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It wasn’t often that Cody dreamt. Though, when he did, they were always dark things that had him waking up in a cold sweat, chest heaving and legs trembling. They weren’t necessarily nightmares, Cody had experienced enough of those to know the difference. But, nonetheless, Cody’s dreams had a tendency to be more than a little unsettling - even when he’d been a cadet not left Kamino.
This one was no exception.
As with many of Cody’s dreams, it began with work. It made sense considering how many of his waking hours he dedicated to his role. He could feel the plates of his armour sitting over his shoulders and thighs just like usual; the weight of his spaulders, his cuirass, the way his armour plates rubbed together slightly each time he bent his elbows. His blacks normally offered a reassuring squeeze around his limbs - a sensation he would have been able to recognise even if he’d lost all faculties. A natborn might have found the extra weight claustrophobic or stifling, but to Cody (and most vod he knew) it was a comfort, a sensation he’d always take stock in.
Usually, that was. This time; however, the weight of his armour filled Cody with a stone-cold sense of dread.
The second thing that Cody noticed about the dream was that, when he opened his eyes, he was gazing down at a dark helmet in his hands, a visor tinted red staring back at him. The sensation of wrong, wrong, wrong gnawed in his gut. Instinctively, even with the shape of the bucket being different and white and gold replaced with red and black, Cody knew the helmet was his own. Something icy crawled down his back the longer Cody stared at the bucket. It had been designed to inspire fear just as much as it had to protect the wearer.
The armour on the backs of Cody’s hands was black, too, he noticed. His fingers ached with the absence of the normal paintwork that he was so proud of, replaced by something utterly blank and all together wrong.
The sight of his own armour shouldn’t have unsettled Cody as much as it did, but there it was. He couldn’t quite pinpoint why, but the dark bucket and red visor made him feel sick. The deep hues were almost hypnotising, pulling Cody in before he realised it was happening.
He tore his eyes away and up to the scene before him.
What a mistake that was.
Cody didn’t recognise the buildings rising high on all sides, but he didn’t need to in order to take in the civilians before him, shaking and terrified with their knees in the mud and their hands cuffed behind their heads.
Were those… were those force-suppression cuffs?
Were these Jedi that Cody had apparently apprehended?
The spike of alarm that jolted through his body was as clear as day, yet his thoughts were soupy and washed away before he could grab ahold of them. He couldn’t be sure if context would have made the sight better or worse. What could these force-sensitives have done that warranted being shoved down into the dirt, bound like animals?
Behind the Jedi (because something in Cody was utterly certain that they were.) two troopers loomed, their blasters drawn. They were in the same terrifying, black garb as Cody himself, the barrels of their weapons tilted downwards at the Jedi in case they tried anything.
But were they really so dangerous? Cody knew the full destructive potential of the Jedi first hand, had witnessed the change in both General Kenobi and Skywalker’s eyes himself once they had a few battles under their belts. These people didn’t fit that description, at least not to Cody. They were soft, wide-eyed and innocent. Jedi or no, they weren’t the battle-hardened type he was used to interacting with. Cody wouldn’t have been surprised to find out they were healers, or creche-masters.
One of the three was staring up at Cody, speaking frantically through hysterical tears. Pleading, maybe? Cody couldn’t hear a word, only the pounding of his own heartbeat in his ears.
The other three members of Cody’s squad stood in front of the trio, blasters also drawn and aimed directly at the Jedi’s heads. Their helmets, though, were angled towards Cody, waiting for orders.
Shit, was this a firing squad?
Cody’s blood turned to ice in his veins. What had the Jedi done that was so terrible? The situation he found himself in felt wrong, right down to his bones. The Republic would never stand for this, he knew.
But there they were.
What Cody meant to say next was ‘stand down’ or perhaps ‘lower your weapons’ but all that came out, unbidden was ‘fire!’
Cody could only watch with horror as the blasters deployed immediately, blasting down the Jedi where they knelt. The Commander’s stomach plummeted into his boots. The three of them fell backwards into the mud before his eyes, crumpled like puppets with their strings cut.
His body lurched, heart in his throat, torn between turning away and racing forwards, as if he could do something, anything to protect them from their fate.
But they were already gone. Cody turned away and, mercifully, the dream let him. It seemed to turn with him, strangely.
Gone was the muddy street and firing squad, Jedi bleeding out at his feet. Where he’d expected high-rise buildings to tower, Cody was instead greeted with wide-open space and a bright sun overhead. A gunship whizzed past his field of view, as did several troopers clad in white and gold. Cody allowed himself to relax a touch. This was - well it wasn’t safe, but it was familiar, at least.
He took a breath and surveyed the battlefield, training kicking in. He and his troopers appeared to be stationed half-way down a gargantuan crater, buildings and roads built into the steep sides. Again, not a planet he recognised, but that meant little.
As Cody craned his neck upwards, he brought a hand to shield his eyes from the sun, only for his fingers to knock into his visor.
When had he donned his helmet?
It didn’t matter, he supposed, not really.
Movement from the opposite side of the crater caught Cody’s gaze.
Something seemed to burst from the cliff face, tearing up the wall at lightning speed and covered in dirt.
Was that… some kind of lizard? Cody wasn’t sure what the local wildlife looked like, but he was fairly certain that it wasn’t that. There was something, or someone, riding on the lizard’s back as it scampered on, too, a small red speck in the distance but no more. Although Cody was too far away to make out any details, he knew somehow that the lizard and its rider were important. The sight of them set him at ease, even if he didn’t know why.
There was movement then, out of the corner of Cody’s eye. It was his own arm moving, swinging downwards, the words ‘ fire!’ coming from his lips even without his say so.
Before he could so much as blink, a plasma cannon was being fired up at the lizard. Cody could only watch as the shot soared through the sky and came into contact with the cliff face directly in front of the creature. With a boom, the area was vaporised, a thousand jagged rocks around the site flying up and outwards before plummeting down to the earth below. The lizard let out a shrill, piercing cry, fighting to continue its path before losing the battle.
Both the lizard and its rider began to hurtle downwards along with the rocks, picking up speed as the ground grew closer.
It was just as the lizard’s rider, little more than a reddish blob, dipped out of Cody’s view, that he woke with a start.
Cody sat up with a lurch, gasping like a drowning man.
Gone was the crater and the lizard. The forboding black armour was nowhere to be seen. Cody was back in his bunk, in Coruscant's command barracks, safe and sound. At least, that was what he forced himself to remember as he registered the pounding of his own heart, the sickness in his stomach and the uncomfortable clamminess of his skin.
His eyes darted wildly around the room, lit only by the dull glow of the desk lamp Cody always kept on during the nights he had company, not wanting to trip over the other in the dark. Still breathing hard, he startled when he felt a warm body shifting against his own, the two of them tangled together from hip to ankle.
Rex.
The younger clone was tucked between Cody and the wall, head dislodged from where it had been resting on Cody’s shoulder. It was a tight fit, two fully-grown officers on a single bunk, but Rex slept on peacefully regardless. He looked more relaxed than he’d done in several rotations - younger, too, without worry lines marring his skin.
Still nude beneath the bed sheets that pooled at their waists, the marks from their earlier activities were clearly visible against tanned skin. Unsettled, Cody’s fingers itched to reach out and touch them, if only to remind himself that Rex was real, that he was warm and alive , but thought better of it. As jittery as he was, he knew the chances of accidentally waking the other were almost guaranteed. With the both of them due to be redeployed in the next day or so, Rex needed all the sleep he could get.
He had no right to bother his love with weird dreams when Rex did his utmost never to disturb Cody with his own.
Instead, Cody took a quiet breath and tried to settle himself. He got to his feet carefully, shivering as the cool, recycled air of the room made contact with his clammy skin, and tucked the blanket up to Rex’s chin to shield him from the worst of it.
Rex slumbered on undisturbed and Cody couldn’t help but take a moment to simply stare. Knowing that the other was safe always made him feel a little bit better. That being said, Cody knew there was a slim chance of him falling back to sleep any time soon.
He padded over to the adjoined fresher, switching the lights to as dim as they would go before closing the door behind him.
Hands set on the basen, Cody simply stared at himself in the mirror for a long while. It was a sight he was intimately familiar with - sharing features with a million other brothers he saw every day. Yet the dream had him feeling… wrong in his own skin. The sense of foreboding had lingered into wakefulness and even as Cody turned on the tap to splash water on his face, it didn’t disappear.
Would he ever really do something like that? Order the deaths of Jedi? Of civilians?
Of course, dreams rarely came with context but Cody liked to think that even with a gun to his head, he’d never harm anything other than droids.
Still, there was no way of knowing what the future held. Cody did anything he could to avoid thinking about the fact that the dream could end up a reality no matter what he did to stop it.
A shudder ran through him at the thought. Perhaps in the morning he should speak to the General about this. Obi-Wan always knew what to do, always knew how to make Cody feel a little better - almost as well as Rex did.
‘Thank fuck I’m not a Jedi.’ Was Cody’s next thought. He didn’t know how he’d cope if he needed to analyse each and every bad dream for visions of the future. Cody, at least, could rest safe in the knowledge that his dream was just a dream, nothing more - no premonition sent to him by an unknown force.
It was as Cody was employing some of the deep-breathing exercises he’d learned as a cadet that the door to the fresher slid open silently.
Rex stood in the doorway looking sleepy, warm and soft. He rubbed at an eye with a closed fist before stumbling forwards right into the other’s chest without hesitation.
Cody’s stomach fluttered, the action tugging him out of the jittery spiral he’d slipped into. When Rex’s arms enclosed around his waist loosely, leaning heavily against Cody’s chest with his head tucked under the other’s chin, Cody squeezed him back gently. He did his best to lose himself in the weight of Rex in his arms, his scent, the feel of his skin now that he was no longer concerned with waking the other. Cody’s skin must have been uncomfortably sweaty still under Rex’s cheek, heart still beating just that little bit too fast, but he didn't seem to mind.
He must have known that Cody had a nightmare, though he didn’t ask about it. He never did. Though he never judged Cody for what he chose to share, either. It was shared hardship that made things so easy with this, he supposed.
“Come back to bed…” Was mumbled into Cody’s skin, Rex still half-asleep on his feet.
Whilst the jitters were still present, as was the ice in Cody’s veins, it was beginning to thaw. He still felt wide awake, but Cody supposed if it were a choice between lying awake with Rex at his side and standing in his fresher staring at himself in the mirror, it was no competition.
Instead of replying verbally, Cody gave a great, heaving sigh and a nod. Rex peeled himself away from where he’d been plastered to Cody’s chest and took him by the hand before tugging Cody gently out of the fresher and back to bed.
He didn’t give the other any instructions as he led him over to the bunk they’d been sharing, simply guiding and shoving Cody where he wanted. He went wherever Rex put him, ending up on his side with Rex tucked behind him, the blonde closest to the wall so Cody was able to keep his gaze on the door just like he preferred. A warm, heavy arm was slung over his waist, squeezing lightly at the same time a kiss was pressed to his nape.
“I got you.” Rex assured him, voice still rough with sleep. “I have the watch.” It was just about the most comfortable thing a brother could say.
Cody made a conscious effort to relax all his major muscle groups one by one, doing his level best to put the dream out of his mind once and for all. It still sat wrong in his stomach, like a warning of something bad on the horizon. But as Cody closed his eyes, he found it easier than expected to drift off in Rex’s arms.
Cody slept easily the rest of that night.
By the time the Republic finally fell, one of them becoming a monster and one not, the warning of his dream was forgotten entirely.