Chapter Text
Cody wakes up sitting on a chair. Which is stupid. Chairs are not for sleeping on. His arms are at a strange angle. And his legs. They're tied to the chair? And there's something over his head.
... Is this a kidnapping?
He's not hurting at all. This seems more like something his brothers would cook up than an actual kidnapping. If someone takes this bag off his head and Alpha's in front of him, he's not going to be impressed.
He can't hear any brothers. There is someone there, in front and to the right of him, doing something with buttons or switches it sounds like. But they aren't a brother. He can't hear anyone else, so he slowly, subtly tenses his wrists, moves them a fraction apart testing the limits of the rope. Actual, old fashioned, twisted rope. Where the kriff had his kidnapper managed to find that?
"Ah, you're awake." The button presser says in a stupidly pretty accent, moving towards him.
He didn't think he'd given himself away.
He opens his eyes. And sees a sack.
There's just enough light filtering through the material to tell that it's brown and coarse. Black silk bags must only be for fancy kidnapping victims.
The sack is lifted off his head.
He appears to have been kidnapped by a Sith. An extremely pretty Sith. Who smiles at him with something a little bit sly and a little bit knowing.
Cody considers his options.
He could get out of this, the ropes will be easy enough to escape from, or, he could sit here for a bit first and admire the pretty Sith. Who is very pretty. Also, intel. Intel is good. Well, intel he gets given is usually bad. But if he gets the intel himself then it will be good.
The pretty Sith smirks at him and gestures widely with an arm.
"Welcome to my lair."
Cody obediently follows the direction and looks around to study his surroundings. The lair in question looks suspiciously like the inside of a mid-sized cargo hold. Spray painted a matte black, and with bolts of red fabric hanging down the walls. The reds are not all quite the same shade. Or length. And, Cody squints, one definitely has a subtle pattern of love hearts woven into it.
"Would you believe me if I told you the fabric was chosen deliberately to provoke a sense of unease in my captives?" The pretty Sith asks. There's a thread of self aware amusement running under the words that makes Cody bite back a smile.
"Not at all, Sir."
"Blast."
He doesn't seem at all upset by this. If anything, he's finding it funny. A pretty, cheerful Sith. Much nicer than the ones Cody usually encounters.
"If I may, Sir, I'm afraid it looks like you got it from the remnant sale."
The Sith flashes a grin at him, eyebrows rising.
"It's almost like you were there, Commander."
Nobody's ever explained to Cody how the whole being in love thing works, but this seems like an extremely promising start.
He ponders briefly what fabric shopping with the pretty Sith would be like and decides it would be highly enjoyable. That feels like more evidence to add to this new theory.
"Right now, down to business." The Sith straightens. "I'm afraid, Commander, that I didn't capture you on your own merit, which by the way is really rather considerable, but as a lure for your commanding officer."
Cody hides a sigh. Brains and looks was apparently too much to ask for. Even if the complement settles into his stomach with all the warmth of caff straight from the pot.
"Sir," he points out, "the General isn't going to come and get me. I was designed to be replaceable."
The Sith sends him an amused look, confident in his plan.
"Oh, I agree that he's perfectly willing to leave people behind when it suits him. But I'm broadcasting this little incident to the Negotiator. It's not going to suit him to leave you here in my nefarious clutches." The Sith grins, wide and a little feral. "And I believe we've now reached the overdramatic threats part of the evening." He throws his arms wide, "Behold!"
A trapdoor under Cody's feet falls open, the chair he's tied to suspended over nothingness. He looks down through the gap into the pit below him, which appears to be full of greeny-grey snappy things. With big teeth. He frowns. He's still not sure what the difference between spocodiles and spalligators is.
"And with every minute that passes, your chair will be lowered another inch towards the spocodiles!"
Ah, these ones are spocodiles then. That's that question answered.
He tilts his head to eyeball the distances and tries to gauge how far a spocodile could jump. He thinks he probably has about half an hour. He can work with that.
"Sir," he asks, mildly curious, "what's the difference between a spocodile and a spalligator?" The Sith looks like he knows lots of things, and this feels like the sort of situation where that information might be useful.
"I don't know, my dear, what is the difference between a spocodile and a spalligator?"
Cody pauses.
The Sith blinks at him, and ducks his head a fraction.
"Ah." The pretty Sith rubs at his beard looking sheepish. Adorable. "That was a genuine question, not the start of a joke, wasn't it."
"Yes, Sir." Cody confirms. The logistics of stealing the pretty Sith away and smuggling him onto the Negotiator and wrapping him in blankets are probably going to be quite challenging. He may need to make a number of significant variations on that plan.
"I believe it's in the teeth," the Sith tells him, "but I have to say, I'm not quite sure about the specifics."
Cody spends the next two minutes escaping from his ropes while the Sith studies various bits on his ominous control panel, humming quietly to himself. It's surprisingly peaceful. Cody takes stock of his situation. There's an opportunity here.
"Sir?" Cody asks. The Sith turns with an inquiring tilt of his head. "Could you set a timer for twenty minutes?" That'll give him eight to escape which should be more than enough.
"And what purpose would that serve, Commander?"
"If it's all right by you, Sir, I'd quite like to take the opportunity for a nap."
The Sith sighs heavily.
"My dear, at this point I believe you should be trembling in terror at the thought of your imminent demise."
"I could multitask, Sir?"
The Sith tuts, the sound heavy with amusement, and a shadow crosses the wall behind him.
Cody would know that silhouette anywhere.
He hides another sigh.
And slips his hands back into the rope that was binding them. Subtly uses his feet to shuffle the lengths that had been tying his legs to the chair into the spocodile pit. Easier at this point to let the General have his fun. And he really doesn't want to have to answer any questions about why he hadn't escaped yet if he had the ability to. Admiring pretty Sith is probably frowned upon by Jedi.
The pretty Sith was right, and Cody really should have expected this. It's an unforgivable oversight on his part. He's pretty sure the General is trying to break every regulation in the GAR. Unfortunately he's not working his way through the list in a logical or predictable manner. And it's making Cody's job much harder than it needs to be.
When he looks up, the pretty Sith is fighting the General, not with his own laser sword, but with a knife. It's a lot of ducking and diving and trying to back the General into the spocodile pit.
Cody could help, but the General has this. Laser sword against knife is a given. And there's no way spocodiles will ever eat the General. Cody will be surprised if they don't end up taking at least one of them back with them. Although where they're going to keep it on the Negotiator is a mystery.
A couple of unnecessary slashes with the laser sword, and Cody is once again free of his bonds. Now with additional mild scalding to the skin on his wrists. And then, he's upside down over the General's shoulder.
"Sir, this is against regulations."
Coming to rescue him is definitely against regs, but if 'not hauling Commanders over your shoulder like a sack of tubers when they're perfectly able to walk' isn't in there, then Cody's adding it. Not that it'll do any good, but it'll make him feel better.
"Oh good." The Sith comments, from where he's pinned to the wall with his own knife. "I wasn't sure if you were going to take the good Commander or the spocodiles." There's just a hint of petty bite to his tone, and Cody feels his eyebrows rise.
"Oh, I'll be back for the spocodiles." The General responds airily, and yes, Cody absolutely understands why the Sith seems to be going out of his way to inconvenience this man. He's incredibly annoying.
He lifts his head as he's carried away. He can easily explain it as watching the General's back, even if that's not why he does it.
The Sith is pulling a face at the knife in his arm. A face that Cody can only describe as extremely disgruntled. There's not a lot of blood and it doesn't look like it's hit anything important. It'll need more than bacta to fix, but not a lot more. He'll live. The Sith looks up, eyes widening in surprise as he catches Cody checking on him, then softening into something that makes his heart go oddly oozy. The knife slides free, pulled out by the invisible force magic, and the pretty-eyed Sith winks at him just as the General leaps and the Sith disappears out of sight.
---
Boil looks up from his pad as the General's light footsteps make their way onto the bridge. He still has Commander Cody thrown over one shoulder, and Boil carefully raises an eyebrow where Cody can see as the Commander is gently set down.
Serves the bastard right for making them all have to watch him flirt with a Sith. If he didn't want to be hauled around like a sack of tubers, he should have escaped before the General showed up.