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“—ommander?”
Cody blinked. “Sorry sir. You were saying?”
Obi-Wan sighed. “It’s alright. I planned to do this in the morning, but the Council has recalled me at first possible notice.”
“I understand, sir.” He didn’t, really, but he suspected that the General would explain himself soon enough. “Will you be back before we leave for Naboo?”
Obi-Wan began to fidget. He worried the hem of his sleeve between his forefinger and thumb. “That’s what I need to speak to you about. Once I get to Coruscant, I’ll be directed to undertake a classified mission.”
Cody was instantly awake. Abandoning his exhaustion by the wayside, he met his general’s gaze evenly. The fact that Obi-Wan had roused him from bed and called him here, to a deserted hangar, instead of the bridge suddenly made far more sense. “A classified mission, sir?”
“Very classified, actually. Deeply classified.” He made a dry sound that wasn’t a laugh. “Really, I shouldn’t be telling you about it at all.”
Cody frowned. “So why are you?”
“Because I won’t be back before we leave for Naboo. In fact, I may not be back for quite some time.”
A tight knot of dread began to form in the bottom of Cody’s stomach. “Sir?”
Obi-Wan closed his eyes for a moment, like his eyelids were too heavy a burden to bear. “In three days,” he sighed, “someone will call to tell you that I’ve been killed.”
———
Once Obi-Wan had explained — and then explained again, when Cody had calmed down enough to properly listen — an awkward silence descended over the both of them. Tucked away in this quiet corner of the launch bay, the operation that Obi-Wan had described in as much absurd, terrifying detail as he was allowed seemed like an outright joke.
In three days, he’ll fall from a roof. They’ll find him dead on the pavement. In four days, they’ll hold a funeral.
It didn’t seem real.
But Obi-Wan wasn’t a liar— well, he was. But not to Cody. Never to Cody. It was one of the best things about the General. Truly, if this war had bestowed Cody with one gift above all else, it was trust in Obi-Wan Kenobi.
So everything he’d said was true. He was going to leave for a mission with no end date, and this may well be the last time they spoke. If Cody thought about that for too long he started to sweat, so he opened his mouth instead.
“Sir?” He didn’t know what he was asking.
“Call me Obi-Wan.”
Cody’s chest clenched, and he let the name rest on his tongue before he spoke it. “Obi-Wan.”
“Yes, Cody?”
Then, like a miracle, an impulse streaked across Cody’s mind. He grasped it, steeling himself as it burned beyond an impulse and into a need. “If you’re leaving tonight, can I— would you give me something? Before you go?”
“Anything. What would you like?”
Cody swallowed hard, stared at his mouth, and prayed that his General understood. “Don’t make me say it, sir,” he said, voice already rough.
Obi-Wan smiled in recognition, though his eyes were full of barely disguised grief. if he was surprised by the request, it didn’t show.
“Alright, Commander. Come here.”
Cody stepped forwards tentatively, crossing the meagre space between them. He was suddenly very aware that they were out in the open; that anybody could just come wandering into the hangar and catch him doing something wrong.
Obi-Wan put a hand on the side of his face and pulled their mouths together, and all of Cody’s thoughts faded into static. He could count on half a hand the amount of times in his short, unromantic life that he’d been kissed — but apparently, he hadn’t done it properly even once. This was— this. He could feel his hands on Obi-Wan, and he could feel Obi-Wan’s hands on him, and though his General’s lips were slow and chaste, the very lines between them seemed to be blurring. They were breathing each other’s air. Cody kicked himself for ever thinking it wouldn’t be this good.
An indeterminate amount of time later, they parted. Obi-Wan’s lips were obscenely pink and his cheeks were streaked with tears, and the contrast was so strange and dizzying that it almost successfully distracted Cody from the pressure building behind his own eyes. He sniffed hard, and they both blinked furiously down at each other’s shoes.
“You’re rather good at goodbyes, my dear,” Obi-Wan said after a while.
“Don’t call it that,” Cody insisted. “You’ll be back.”
A pause. “A goodnight, then? Not a goodbye.”
Obi-Wan was humouring him, but Cody was thankful for it. “A goodnight,” he agreed. He was ill-suited to optimism, but tonight it was his only life raft and he clung to it. With an immense effort, he straightened his back and stood to attention. “The men will be taken care of in your absence, sir. I’ll lead them as if they were my own battalion.”
Obi-Wan gave him another one of those impossibly sad smiles. “They are yours, Commander.”
Cody shook his head. “Respectfully, General, I disagree. We’re your men. And we’ll be waiting up for you.”
“Don’t wait too long.”
“Watch me.”
———
Long after Obi-Wan’s fighter had disappeared into a flash of hyperspace, Cody stood in the midnight quiet of the hangar, letting the silence blanket him like a physical thing. Deep in Republic territory as they were, the ship itself seemed to have been given permission to relax — it’s hull creaked more quietly, the distant hum of the engines more of a sigh than a roar. Cody let his eyes drift briefly closed, listening.
He contemplated going back to bed. He could return to his quarters like nothing was wrong, and tell himself that the General would be there when he woke up. Goodnight, not goodbye.
But Cody didn’t like to lie to himself. Sleep wouldn’t change anything.
Even now, the urge to move and make himself useful was itching under his skin, and he relented with a sigh. He pulled his bucket back over his head and let his feet carry him towards the bridge; shoulders square and resolute.
Alright, he told himself. Time to keep those home fires burning.