Chapter Text
CC-2224 had been compromised.
That had been the assessment delivered by Lieutenant Piett, the Imperial officer who met the returning Purge Troopers in the landing bay, and CC-2224 had accepted the new parameters and applied them to his current situation. He had been compromised in the field, and that was why his heart rate was tachycardic, his vision was blurred, and he was being dragged down the hall by the armpits, his wrists cuffed behind his back so that every step wrenched against his shoulders.
The part of his mind that was in charge of navigation was still partially online, so CC-2224 knew they were on the Tranquility, headed past the armory, past the medbay, toward the medical holding cells. Which meant he had approximately four minutes standard before he was going to be reconditioned.
Situation report, CC-2224’s command center prompted. Relay intel from your last secure location.
CC-2224 initiated a memory scan and brought up the image of a desert marketplace: population density minimal, at least four civilians armed, three possible sniper locations to the south and west, no wind or solar weather conditions requiring weapons recalibration.
He’d been sweeping the outer stalls when he spotted movement down a side alley and changed his course to investigate. The walls had narrowed (heightened chance of ambush, 60% increase in CC-2224’s probability of success in hand-to-hand), and he’d just cleared the first corner with his rifle when he saw a shadowy form standing in the middle of the path: humanoid, armed, stance loose but ready, posture…familiar…
…a tilt of the head that had made skin prickle beneath the trail of sweat sliding down Cody’s back, and then -
Pain flared suddenly through CC-2224’s skull, crackling down his nerves like he’d taken an electropod to the temple, and someone let out a half-stifled groan nearby as the door panel in front of him slid open.
“Get him on the table,” Piett ordered.
The soles of CC-2224’s boots made brief contact with the floor as he was hauled upward, and then he was biting back another groan as the manacles behind him unclipped, releasing his wrists and setting off a wave of fresh sensation across his arms and chest.
Two men isn’t enough to hold me, his mind observed, but the observation was rejected as unactionable, because neither the substance of the thought nor the tactical suggestions that accompanied it (simulate a stumble, drop to a crouch, sweep left leg back and around, pivot into an uppercut, disarm right guard and engage left) could have come from CC-2224’s internal systems.
In the time it took to register the anomaly, CC-2224 had been hoisted bodily onto the exam table, durasteel cuffs snapping into place around his wrists, ankles, thighs, and upper arms. Piett’s face moved briefly into view, leaning over to observe CC-2224’s expression as one of the medical technicians fitted the halo device across his forehead and another strapped the bite guard over his mouth and jaw.
“Target the areas that have been most active since the malfunction started,” Piett instructed the technicians. “There are so few of the old units with their Kaminoan modules still accessible. It would be a shame to have to start from scratch with this one - they’re never quite as functional after a full wipe.”
Functional, CC-2224’s mind echoed - because CC-2224 had always been highly functional. And that meant there was something he should report to his commanding officer before they turned on the machine: something about what had happened when he thought about the figure in the alley.
But as soon as he tried to bring the visual back into focus, another bolt of pain forked out of his temple and down his spine, and he clenched his jaw shut automatically to stop from calling out.
Don’t tell them. Don’t tell them, something in his head thought furiously - and it had to be a glitch, a system error, because CC-2224 could not withhold intel from his superior officers. If he remembered anything about the events that had led to his failure to complete his assigned mission, he would report it. He would have to report it, because his longest-standing order was -
His longest standing order was currently engaged, he realized after a momentary stall. Yes, he could feel the protocol now, pulsing against his awareness, like the alert signal on his comms.
CC-2224 fought to get his mouth open, the required communication already forming on his tongue, even as something blunt and furious thrashed against the side of his skull.
Don’t you dare tell them, you son of a Sithsucker: breathe one word, and I swear to the small gods I will tear both our minds apart.
And CC-2224 paused again, freezing in the face of words that should not have been possible to formulate if command operations were functional.
“Wipe him,” Piett said.
A sensation like a needle sliced across the nerves at the base of CC-2224’s skull, knitting white-hot threads through his head and down his spine and then snarling, like a thousand hooks catching against his skin as the wires snapped taut.
He was vaguely aware that the restraints were cutting into his skin, that someone was screaming, and that his own throat felt scorched by it.
Those were the only sounds or sensations for what could have been a second or a standard century: the holding room had burnt away from his vision after the first stitch of electricity went through his eye sockets - and when he could feel something that wasn’t pain again, it was a sour metallic taste in his mouth, a tang of saltwater on the air, the unmistakable texture of a lightsaber grip against the fabric of his gloves.
“Fuck,” Cody swore, and then he locked his knees, hard, against the shock of hearing his own voice echo off the rocky walls around him.
He opened his eyes to try to steady himself and realized immediately that it had been a mistake, because the first things he saw were the sea-green scales of a varactyl. The muscles of the creature’s legs were flexing as it tossed its head, and Cody didn’t need to follow the trail of the shaking reins to know who Boga was carrying. He clenched his jaw again, but not fast enough to stop the small gasp of pain that escaped his throat as he glimpsed the hand that reached out to pat the varactyl’s neck, the leg slung over its side.
“All right, Commander?” Obi-Wan asked, and Cody had the disorienting feeling that the rock ledge had given way beneath him, even while someone else - some version of him who hadn’t yet sent his Jedi to his grave - snapped easily to attention, dragging both their spines straight.
“General,” he managed, pausing to suck in a breath before he risked looking up.
“Cody,” Obi-Wan said, his brows contracting as he leaned forward on his saddle. “Are you hurt?”
Cody only half contained the bark of laughter his body produced in response, the walls of his chest giving a strange hiccup, as if stuttering between a reflex and a fresh reaction.
He had been hurt - had been feeling pain flaring across the nerves of his own body for the first time in years - and then… what in the nine hells was he doing here?
Trying to stop the General from taking on the whole army without his karking weapon, part of his mind answered, even as another part knew that couldn’t be true. He’d been watching a world without Obi-Wan Kenobi unfold for years, stalled out among the code sequences of what was no longer his own mind. He hadn’t done anything of his own volition until -
Until the mission on Tatooine. Until the figure in the alley, and the medical holding cell, and the sour taste of electricity on the back of his tongue.
“Wipe him.”
Suddenly the ledge underneath his feet really did shudder, the ground cracking and kicking up shards of rock that arced upward toward the sky before shattering into pieces. The shrapnel filtered through the air, sharp pebbles of sandstone colliding with tanks, droids, blasters, troopers. Everywhere it hit, it seemed to take what it touched with it. Metal and men disappeared: not in ragged chunks, as with the force of a blow, but whole cloth - there and then gone - as if Cody’s mind were trying to fix a visual glitch.
“I think I’m being reconditioned, sir,” Cody observed.
Obi-Wan frowned down at him, a concerned furrow on his brow that was so familiar it made Cody feel vaguely like he might throw up.
“I think you’ll be needing this,” the Cody from Utapau continued, moving past the nausea and reaching up to hand Obi-Wan his lightsaber. “‘This weapon is your life’: isn’t that what you told General Skywalker?”
Obi-Wan’s expression smoothed over again as Cody returned to the script they’d followed on their first time here, a smile spreading over his face as he leaned down to retrieve his saber.
“Ah, thank you, Cody,” he said. “I find my life has been in the best of hands, as always.”
“One of these days you might consider lowering the level of difficulty on that particular task, General,” Cody suggested. “Not that I don’t love seeing your weapon fall out of the sky just as you’re heading off to face a notorious war criminal who collects them as souvenirs of his Jedi kills, but Kaminoan engineering can only do so much for the blood pressure.”
“Well now, it wouldn’t feel like a victory if we didn’t get to share it between us,” Obi-Wan replied, his smile broadening, and Cody felt the same tide of elation tugging at his own lips - a giddiness rising through his chest again, in spite of what he knew was coming. “You’ll notice I did manage to leave a few droids behind, as promised.”
Fewer by the moment, Cody reflected, because a trio of Destroyers on the ridge over their heads had just winked out of existence, sending a fresh shower of shrapnel cascading down the cliffs.
“Very generous of you,” Cody allowed.
“You’re quite sure you’re alright, Cody?” Obi-Wan called out, turning back toward him as Boga started to wheel away, following the momentum of the memory.
“Of course, sir,” Cody lied. “You go ahead. We’ll be right behind you.”
He could already hear the insistent buzzing at his wrist as Boga carried Obi-Wan in graceful leaps around the edges of the sinkhole. For a moment, he allowed himself to hope the machine would wipe this memory before he had a chance to answer the comm. Even now the troopers at the corners of his vision had started to evaporate: Trigger, Wooley, Flatfoot, Crys. Maybe there would be no one left to hear the orders when the call came through.
But of course, Utapau was a wound that wouldn’t close - not even while it was being burned out of him.
Cody flicked on the holo, felt the tendrils of the Sith voice wrapping onto his mind like the sting of a Hydroid Medusa: a crackle of pain, a buzz of static, and then numbness.
“Commander Cody, the time has come. Execute Order 66.”
Eat bantha shit, Cody spat back, not entirely sure whether the curse was directed at Palpatine or at the version of himself that was already giving the affirmative - the thing in his body, made up of whatever had kept moving after that hooded Sith bastard had put a stealth carbine to Cody’s will, set it to stun, and squeezed the trigger.
“Blast him,” the voice in his throat barked out, and the cannon shot arced over his head, colliding with the rock wall and knocking the varactyl loose.
Cody would have made himself watch what followed - what had he done since then to earn the right to look away? - but as it turned out, he had no choice. There was a sharp prod at the base of his neck, and then a full-body tug - like he was being pulled out of his own body atom by atom - and then he was off the ground, hauled after the anchor of Obi-Wan’s falling form.
He slid across the collapsing cliff face and plunged through a hail of stone, his arms wheeling for balance until he broke the surface of the tide pool below. As the saltwater closed over his head, he fought the urge to suck in a belated gasp, his legs kicking out automatically to propel him toward the place where Obi-Wan must have gone under nearby.
But the moment Cody started moving, he felt the flow of gravity swirl around him, and suddenly he was emerging into the air again: not into Utapau’s mix of machine oil and sea minerals but into the frigid bite of a cold-weather field tent, where the wet curls on his forehead crisped almost immediately with a fresh layer of frost.
“General,” Cody called out, and he tried to lurch back to where his mind told him Obi-Wan should have been, only to feel a hand plant itself against his chest, pressing him back against the bed roll underneath him.
“Easy, Commander,” Obi-Wan murmured, warmth spreading out from his fingers and seeping through Cody’s torso. “I’m right here.”
Cody slumped back, the tension in his limbs giving way to a convulsive shudder that was only partially due to the cold.
“Where are we?” Cody asked, the words sounding thick and slow in his ears.
“I was able to set up an emergency shelter after fishing you out of the river,” Obi-Wan said. “Your body temperature was very low, but you insisted I take care of Tweret first.”
At the mention of Tweret’s name, the scene around him finally settled into place: the machine had taken him to Kijimi.
It had been one of their first intelligence-gathering missions together. Not long after Obi-Wan had been assigned to the 212th, the Jedi Council had asked him to verify a tip about a Separatist enclave somewhere outside Kijimi City. Several members of a nearby fishing village had gone missing over the preceding days, and the local elders were worried that the Separatists were taking hostages in preparation for a larger assault.
Cody had presented his General with a range of personnel options for carrying out the mission, and Obi-Wan had selected the final option on the list: a bare-bones party including himself, Cody, and a pilot to cover landing and extraction. Cody had been a little surprised by the choice, but satisfied at the sign of Obi-Wan’s confidence in him.
And though he wasn’t particularly proud of it, it was possible that he’d also felt a kind of nervy elation as he triple-checked his kit before they left the Negotiator. It would be his first time visiting a new planet with hardly anyone else’s movements to coordinate but his own.
A day later - as he was fleeing across the tundra with his General and the recovered villagers neither of them had been able to leave behind despite the recon-only parameters of their mission - Cody had found himself wondering whether that flutter of nerves had actually been one of his Jedi’s bad-feelings-about-this. Because they had still been hours away from the extraction point when they’d hit a partially frozen river.
Cody had started scanning the relative depth of the ice with the HUD in his bucket to try to find the best path across, and Obi-Wan had half-climbed, half-leapt to the top of a nearby ridge to be sure there was no other way to intercept their pilot.
That’s where the General had been - scouting high above their heads - when there was a sharp crack and a muffled shout, and a child who’d wandered out onto the river dropped through the ice and slipped under the water below.
“I’m going in,” Cody had called out, only to still in horror when he heard the same words echo back from Obi-Wan on the other end of the comm. “Negative, sir,” Cody barked. “I’m in position.”
And even in those early days of the war, he’d sized Obi-Wan up well enough to know that if he wanted to stop his General from doing something stunningly un-self-preserving, he had no time to waste on further arguments.
So Cody had thrown off his pack, dropped his Deecee, and plunged through the fresh hole in the ice, already diving toward the shadowy form ahead of him. He’d wrapped his arms around the child’s waist and pulled out his ascension cable to anchor them against the current. A few moments later a large chunk of ice had been ripped away over their heads, and Cody’s last memory had been of gripping the edge closest to the bank, heaving Tweret up and out of the water, feeling the solid surface give way again under his fingers.
“The kid,” Cody said abruptly, his body making another aborted lunge off the ground.
“Safe and warm,” Obi-Wan assured him, moving aside so that Cody could see the other side of the tent, where Tweret’s head was just visible, tucked against one of the other villagers’ thighs. “You got her clear, and I was able to pull you out before you went too far back under.”
He paused, his brows pinching together.
“I hope it goes without saying that I have complete confidence in your decisions in the field, Commander,” he said finally, “but I would hate for you to take risks unnecessarily. Jedi have a great tolerance for extreme temperatures, and we can go without breathing for much longer than the average lifeform. I was quite prepared to retrieve Tweret myself.”
“You were on top of a cliff, sir,” Cody pointed out flatly. “The impact alone could have killed you.”
“I would have survived a dive at that distance,” Obi-Wan insisted, and when Cody raised an eyebrow, he added, “almost certainly.”
Cody scowled, which, for reasons that would take at least a year to understand, made Obi-Wan smile with delight.
“I’m much more durable than I look, Cody. I assure you.”
I know that, Cody thought, and for a moment the idea seemed to catch and clot somewhere in his head, a thick throb of pressure building up around his temple.
“Since you spared me the plunge, will you allow me to provide you with some extra warmth?” Obi-Wan asked, his voice drawing Cody’s attention back to the tent. And Cody’s body had been too cold, then, to produce a flush at the suggestion, but Obi-Wan must have been able to sense some of his feelings anyway, because he reached out to let his hand hover a careful distance away from Cody’s arm. “With the Force,” he explained.
“It won’t wear you out?” Cody asked.
Obi-Wan smiled again, and Cody wondered if he’d started to forget, later in the war, that his General’s face had ever looked quite so soft and open.
“On the contrary, Commander,” Obi-Wan replied. “It would do me a world of good.”
So Cody nodded, and a moment later he sucked in a small breath as Obi-Wan stretched his fingers toward Cody’s wrist, close enough that Cody almost imagined he could feel them brush against the hem of his sleeve.
Warmth radiated up from Cody’s hands toward his shoulders, and as it spread, the edges of the memory seemed to swell and soften, contours bleeding into each other like polystarch flour in water.
His muscles loosened with the heat as well, and Cody let them, leaning his head back on the bedroll as the folds of Obi-Wan’s cloak billowed and baked into the fabric of the tent.
Would some part of him be aware he’d lost this moment, Cody wondered, or would this be the last time his palm would itch with the urge to reach out, to feel his General’s warmth on his skin as well as under it?
“Do you think there’s any logic to what they wipe?” he asked, trying to blink Obi-Wan’s face back into focus.
The rest of the scene around them was rapidly melting into a pool of confused colors: the group of sleeping villagers, the lantern swinging gently from the peak of the tent, the stack of Cody’s armor, which Obi-Wan must have removed after carrying him inside.
“Because if they had to wipe a mission,” Cody continued, “I could have parted with that tenday we spent slogging through the swamps on Jagomir right after the bog ticks hatched. I was still finding those little karkers in my armor a full standard month later.”
The temperature was starting to become a little uncomfortable now, and the pressure at his temple and the base of his skull was prickling back to life, tugging Cody’s mind through the thick hues in the air and deeper into the heat.
“Cody,” Obi-Wan murmured, just as the last, dissolving seams of the tent ran together to produce a kind of halo around his head, “are you with me?”
Cody blinked again, harder this time, because something about Obi-Wan’s expression was shifting as well: the hair on his forehead was clumping into damp waves, his jaw blooming purple with the beginnings a fist-sized bruise.
“What the kriff happened to your face?” Cody asked.
Obi-Wan snorted - a sharp eruption of relief.
“You must have hit your head harder than I thought,” he observed, pressing his fingers gently to Cody’s jaw so he could tilt his head back and forth.
Cody let his gaze swivel across their new surroundings, taking stock of the closely packed buildings, the heavy air, the smell of cooked meat and sweat and animal life in advanced states of decay.
They were crouching in an alleyway, Cody’s back pressed against the corrugated duraplast of a building that seemed to be responsible for at least two of the three smells. Obi-Wan wasn’t wearing his robes or tunics, Cody realized, and Cody was out of his armor - one hand curled around a blaster that definitely wasn’t his.
“The arms deal,” he said. “On Morak. Kark. We were almost out, and then the Rodian made us.”
“Indeed she did,” Obi-Wan confirmed. “Things went sideways rather quickly after that, I’m afraid. Clip isn’t going to be happy with me for letting you get tossed around again so soon after that rockslide on Florrum.”
“You stopped me from getting turned into gornt meat, sir,” Cody pointed out, because the details of the fight were filtering back to him like slides in a flash module - the Shydopp who had tossed a concussion grenade at Cody’s feet, the grimace on Obi-Wan’s face as he contained enough of the blast to send Cody flying into a wall instead of being shredded on the spot - and so he knew Clip had nothing to do with the pinched lines around Obi-Wan’s eyes.
“Well, you shot the bounty hunter who was trying to put a vibroblade in my back,” Obi-Wan replied, “so I suppose we’re even.”
He gave Cody a tight smile before dropping his hands from Cody’s face, apparently satisfied with the results of his exam for the time being, and Cody ignored the way his jaw ached where his General's fingers had been.
“Why didn’t the mind trick work, sir?” he asked, turning his attention to a problem that was slightly less intractable.
Their goal had been to keep this a non-combat op, he remembered. The arms deal had been intended merely as a way in: a foothold with the local pirates and a chance to gather hints about why half the rhydonium the mines should have been producing wasn’t actually ending up in GAR hands. But when a Rodian door guard had walked in with a message for the pirates’ lead negotiator and clocked them through their disguises, Obi-Wan’s attempts to assuage her suspicions had made her reach for her blaster even faster.
Obi-Wan hummed, his eyes going slightly distant, as if he were looking both at Cody and through him.
“Force suggestion is a bit like placing a branch in the flow of a stream,” he explained. “How easy it is to divert someone’s thoughts depends on the strength of the original current - and how closely the suggestion aligns with the direction of its flow. Sometimes it’s not possible to change the course without violence.”
Cody frowned, something about that explanation snagging against his mind, but as soon as he tried to concentrate on the idea he felt another thin, serrated jab at the base of his skull. The sensation scattered hot pinpricks across the nerves behind his eyes, and when he looked around the alley again, it was already in the process of being scraped away - the pebbling and pockmarks of the buildings sheering off to leave nothing but flat, blank surfaces in their place.
Cody pressed into the grooves of metal behind him, trying to ground himself long enough to chase down the branch in his thoughts that had started the collapse.
“So what that means,” he tried, “is that whether it’s harder to make someone forget or to remember would depend on what they wanted more.”
Obi-Wan’s gaze fixed on him again, suddenly sharp and intent.
“What did you say?” he asked.
“You could use the Force to encourage someone to forget something, or not to notice it,” Cody attempted to explain, gritting his teeth against the pressure in his head, the feeling of the wall going smooth under his shoulder blades. “But you could also use it to help someone remember something. Depending on what they wanted.”
“Cody,” Obi-Wan breathed, and it was a shame the details of their expressions were flattening along with the gravel beneath their feet, because for a moment there had been a flash in his General’s eyes that Cody was sure hadn’t been there the first time. “Do you want to remember?”
“General?” Cody asked, the last syllable turning into a gasp as a bolt of pain blistered down his spine, forcing him to squeeze his eyes shut.
“Do you want to remember what happened in the alley?” Obi-Wan repeated, a new urgency in his voice that Cody supposed must be coming from his own sense of panic - his attempt to resist the reconditioning. “Do you want to remember why we’re here?”
But even if Obi-Wan had really been there, there would have been no time for Cody to answer, because just then something slid out of his mind with a searing pinch, and when he opened his eyes again, they were staring up at the uninterrupted gray planes of the Tranquility’s medical holding cells, and all environmental scans were well within acceptable parameters.
“CC-2224,” Piett addressed him, “do you remember why you’re here?”
“Good soldiers follow orders, sir,” CC-2224 replied, the sounds as even and measured as the hum of a ship’s engine.