Chapter Text
Obi-Wan wakes to the sound of Cody's desperate voice. He is begging for someone to wake up, to not leave him. It is not the first time Obi-Wan has seen Cody have a nightmare, nor would it be the first time he had experienced it had the dream been of a more amorous nature. It is the first time, however, that Obi-Wan is able to do something about it. He runs his fingers lightly through Cody's curls, much as he longed to do when he was little more than a ghost. It thrills him that he can do this now. He can touch Cody, can love Cody. Others may have felt his presence and heard his voice, but Cody was the first to listen.
Gentle amusement brushes against his mind, but there is an undercurrent of concern that worries him. Fay is awake, and outside their door.
"Tracinya laar," Cody mutters as his eyes open.
Obi-Wan freezes. No one has called him that since before he was cursed. Flame song. Only one person ever addressed him that way, and he is long dead. Killed only days before Obi-Wan, himself, was placed in a cave to await the impossible.
"Are you alright?" Cody asks.
"What did you just call me?" Obi-Wan asks him.
"Obi-Wan."
"No, before that," Obi-Wan clarifies.
"I was asleep before that," Cody replies. "Having a nightmare. You woke me. Thank you."
"Always," Obi-Wan promises. "Can you tell me what it was about?"
"I…"
A sharp tap on the door interrupts him and the sense of Fay in the back of Obi-Wan’s mind sharpens. They have not yet had a chance to talk. Far too much of the evening before had been spent listening to Fay explain how she knows Obi-Wan and how she has lived so long. Being beloved by the Force is rarely the gift so many others assume it might be. All they were able to establish, before Jango declared everything else should wait until morning, was that Fay came because she felt Obi-Wan wake. She is not here at the behest of the Jedi Council.
"It's Fay," he tells Cody.
Cody smiles and nods, answering the request that Obi-Wan does not need to voice. They have time to talk about Cody's dreams, something he might actually do now that Obi-Wan can truly hold him. They have no idea when the Force might call Fay away. Obi-Wan unlocks the door with the Force, sitting up enough to expose his bare chest to the cool air of the room. He could put more clothing on, but Fay has seen him wearing far less than sleep pants. His body, which he was without for so very long, is little more than crude matter. The unlocking of the door is enough of a confirmation to Fay that she is welcome, but he makes sure to impress that feeling against their bond anyway.
Fay always cared more about that than Tarre ever did. She may have seen him naked more times than Obi-Wan cares to count, but Tarre has seen Obi-Wan in infinitely more compromising positions. Had seen him. Even after centuries as little more than a ghost it is hard, sometimes, to remember that almost everyone he cares about is long dead and with the Force.
"I felt something shudder in the Force," Fay says, "is everything alright?"
She almost seems to glow in the near darkness of the room, lit only by a slither of moonlight through improperly closed curtains. Obi-Wan flicks the bedside lamp on, bathing the room in the half light of sunset. It renders the angles of her face strangely. Dangerous. Speaking to the power she wields which she never uses to kill but which can take a life all the same. A power which she has long stopped trying to explain to people who have no right to demand that she do things their way rather than hers. It is probably one of the reasons she followed Tarre when he left for Mandalore. Similar demands of him certainly played some part in Obi-Wan's motivations to seek alternative horizons. Along with his deep friendship with Tarre, anyway.
"Everything is fine," Obi-Wan tells her.
"Strange," Fay mutters, pale eyes fixed on Cody who has also sat up in bed.
Like Obi-Wan, Cody does not seem to care that Fay is seeing him barely dressed. Interesting since Mandalorians seem to be a lot less open about their bodies than a lot of other races Obi-Wan has encountered. At least, when not with their traat'liit. They tend to become a lot closer to members of their traat'alitt. Enough to be vulnerable in that way. Perhaps Cody simply understands that Fay is traat'aliit to Obi-Wan in the same way that Cody's vode are to him.
"How so?" Cody asks.
"For a minute I thought I felt… nevermind." She shrugs. "I am certain the Force will provide answers sooner or later. We were unable to talk earlier," she continues. "About what happened to you. I thought you might like to hear it without Jango Vhett breathing down your neck."
Her voice curls differently around Cody's surname, the archaic form that was once so familiar to them both. Cody blinks, something shifts, and then settles away again. A shudder in the Force, much as Fay described.
"I think that would probably be a good idea," Obi-Wan agrees. "I am sure there will be a lot in there which may require more explanation than I have the patience for at the moment."
"For a man with limitless patience, that surprises me," Fay chuckles.
"He worked through it all waiting hundreds of years to be woken up," Cody quips.
"Well, you did take your time," Obi-Wan tells him, sliding out of bed to grab a robe so that he can join Fay in the small sitting area.
There is a moment of hesitation on Cody's part before he does the same. The two of them could talk quietly, or Fay could share the information through the Force so that they do not disturb Cody, but it seems that he would, also, prefer to get this information with a minimum of interruptions.
Fay takes her time reminding Obi-Wan of the events that led him to being cursed by a Sith lord, one of the Line of Bane even though they had believed it had been eradicated. Apparently, Obi-Wan had believed he was about to corner the Sith and finally, truly, eliminate the Sith once and for all. Apparently, it was not the Sith who needed to worry. It was Obi-Wan. The Sith was not backed into a corner, he had lured Obi-Wan into a trap. And Obi-Wan, in an uncharacteristic moment of recklessness, had run right into it. Fay had been the one to find him, unconscious, breathing, covered so thickly in Sith magic that when she tried to work her way through it she had been forced to step aside and throw up.
Worse, there had been nothing that they could do about it to wake him up. They could not even give him the medical attention he might have needed to keep his body functioning. He had been in a sort of stasis, all but untouchable. They only seemed to be able to move, or remove, his beskar'gam. The Force repelling nature of it had worked, but unfortunately for Obi-Wan his preferred armour left just enough of him exposed for the curse to take effect. Had he worn armour more like Cody's the curse might have rebounded instead. The misfortune of preferring a form requiring more flexibility than stability. Obi-Wan was in the healing wing of the new temple for Ka'ra'ade Tarre had returned to Mandalore to establish for months before they realised that there was nothing they could do. It had been a place that Obi-Wan was supposed to be building, having taken over for Tarre when he inadvertently became Mand'alor. It was the last place he rested before Tarre had a vision of the Dral'Han and ordered that Obi-Wan, along with so many of their cultural treasures, be placed in the hidden vault beneath the temple. The Dral'Han destroyed the temple, buried even the memory of it. The vault remained. As did Obi-Wan.
But not his armour. Most of it anyway. Fay had taken the rest of it at the urging of the Force, taken it and hidden it among the Vhett family armour. Safely mixed in with the armour of a member of the Vhett family Obi-Wan had been particularly close to. A person he had believed lost in the run up to their confrontation with the Sith and which may have contributed to his reckless behaviour. Fay had left his buy'ce, because the Force insisted that she should, and his right vambrace, because the only one with the right to take that would be his spouse. Married Mandalorians are cremated wearing those, unmarried Mandalorians usually have them placed in the vault with the rest of the family armour to be reworked.
Obi-Wan had not been married.
Fay obviously knew something that Obi-Wan does not.
"The Sith curse you were put under, there were two ways to get out of it," Fay says. "True love's kiss, which you seem to have achieved with a minimum amount of interference on my part," only her making off with his armour, "or Falling."
"Falling?" Obi-Wan asks.
"Yes," Fay pushes her hair back from her face with one hand. "The frustration of being a disembodied spirit was supposed to make you more susceptible to the the temptations of the Dark Side. That way he would have been more able to use you, manipulate you. He wanted a powerful Force user under his control. He did not account for the fact that your soul is tied to your beskar'gam because you are Ka'ra'ade."
"So the beskar'gam saved him?" Cody asks.
"I doubt he needed it," Fay scoffs. "Nothing could make Obi-Wan turn from the Light. We used to call him Guiding Light at the Temple."
Obi-Wan feels himself flush and curses his pale skin. There is no way that Cody will miss it even in the lamp light.
"Really?" Cody grins at him, then frowns. "I feel like I knew that."
"Maybe Obi-Wan mentioned it before, while he was a spirit? Or since he woke up?" Fay suggests looking sharply at Cody.
"I would never mention something so embarrassing," Obi-Wan scoffs. "It was a relief that all of my embarrassing secrets were supposed to have died with everyone I had ever known."
Fay is still looking at Cody, her eyes narrowed.
"Why did you give my beskar'gam to the Vhetts?" He asks, trying to draw her attention away from Cody who she is now reaching for in the Force.
"You knew them," Cody says before she speaks. "Where else would she have taken it?"
"I only knew one Vhett well, Cody," Obi-Wan points out. "Until you."
Cody smiles and glances down.
"Tracinya laar," Cody begins, then frowns and shakes his head.
The Force shudders again.
"That is the second time you have called me that," Obi-Wan tells him. "You called me it earlier after I woke you from your nightmare too."
"Maybe you should tell us about this nightmare," Fay suggests.
"It doesn't matter," Cody says. "I used to have them all the time as a kid. I thought it was just Ba'buir telling me too many stories about old wars. They mostly stopped when I got my beskar'gam. Only came back if I had to leave it off for a few days. It's nothing."
No, Obi-Wan thinks, it is something. Although what it might be he has no idea. Something to look at later.
"I don't want to talk about my weird dreams," Cody tells them. "I'm more worried about why the curse didn't break when the Sith died. I assume he died."
"His body did," Fay says. "But Sith are… tenacious. The master died, and the bond he had forced into the mind of his apprentice pushed the soul and mind of the apprentice out, so that he could take over."
"That's horrifying," Obi-Wan says.
"The curse would imply that you were chosen as a possible candidate," Fay says."It did not break, until Cody here kissed you, because the Sith who created it did not die. I managed to track him for about three hundred years. And then I was following the Force somewhere else and instead of taking over the apprentice I knew about, he took a different one. I lost him and have not been able to find him since."
"That is… troubling," Obi-Wan mutters.
"More than troubling," Cody replies. "I assume he'll know that Obi-Wan is awake?"
"Undoubtedly," Fay replies. "And he will be on his way here hoping to pick up a new apprentice. Congratulations, Obi-Wan, Lord Sidious will be on his way to try and convince you to join him."