi-Wan had said. He'd been pale and shaking and looked desperately ill; it had terrified Cody, even if he couldn't name why. "All of us. If we do nothing, he will try to murder us all, and but for a handful of survivors, he will succeed. Even... even the younglings."
And Skywalker had slumped down to his knees, weeping silent tears, and the horror in the room had been absolute.
"There are chips in all your minds," Obi-Wan had told them, looking at Cody with a terrible, formless grief. "He means to force you to turn against the Jedi."
He hadn't spelled it out. He hadn't needed to. Cody could put the pieces together, they all could.
They would have gone to Utapau that morning, if they'd followed their orders. Obi-Wan would have been isolated, a single Jedi among an army of clones, and Cody would have tried to kill him.
He has to stop there, halfway up a sweeping curved staircase, where light shines through a tall window and down onto a statue of a robed figure with a kind face, and a delicate mosaic floor, and a clone commander who forces himself to breathe, to focus on what is, not what might have been. The chip is gone. They disabled the signal underlying the chips while the temple was being evacuated; Skywalker, though dangerously out of sorts, had been able to hack into the underlying code unerringly. Now it's physically out of Cody's head as well, and has no power over him at all, and soon his brothers will be safe from it too, and the Jedi will be safe from them.
In his mind's eye, he can still see Obi-Wan dying. How would he have done it? A blaster shot to the back, because Obi-Wan wouldn't have sensed danger, wouldn't have guarded his back because Cody was there to do it for him? Because he trusted him, and he'd known he could, because Cody would have followed him into hell to keep him safe? Or would it have come down to hand to hand, would he have caught Obi-Wan off guard, crushed the life out of him while Obi-Wan tried to save him in turn rather than fight back?
The war is over.
It didn't happen. It won't happen. He needs to stop driving himself mad.
"You just had to go up this many stairs, didn't you," Cody mutters, as if Obi-Wan is there to hear his rebuke. Imagining the unrepentant grin Obi-Wan would give him in answer lends him the strength to keep climbing.
He finds the room eventually. It's halfway down a corridor with doors on both sides, illuminated by skylights thanks to the sloping design of the temple. Obi-Wan's name is engraved into a little placard set into the door.
Obi-Wan has invited him here before. He's eaten with the General in the dining halls before, even joined him in some of the gardens. He's been in the General's room on the ship many times, where late nights of strategy became hasty dinners, or even drinks and a round of sabaac when they could snatch the time.
But he's never been here. Never seen the rooms where Obi-Wan lived - where he really lived, when his life was his own to choose. He'd felt at the time that it hurt Obi-Wan a little, to have the invitations rejected, though he never said anything to suggest it.
But it had felt too painful to Cody to accept. To be so close to an intimacy without ever really having it. To imagine a world where that life might be one Cody could choose too; to imagine that Obi-Wan might wish to have Cody there.
The door is ajar. Cody touches his fingers to the smooth old wood, and pushes it open.
And he wishes, in that moment, that he had taken the invitation when it was offered. He would have liked to know what these rooms were like before.
It's a high ceilinged, open space, like the rest of the temple. The ceiling and walls bear signs of some pattern or engraving, and the floor of a rich, polished wood. Where he can identify colours, they're earthy, natural shades.
That's as much as he can tell.
The far wall has been mostly obliterated. The remains of a tall window frame are still at one end, with a jagged shard of the outer wall at the other. A section of the floor is missing where the damage continues downward, like some huge creature has taken a bite out of the stonework. The room is a wasteland of debris and broken furniture, all coated in a thick layer of dust.
Beyond it all is Coruscant in the early morning, with speeders already crossing the air in the distance. It's one of the oddities and yet facts of the galaxy that even as the Republic reels in shock, the Senate tries to find its feet and Cody's entire life has been upended, people are still on their way to work.
Obi-Wan is sitting at the edge of the broken floor. He's sitting on what might be a meditation mat, though it's turned so grey with dust that it's hard to tell. If he's been meditating, it's not in his usual pose; his head is bowed into his hands. Cody knows he's hurt, in mind and body both; it was an awful, heart-stopping moment, seeing Obi-Wan caught in the grip of Palpatine's lightning, and he can still hear the screams in his ears.
But he is alive. He's alive and Cody can see his shoulders move as he breathes.
Fear and horror have been Cody's constant companions these last two days. Terror so strong it threatened to topple him, but he has had to remain stalwart, to fight, to lead. There hasn't been time for anything else.
Now, it's like he's finally reached his limit. Or, perhaps, his body and mind have finally decided that he's safe, that he's home.
He could not, for all the world, have spoken a word, but he doesn't need to.
Perhaps he heard him enter, or perhaps the Force alerted him, or perhaps he's drawn by the same feeling that always gravitates Cody towards Obi-Wan, like he's following a guiding light.
Obi-Wan lifts his head, looks round, and sees him.
"Cody."
No one else has ever said Cody's name like that. Like it's oxygen. Like it's the answer to a question he's never dared to ask.
And the tears that have threatened for so long finally fall. Cody cries silently, but not alone. Obi-Wan moves faster than he can track, and is there in front of him, filthy and bloodied and exhausted and alive. And there are tears on his face, too, but Cody only glimpses them for a moment before they are clinging to each other.
They've never hugged before. Not once, despite - despite everything. Obi-Wan is broad and strong and warm. They hold each other like they are determined never to be pulled apart, so tight it sort of hurts, but in a way Cody wouldn't trade for anything. He digs his fingers into handfuls of Obi-Wan's robe and presses his face into the juncture of Obi-Wan's neck and shoulder, just as Obi-Wan is doing to him.
Cody's not sure how long they hold each other for, and he doesn't care; days could pass like this as far as he's concerned. When they do break apart, it's Obi-Wan who draws back first, far enough that he can look at Cody's face. They don't separate entirely; Obi-Wan's hands are still on Cody's shoulders, and Cody transfers his rigid grip to the front of Obi-Wan's robes.
"Are you alright?"
It's funny; that's the question that was on the tip of Cody's tongue too. But Obi-Wan is looking at his hairline, and he thinks of what Rex said.
Your General was here. He was worried about you.
It might be the most substantial understatement Rex has ever made, Cody reflects, now that he can see the urgency in Obi-Wan's eyes.
"They got it out," he confirms. "You're safe now."
Obi-Wan gives him a look too layered for Cody to pick apart. "You're safe," he says, and his hands flex on Cody's shoulders. "It was so experimental. I didn't know..."
"Someone had to go first," Cody says. He doesn't dismiss the concern; he knows this was an easier decision for him to make than it is for those around him to witness.
"I would have been there. When you woke." There's no rebuke in it, only something soft, wistful.
"I know," Cody says, because he does. "I couldn't bear it. Not until we knew it had worked, that it hadn't just provoked the programming somehow. Rex was there, I wasn't alone."
"Good. Good. And they can start rolling it out now?"
"Yes. We'll have to get the medics comfortable performing it in smaller teams, move them back to the ships; we can't bring all the clones through the temple, there's too many. But we'll have to go fast, just in case, and because there'll damn near be a riot if we don't-"
"Cody, we have time," Obi-Wan says, and only with the interruption does Cody remember to breathe. The understanding in Obi-Wan's eyes is almost painful to look at. "We've got time to make this right."
They do. They have stolen back time, apparently, against all expectation. Stolen back thousands of lives. Hundreds of thousands.
"With all due respect, sir," Cody says, falling back on protocol as if it's not far too late for that, "can you tell me what the fuck's just happened? This vision - it's more than you let on, isn't it? It's changed something about you, and about Skywalker."
For a moment, Obi-Wan falls silent. He looks so tired. It's a deeper exhaustion than Cody's ever seen in him before, even in the depths of the worst sieges, even after torture.
After everything, Cody realises, he is still scared. There are shadows in Obi-Wan's eyes that he doesn't understand and it terrifies him, because the danger ought to be over but Obi-Wan is still afraid.
"I'll tell you, Cody," Obi-Wan says at last, and his voice is steady. "I'll tell you everything I can, if you'll make a deal with me."
"What deal?"
"Call me Obi-Wan. Not sir, not General. Not now, not ever again. Whatever comes after this, it can't be more war."
They are still leaders, the two of them, of the Grand Army of the Republic. Until the Senate stands them down, discharges the Jedi and decides the fate of the clones, they are still considered soldiers. They might be considered traitors too, or perhaps heroes; two sides of the same coin, depending on whose voices cry the loudest in the Senate. Cody doesn't know yet whether he will ever count as a person in the eyes of the Republic that his people have fought for, bled for, died for.
But he knows who he is. He's a man with as much right to freedom as any other. He is a clone, and he is his own person, and he understands what Obi-Wan means.
He, too, is done with waging war.
And that means, whatever else may come, he is not a Commander standing before a General.
He is Cody, and this is -
"Obi-Wan."
Obi-Wan smiles like the dawn.
The story Obi-Wan tells him is a much more complete version of the key points he and Skywalker gave them two nights ago. That had been what they needed to share most urgently to lay a strategy to save all their lives and the freedom of the Republic. Obi-Wan had made it clear that it was a vision, that they'd both seen the future, more than enough to know who the Sith lord behind the war was, and what they could do to fight back. It had been clear that there was more they weren't saying, and that had become ever more apparent, particularly in Skywalker's behaviour over the course of the battle.
This is so much more. So much worse than Cody had understood.
Somehow, Obi-Wan received a vision that was a great deal more than that. In the space of a single night, he effectively lived ten years - ten years in a world where the Jedi died, where the clones were forced to betray them and join the ranks of the Empire that rose from the ruins of the Republic.
A world in which Anakin Skywalker fell to the dark side and was the right hand of the Emperor.
The broad shape of these ten years Obi-Wan relates in an oddly mechanical way, perhaps the only way he can bring himself to tell it all. The fight against Skywalker on Mustafar, the rise and cruelty of the Empire. Padmé's death in childbirth - and Cody knows she's fine, has heard it from Rex himself, and he knows he's only feeling a ghost of Obi-Wan's fear but it grips him sharp and cold, and he wonders how Obi-Wan is still standing.
Not least because it is not only the memories of his own alternate self that Obi-Wan has crammed into his head, but he's seen into Skywalker's memories too - and no wonder, then, that Skywalker knew how to disable the signal linking the chips together, that he'd been such an instrumental help in planning against Sidious' contingencies, and in destroying the Sith himself in that final fight in the Senate. Only a Sith could know another's secrets so well.
"Anakin's still with Mace and Yoda," Obi-Wan says, voice still eerily flat, clearly reading the way that Cody's breath is speeding up. They've moved to sit down now, side by side on the ruined meditation mat, though Cody's inched it a bit further away from the hole in the floor. "I've got his saber. He insisted."
He has. It's there on his belt, alongside his own.
Skywalker had turned himself over to the custody of the Jedi as soon as Palpatine was dead - as soon as the aftershocks of the explosion had ceased to rock the building, anyway. Not because they were arresting him, but because he'd insisted upon it, and he'd been sequestered with the most senior council members ever since.
No wonder, if this was the tale he'd had to tell them. If this was how close he'd been to falling.
Obi-Wan touches the lightsabers, and now, at last, his voice cracks.
"I was so alone," he says, barely more than a whisper.
And Cody's heart shatters.
"The Jedi were dead. Ten years, and I had barely seen any survivors. And you - you were all gone, and I didn't even know what had happened to you, why you'd... I knew something must have happened, that you'd never have chosen it, but I never understood. I'm sorry, Cody, I'm so sorry. I should have done something. I should have known."
Cody shakes his head, because how could he have known, when none of them had? But his tongue feels thick and clumsy because he's still caught in the horror of it, of how long Obi-Wan must have wondered, doubted all their time together, wondered if Cody had hated him after all.
"And I was there to protect his children, and it was worth it, of course it was worth it, but I had lost everything else - everything that ever mattered to me. And I know it didn't happen, it was just a vision, but it wasn't only that, it was real too. We've averted it, but I still remember. And there are echoes of it. The invasion of the temple - just with a droid army, not clones. I was still there with Padmé, still one of the first people to hold her children. I passed her the babies, she gave them the same names. It's all so..." He breaks off, shakes his head, and looks away. "I'm sorry, Cody, I shouldn't lay it all on you. It just... hurts."
He buries his head in his hands again, just as he was when Cody entered the room.
And Cody looks out over the edge of the floor, where the gaping drop rolls down right to the entrance of the temple far below, where the Separatist siege machines still sit.
That was not part of the vision Obi-Wan saw. No, in that world, Order 66 had succeeded, and the clones had laid waste to the temple. Here, when Palpatine tried to issue the order and it failed, when he realised he'd lost control of the clones, he had sent the Separatists in instead, led by General Grievous. But the droids had found themselves facing not the few warriors remaining in the temple with their children and non-combatants but the massed strength of hundreds upon hundreds of Jedi and thousands of clones, snuck down to the surface under Palpatine's nose, as he crowed in the victory he thought he'd won.
Here, Skywalker's fall had been a ruse, the clones were free, and the strike team that went to the Senate after breaking the assault on the temple had destroyed him.
The Force had given Obi-Wan and Skywalker a gift they hadn't known they needed, in giving them this vision.
It had also given them a weight that was terrible to carry.
"You can tell me anything, Obi-Wan," he says. "Whatever burdens you have, I will share them."
Obi-Wan lowers his hands. Even here, battle-worn and weary, he is beautiful.
Cody doesn't know how Jedi see people in the Force. He knows it's different from how he perceives the world, and that he'll never really understand.
But looking at Obi-Wan in the glow of the early morning sun, he doesn't think it matters. There is so much light in him, whether it's of the Force or not.
"Cody," he breathes, and Cody has to close his eyes for a moment, almost undone. "I missed you so very much. In all those years, I had so many regrets. One of the greatest of all of them was that I never told you how much I loved you."
And everything in the world just -
- stops.
Except Obi-Wan, who looks at Cody's face and keeps talking as if he hasn't just frozen time.
"I wished I could have told you. Even if it didn't change anything. Every single day, I wished I had said it to you, even just once. I wanted you to know. And now I've got that chance, and I still want you to know."
"I do," Cody says. Because it's true. He's known for a while. He thinks they both have. They've never said it - never acted on it. They haven't even needed to say why because they both understand. There has been so much standing between them, so much duty and hierarchy and risk.
But it's there, in the gentlest of touches, in the quietest of nights. In the way Obi-Wan looks at him. That smile he has that is only Cody's. The trust between them, the things Obi-Wan has confided in him that he hides from everyone else.
"I know," he promises, and is glad that he can lay this truth bare between them at last. It feels like a song bursting out of his chest. "I love you too, you know."
And whether he knew or not, the words transform Obi-Wan. The shadows on his face lift, like Cody is shining bright enough to burn them all away. He smiles through the tear tracks and the dirt, and he looks younger. Lighter. Free.
And he reaches his hands into the space between them, and Cody meets them, and they tangle their fingers together. Cody's hands are rough and scarred - but so, he finds, are Obi-Wan's. A matching pair.
This is happiness. This is a sort of joy more profound than he's ever known before. And it is also just like every other moment they've spent together, the natural successor to every battle fought side by side, every strategy planned shoulder to shoulder, every meal shared across a table.
There was no guarantee it would end like this. There was another world where it ended very differently. And yet they are here, and Obi-Wan's hands are in his.
"I don't know where to go from here," Obi-Wan says suddenly. "There's so much to do. So much uncertain. I had ten years to think about it but I don't have a plan. I don't know what to do next."
Cody's only had a few hours to think about it, but his mind's been racing. What does come next? If the Senate get their act together and understand what's happened? The Jedi, presumably, will go back to what they were always meant to be. They have a life to return to, though the transition will not be an easy one. They are scarred by a war they should never have had to fight.
And the clones? The Jedi are fighting for them in the political sphere now, along with their friends in the Senate. If that fails - Cody doesn't know. But if it succeeds? If Cody wakes tomorrow and is a free man, what then would he do?
Exactly what he would do today, he thinks, and feels that settle inside him as a certainty. He will look after his brothers, and find a place for them in the galaxy. He will protect the Jedi, not because that is what he was made for, but because that is his choice. He will defend and look after the people of the galaxy, because that is what he finds worthy of his time and his labour.
And if all the galaxy were laid before him for the choosing, he would not do otherwise than he does right now.
"Come and have dinner with me," he says. "Then we can find a place to sleep. But first, share a meal with me."
"And a lifetime?" Obi-Wan says, and there is a light back in his eye, a grin crooking at the corners of his mouth.
There you are, Cody thinks, at the return of that devilish look. And he thinks, you romantic bastard, too, and smiles.
"One thing at a time," he says, feigning scepticism, as though the idea is anything but a wonder to him.
Obi-Wan laughs, and they haul each other to their feet. When they leave the room, their hands are still clasped together.
One day soon, Cody vows to himself, they will rebuild these rooms, along with the rest of the temple. He will make this into Obi-Wan's home again - perhaps a home for both of them.
Their love for each other will never stand above their devotion to their people; he knows this of Obi-Wan, and he knows it of himself. There is no individual love that can ever be more than the love they hold for their vast families, and the duties they have chosen. But their hearts are not limited; their love is not finite. There is space for both, and there is time to work out how to balance everything.
The war, after all, is over now.