Chapter Text
When Obi-Wan comes back to himself, a slow return to consciousness that isn’t quite full wakefulness, he immediately wants to go back to wherever he was before. It was dark and cool there, and there wasn’t so much pain.
There is pain now.
When his eyes crack open it feels like a knife is being rammed through his skull. He tries to ride it out the way he always has in the past, to blink his eyes open and reach for the steadying embrace of the Force.
It doesn’t work. His vision remains blurry. He can just about make out the tragically familiar shapes of the Jedi Temple’s medical wing, but the outlines are still just fuzzy shadows to him.
When he tries to shift and move his body, it gets worse.
Memory comes back to him in shards.
Collecting the broken pieces of himself proves to be a much more difficult problem.
It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. This was unforeseen, unplanned, unexpectedly insurmountable, and Cody is not coping well.
He has always been a soldier, always appreciated structure and order, always flourished in the controlled chaos of the battlefield. He was like this even as a shiny, so much so that he was marked out early for special attention and training.
He even eventually caught the eye of the Prime, earned a distinction within the other man’s cynical worldview that was then gradually extended to his brothers.
He thinks, when he chooses to think about it, that it was partially those early interactions with clones like Cody, clones who were all capable, thoughtful, and unique in their own ways, that first pushed Jango Fett into believing that there could be more.
That they could all be more – the clones and the lost Haat’ade. Perhaps even Fett himself.
The True Mandalorians were no longer the famed warrior defenders, but instead bounty hunters and trainers and exiles without a home of their own since the Kryze regime took over.
But they would perhaps rise and answer the call of the Manda’lor. Perhaps they might return to liberate a world oppressed by hut’uun traitors.
The clones were slaves made to serve a corrupt Republic. Not quite children, not quite droids, not quite people. Just some strange, disposable thing in between.
But they had wills and hearts and minds of their own, more and more apparent with each passing day.
The truth eventually became obvious to Jango Fett.
It took a long time – too long, Cody will admit to himself. To be honest, he wasn’t even sure it was happening until they discovered, quite by accident and not too long before the war started, the presence of behavioral control chips in their heads.
The Prime had been incandescent with rage when he saw the bloodied chip that had been removed from Heavy’s head by Kix after a battle simulation ended poorly and forced the clone to get a brain scan.
Cody could remember watching Fett as he and Kix told him, certain that coming to Fett with this was the wrong call, that he would dismiss it. But he didn’t.
Instead, Fett’s eyes grew dark and distant with memory, and a slightly wounded huff escaped him. That noise and no other, before the fury set in.
It was only the inescapable practicalities of their situation that kept Fett from slaying the Kaminoans outright. However, his reaction did earn some trust from the Vode. Trust the Prime had not yet betrayed.
When Cody thinks back, he can see that Jango Fett changed then. He was forced in that moment to confront what he had done, to see the clones not as flesh droids but as people. As Vode, enslaved. As beings not so different from his precious Boba. Not so different from himself, and the child he once was.
Yes, Fett changed, slowly but profoundly, during his time training the clone army. He responded to them and they, in turn, started to come into their own.
But Cody knows that it wasn’t until the Jedi general came to Kamino that Jango Fett truly started to become the man he is now.
Obi-Wan Kenobi is what changed everything for everyone. He is – what was the term General Windu used? – a shatterpoint.
Obi-Wan found the Vode and saw them instantly for what they really were. The clones who saw him that day he arrived could read it in the flicker of his gaze, the tightness around the mouth, his tone when he questioned the methods used in their training.
When he spoke, he spoke to them, and those ocean-colored eyes saw them. He made them visible… made them real.
His coming triggered the conflict that got the army away from Kamino. And when the army came to rescue the trapped Jedi on Geonosis, Obi-Wan slipped so well into his role as general, knowing immediately exactly what needed to be done and leading the charge like a true soldier.
It was only later that Cody learned about Obi-Wan’s reluctance to lead in a military capacity and where those feelings came from.
And the Jango Fett who initially fought against Kenobi, who survived the Geonosis conflict, who barely escaped that fight with Boba in tow, was not the same man from before. When he contacted Cody again using their secret backchannel, something was different.
Cody’s life changed then as well. During that call he was the one gifted with that greatest of all responsibilities – the care and defense of Obi-Wan Kenobi, his general and the future Be’alor of Mandalore.
Yes. That was a gift, a special job entrusted to him. It was the most important charge given to him by Jango Fett, the rising Mand’alor, the failed father and leader trying to make it right.
Cody would have taken on the task of protecting Obi-Wan anyway. Even if the Jedi master had not been marked out for a particular destiny, even if Jango Fett hadn’t given him his orders, Cody firmly believes he would have been drawn to Obi-Wan, would have cared for him, would have always seen him as a guiding light.
There is something in Cody, something encoded in his DNA, perhaps, that ties him to this man. Or maybe it was simply something in Obi-Wan that made them all change for him. Cody never expected his general to become his friend, but it happened anyway.
Fett called Obi-Wan, in the old language, dral’runi. Be’alor.
Belonging to the Mand’alor and the people both.
Made to be a partner and a leader, the bridge between the ruler and the ruled. Made to be cherished and protected. Made to be the warm heart beating inside the cool beskar armor. Made to complete them all.
And when he could, when the current war had accomplished what it was supposed to, Cody was the one tasked with bringing Obi-Wan home. Home to his soulmate, his throne, his people. Beloved and secure.
Obi-Wan would perhaps be resistant at first – it’s a big change, after all, that transition from being a journeyman warrior and mystic to a head of state. Cody is no fool, and he knows Obi-Wan will be inclined to see such adoration as the bars of a gilded cage.
He is confident in his general’s ability to adapt, however. They would all learn how to be themselves in that new, promised place.
All Cody had to do was keep the jedi master safe in the meantime and then carry him the rest of the way when the time was right. As reckless and self-sacrificing as Kenobi could be, it was no hardship.
Cody and the whole 212th soon grew to admire and love the general deeply. It was impossible to do otherwise when the man was competent, funny, intelligent, and kind, when he remembered every clone’s chosen name, their face, their fears. When he took care of them so well. When he laughed and his whole aura went bright like a star. When his face grew gray and drawn with deep inner pain each time he lost even one of them in battle.
Cody had every confidence they could keep the jedi alive and in one piece, even if the man did have trouble holding on to his lightsaber. Even those who weren’t aware of Fett’s long-term plans would have happily sacrificed anything to protect their general.
And so… it wasn’t supposed to be like this.
They were on Coruscant when it happened, for kriff’s sake. Not on the frontlines, not on some barren, isolated moon, not in the heat of battle, not in a firefight.
They were home, or at least a place Obi-Wan would have considered home-like, right in the city center at the heart of the Republic. Somewhere safe and far away from the fighting and danger.
Obi-Wan was speaking longingly of Dex’s nerf burgers, promising to treat Cody to one as soon as they could sneak away from this tedious political display Chancellor Palpatine insisted they participate in. They were stage-dressing, and the whole event was propaganda, nothing more onerous than marching in formation to satisfy some civilians and politicians. Pointless, but safe.
Surely, here of all places, they were safe.
And then, as the event was ending, as General Kenobi was striding across the garishly decorated square, alone and unprotected… he paused, sensing something…
The one responsible was, allegedly, a Separatist assassin trying to kill the Chancellor. A bumbling amateur with a shoddily constructed bomb and a terrible sense of timing who spectacularly missed their target.
Cody doesn’t know any of the details for sure because he isn’t allowed to be part of the investigation that follows. He can’t really bring himself to care.
He should care, maybe, about who is responsible. He should crave vengeance. He imagines it will matter to others. Someone like Alpha-17 would care.
The Mand’alor would care… probably will care when Cody tells him. Mando'ad draar digu.
Cody thinks maybe this makes him a failure, the fact that retribution is not what most preoccupies him now. But it doesn’t matter. Who did it and why doesn’t matter.
What matters is…
Maybe he really is just a mindless, soulless flesh droid. He couldn’t do the one thing he was tasked with doing, and he doesn’t care about justice or vengeance now.
All he cares about is getting to his general.
All he can see when he closes his eyes is the image of Obi-Wan’s body, burned and bruised and bloody, being tossed in the air like a child’s doll before landing, hard, on the debris-covered ground.
It’s bad. It could always be worse, of course, and Obi-Wan knows that. He’s lived with Anakin all these years, after all. Frankly their entire lineage is famously disaster-prone.
It is also important to remember that he got the full brunt of the explosion, and that he was the only one to do so.
This is a good thing.
The others, Cody and Anakin and Ahsoka and the rest, are mostly fine. Bumps and bruises, according to Healer Che. Obi-Wan was the only one walking across the center of Rapi Square when it happened, having volunteered for an inconsequential task that placed him in the wrong place at the wrong time.
It is unfortunate it happened at all, but if it had to be then he is grateful to be able to take that burden for them, his dear ones, his family. It is, in a way, lucky that he was able to catch the brunt of it.
Good luck, bad luck… no such thing as luck.
It is good that he was the only one seriously hurt. But still… this is bad.
When he comes out of his coma he is in great pain. His left leg is barely functional, and his vision still won’t clear fully no matter what he tries. Even with Healer Che’s considerable efforts using both the most advanced medical technology the Temple has and her skills with the Force, the damage is obvious.
Che reminds him repeatedly when he articulates a slight – slight! – frustration at the pace of his recovery that he has been in a medically-induced coma in the Temple’s intensive care unit for weeks. He can’t be expected to do cartwheels on the very first day… or the second… or the tenth.
Obi-Wan reminds her that he has been in worse situations on the battlefield. He has survived worse explosions and field-dressed worse injuries on his own body.
Che is unimpressed, of course.
His vision comes and goes, never fully clear or fully dark, and Healer Che says something about ‘hysterical blindness’. Obi-Wan wants to laugh at this but doesn’t. He is not inclined to think his sporadic vision problems are purely psychological when one considers how physically damaged his head is at the moment.
The brain injury is the worst of it. At first, they think it is a concussion, a severe one, but it takes longer to improve than it should, and as the scans come back the medical team starts to think it might be something more serious.
It is the most painful injury, the most difficult to help and heal, and worst of all, it prevents him from fully accessing the Force.
“Think of it like a frequency,” Bant Eerin tells him when she comes to visit, softening the edges of the no-nonsense Che with her insights. Obi-Wan is very, very happy to see her, but unfortunately despite her skills she is also limited in what she can prescribe.
“Your injury jarred something inside,” Bant says. “You are still resonating with the Force, just as you have always done. It’s just not in a way that is comfortable or clear to you right now.”
Obi-Wan throws Bant an unimpressed glare before turning back to his therapy exercises for his leg. They are having him walk in a range of particular ways and it’s more difficult than it should be.
“Ah, yes,” she smiles sheepishly, apologetic. “More than uncomfortable.”
It’s like someone is drilling into his skull. Calling it 'a catastrophic amount of pain' would be closer to the truth. Even so, he shakes his head slightly as if discarding what she is saying and not saying.
“Regardless…,” he says, voice cracking slightly with the effort of holding himself together. He takes another step to the side and winces when Che taps his knee, reminding him to lift it further up.
“Regardless, I feel like the Force should be aiding more in my overall recovery, even if it… is uncomfortable to access. I can’t feel it as I used to, but surely…”
Bant sighs as he trails off and looks over to Che, whose brow is furrowed.
“We have every confidence you will heal fully, Obi-Wan,” Che says finally, voice firm but also uncharacteristically gentle. She guides his leg into the position she wants it and points him towards his chair. “But it’s going to take time.”
Yes, it could be worse. But it also could be much better.
And the fact of the matter is that he simply does not have time to waste. There are people counting on him. They are at war. He is a general…
“Well, there must be something,” Obi-Wan murmurs, half to himself. “Even if it is a temporary or partial fix. I’m needed on the front. The 212th will need to set out soon…”
The silence is so loud that, even without the Force to inform him, Obi-Wan can feel the weight of things unsaid. He looks up quizzically.
“What is it?” he asks Bant.
“Obi…”
Obi-Wan puffs out a breath of air as Master Che gently but firmly pushes his back into his seat. Bad news, then.
“Obi-Wan,” Bant says gently. “The 212th have already been redeployed. They were sent out a week ago. They are under the command of General Kalen until further notice. Anakin is also gone. It… Chancellor Palpatine felt that it was prudent to send the 212th and 501st back out as soon as possible, since we had no… no timeline in place for your recovery.”
Obi-Wan doesn’t answer.
“Obi? Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”
Oh, yes. Obi-Wan understands.
It may take his wounded mind a bit longer than usual to piece together a complete picture, but even so, this thing he’s feeling now, this truth… he understands it. It is familiar to him. An acquaintance of long standing.
Pain, confusion, heartbreak.
Enduring slavery on Bandomeer, being abandoned on Melida/Daan, Qui-Gon choosing Anakin as his padawan, Qui-Gon dying because Ob-Wan was too slow to reach him in time, Anakin choosing… well, almost anything besides listening to his replacement teacher.
Somewhere in the shadows of his mind, he sees a pair of warm brown eyes going sharp and dark and possessive before slipping away from him. Turning away, as Obi-Wan had turned away, two people pulled in different directions and unable to do more, to be more than just a passing thing.
The cold weight of silence. Absence.
The feeling of being inadequate. The feeling of being abandoned because of that inadequacy.
“They, ah…” he starts, and then bites his tongue viciously to stop the rest from coming out.
They didn’t say goodbye. Cody. Anakin. Waxer and Boil. Ahsoka. Rex. Everyone, all of them. They didn’t even say goodbye.
It’s a child’s lament, a demand for fairness in a galaxy that is brutally unfair. It is pointless, useless, but… he feels it. It hurts worse, somehow, than any of his other injuries.
Qui-Gon. Cerasi. Anakin. Cody.
Jango Fett.
Jango isn’t here. He left. Turned around and walked away and you haven’t seen him since. He offered you something, something nebulous and frightening and tempting, and you said no, and he left. Not unexpected.
But he didn’t say goodbye.
No.
No, that… that was months ago. Jango Fett isn’t part of this new thing, this recent sorrow. Jango’s disappearance is an old hurt, not… not relevant.
And now, even now…
Of course, they couldn’t have said goodbye. He was in a coma, ill, and they are at war. It’s ridiculous to get upset. Everyone has their duties.
Is that not the reason he gave to Fett and to himself when Fett offered him a way out and he didn’t take it? No point avoiding it now – Jango Fett offered him a different life and Obi-Wan denied him.
Duty before desire. A path chosen and not to be questioned.
So, there is no point being hurt about a missed goodbye.
He forces the old, familiar mask back on his face. From what he can discern from Bant’s expression it isn’t as reassuring as he’d like.
“Just as well,” he says with admirable steadiness, the words clipped and precise. “Master Kalen is very competent. I’m sure this will suit everyone much better.”
For all his supposed success as the Sith Killer and then a Jedi knight and master and then a GAR general, Obi-Wan has always felt, deep down, very much like the same lonely, failed initiate he was as a child.
And now, with his blurred vision and his terrible headaches and his fractured thoughts and his pronounced limp and his lack of control over the Force… no.
No. He’d be a fool to think anyone would want someone like him to lead.
It is a kiss. It is their first kiss – their only kiss – and it is unexpected.
What were they talking about in the moments before the kiss? Obi-Wan can’t remember the specifics now.
Jango Fett is a mystery to him in more ways than one. The template for the clone army, a hired gun for the Separatist leader…
But then, after Geonosis, unprompted and against all odds, he reaches out to the Jedi, his old enemy.
No… he doesn’t reach out to the Jedi. Not to the Order.
He reaches out to Obi-Wan Kenobi.
At first Obi-Wan thinks that perhaps Jango feels that he owes Obi-Wan for checking his unconscious and wounded body for a pulse on Geonosis, for dragging him to where Boba was hiding, for sharply telling his son to get Jango to their ship and leave as quickly as possible.
Fett likely wouldn’t see that as an act of grace. He would want to pay off the perceived debt quickly, even if it is a debt owed to a hated jetii, and even though Obi-Wan tells himself that he did what he did for no other reason than to protect a child from seeing his father murdered in front of him.
On that day of senseless death and the loss of so many of Obi-Wan’s Jedi family, Jango Fett’s destruction would have been just another regret, a pointless and empty retaliation. And Obi-Wan is not unaware of what the Jedi owe Fett, after Galidraan. It was a small enough act of mercy at the time.
Certainly, the thought that Obi-Wan could leverage that against Fett never crossed his mind.
Or perhaps it’s an almost-sentimental choice on Fett’s part, picking Obi-Wan as a liaison, an enemy turned ally, their initial battle of words and their subsequent fight in the rain like a dance the bounty hunter wishes to continue. Jango doesn’t strike Obi-Wan as a sentimental man, though.
Still, the bounty hunter has hidden depths.
There are tentative exchanges. Initially, crucial information is passed along at a key moment in exchange, ostensibly, for safe passage through a Republic-controlled territory. Obi-Wan is sure Jango doesn’t need what he gets from Obi-Wan, but the jedi takes a risk and uses the gifted intel anyway and is rewarded when many lives are saved.
The next time Jango gets in contact there is more. The conversation lasts slightly longer this time. Obi-Wan, who has been reliably informed that he flirts as easily as he breathes, makes a humorous quip and receives a positive response in return. Jango’s intel is given not in a one-for-one exchange, but as a goodwill gesture.
Obi-Wan returns the favor later with a timely warning of his own, some pertinent information picked up by accident from Hondo Onaka.
It evolves from there.
Obi-Wan sees more of the man over time. It is not sentimentality that drives the bounty hunter, but perhaps it is something closely related.
Jango Fett not a good man, but Obi-Wan does not see him as a villain either. He is a lost and lonely prince, a twice-orphaned child of tragedy, travelling around the stars with his son and trying to outrun his past even as his single greatest sin threatens to tear the galaxy apart. His decisions are more emotion-based than one would expect, perhaps even more than Fett himself realizes.
There is the language of personal grievance and revenge in all that he does. He kills without mercy, destroys without regret, like a force of nature, detached and cruel.
Because he wanted vengeance and a son he set an unspeakable atrocity in motion, but Obi-Wan reflects that the Jedi and the Republic are hardly blameless here.
Jango Fett is not the first, and he will not be the last, to start a fire that spread beyond his control.
And in Jango are also more admirable echoes of profound grief, boundless loyalty, a survivor’s determination. Something that is not quite hope but might become that with a little gentle encouragement.
Obi-Wan can see something worthy in this. He can’t even fully despise Jango for that one terrible sin. He understands why he did it, and in becoming the clone template Jango also gave Obi-Wan an unexpected gift.
Cody and the 212th. A family. A Vode.
Brief com calls become longer conversations, become face-to-face meetings, become shared wartime experiences, become revelations about past traumas, fragile dreams, indestructible hope.
There is attraction there, certainly, on both sides.
One night after a battle where Obi-Wan is nearly killed, the bounty hunter comes to him, supposedly to exchange information. Jango enters his temporary quarters and Obi-Wan barely gets a word out before Jango picks him up and slams him against the stone wall, armored body pressed against his, gloved hand reaching between them and freeing the jedi’s cock from his trousers. Though Obi-Wan is startled by the action, he is not terribly surprised, or at all displeased.
Fett kriffs him against the wall, rough and fast and wonderful.
Obi-Wan is already shaking from leftover adrenaline and this, fierce and purely physical, is just what he needs to find his feet again. Fett keeps his helmet on the whole time, and then he leaves afterwards without ceremony.
Obi-Wan doesn’t read too much into it. He’s not a virgin, and Fett is very attractive, and they’ve both lived as warriors in a dangerous galaxy long enough to recognize the transience of things and the difficulties of maintaining long-term relationships. There is little enough risk of attachment, he thinks. Obi-Wan doesn’t expect more from Jango, and he assumes Jango feels the same.
Even when the physical encounters are repeated sporadically, stolen time between battles and campaigns, Obi-Wan has no reason to doubt his initial evaluation. They are an unlikely pair, but Jango makes out well enough - he receives information, access to his acquaintances among the clones, and time with Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan is not so self-critical that he doesn't know he's attractive, and he can also see that for whatever reason Jango is willing to work through his past and his hatreds if it means he can stay in contact. Jango has strong shields, but still... Obi-Wan senses no underlying hostility towards him.
When he and Jango argue (and they do argue, fiercely, mostly about each other’s stupid choices) the past rears its head like a krayt dragon – Jaster Mereel, Galidraan and the lost Haat’ade, Jango Fett the Jedi Killer, Satine Kryze and the pacifist regime, Death Watch, the creation of the clone army. It all threatens to tear them apart.
In time, however, even those seeming-mountains shift, turn into pebbles gently swept aside by the river current. Weaponizing those things against each other is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die, and when the swords are thrown down and the combatants still remain afterwards, bloody but unbowed, the act of causing pain starts to lose its appeal.
Those old hurts become softer, purged in the process of grieving. And he and Jango are drawn to each other, have felt a gravitational pull ever since their first meeting. Attraction, even then, Obi-Wan assumes.
Fett never comes down on one side or another in the war – he is very careful to never commit, takes jobs for both sides and stays carefully neutral in conversation – but in reality he is practically an on-call advisor for the GAR. For Obi-Wan.
And Obi-Wan isn’t a fool. He doesn’t allow himself to consider Jango Fett as anything other than what he is, but he also isn’t blind to the potential between them for something more than just physical.
So, he isn’t exactly surprised that the kiss itself happens.
Fett has come to him to tell him something, give him insight and intel. He came in person, landed Slave I half a click away and materialized at the jedi’s side. Obi-Wan, smiling, waves to a now-teenaged Boba as the young man grins back and slinks off into the night to catch up with his favorite clone brothers and cause mischief.
Obi-Wan and Jango go into his field office, set up in a corner of a battlefield campsite. Jango removes his helmet and Obi-Wan is treated to those warm brown eyes and that sly smirk.
They talk.
He isn’t surprised that the kiss happens. He’s rather surprised by the kind of kiss it is. That is the unexpected thing.
It is all-consuming, and yet… gentle. More tender than Obi-Wan would have thought Jango capable of being. It is almost as if the bounty hunter sees Obi-Wan as something precious to hold, rather than what the jedi knows he must be to a man like Fett – a prize to be won, a thing to be conquered.
It is their first kiss. For all their previous encounters, they’ve never kissed like this before.
(Obi-Wan refuses to count the Keldabe kisses Fett sometimes bestows when they are both spent and panting, pressed up against each other. That is simply an unintentional brush of the forehead, nothing more.)
“Obi-Wan.”
It is quite a skill, the man’s ability to place so much meaning into a simple name, in three innocent syllables. So much spoken and unspoken, said as though Obi-Wan himself understands everything and nothing.
A hand lands lightly on Obi-Wan’s wrist, and when did Jango take his gloves off? The touch of skin on skin is electric, and Obi-Wan allows himself to briefly revel in the feeling of Jango in the Force, that signature that is his and only his. Fierce and wild and warm, like the first windy whispers of a sandstorm.
“You could, you know,” Jango says, pressing his forehead to Obi-Wan’s.
(A kiss, a Keldabe kiss, and Obi-Wan can't lie and say it's not.)
“Could?” Obi-Wan licks his lips, chasing the taste of Jango, and blinks open eyes he hadn’t realized he’d closed.
Jango smiles.
This is his problem, Obi-Wan thinks. Jango Fett doesn’t lie, has never actually lied to him… but he doesn’t tell the truth, either.
It is just like that first day, that day on Kamino. ‘Do you like your army?’ indeed. That not-there smile, those sharp eyes, tilting his head in invitation, like there was a big cosmic joke and only he and Obi-Wan were in on it.
Like they were both playing predetermined roles, acting out scripted lines, and none of it was real, and they both knew it.
There are things the man will not say out loud but still expects Obi-Wan to understand.
And worse, so much worse, is that Obi-Wan does understand. He doesn’t want to, but he does.
He thought he had successfully buried that part of himself. He thought that the double-edged knife of living with Qui-Gon and Anakin, of being the outsider craving acceptance, of knowing and knowing and never being able to say it… he thought he had learned that lesson. He thought that experience had cut that strange, secret thing out of his soul for good.
Obi-Wan feels as though he is being driven slowly off a cliff, or perhaps is being coaxed into jumping off. But he can’t see the details, the ledge, the bottom. And even if he could…
Even if he could…
“I should go,” he says, tone polite as he draws in on himself, pulls away, steps back. “We’re shipping out again in a few hours. Cody will be buried under paperwork… I should rescue him.”
The grip on his wrist tightens, the familiar brown eyes go from playful to dark, possessive.
“Obi-Wan,” Jango murmurs. “Don’t…”
“I’m sorry, Jango,” Obi-Wan says, and his use of the man’s first name is rare enough that it stops the bounty hunter in his tracks.
Or maybe it is the apology, ostensibly a polite dismissal as Obi-Wan disentangles himself from this man, this distraction, and returns to his duties.
But it is clear that the “sorry” is about more than that. Because they were enemies, and then they were reluctant allies, and then they were almost friends, troubled by the promise of something hot and sharp and unspoken between them.
And because Obi-Wan feels, deep in his gut, in that hidden place, something... that secret that has waited for him all of his life...
And now they stand on the edge of a blade.
But it was not meant to be.
It cannot be, Obi-Wan reminds himself.
But still…
“I am…I am…sorry.”
Jango doesn’t release Obi-Wan’s wrist, not right away. His hand tightens again, almost imperceptibly, a slight tremble in it as if the bounty hunter is grappling with some strong emotion. His eyes grow impossibly darker, and Obi-Wan feels a ripple in the Force, a rare crack in Fett’s mental walls.
Anger. Need. Determination. Frustration.
Pain.
And, oh… Obi-Wan regrets that. He is not going to change his mind, he is bound by duty, but he never… he knows this man. He understands him more than he wants to.
And he regrets causing Jango Fett pain. The man has had too much hurt in his life already.
Then Jango releases him, from his physical grip, from the weight of his gaze. The walls go back up, high, impossible to leap over, and the bounty hunter slides his helmet back on, hiding his face from view. He turns without a word and leaves.
It will be many months before they see each other again.
They won’t let Cody in to see Obi-Wan. At first it is because Obi-Wan is in critical condition and remains that way for a very long time.
Then it is because there are other things to do, because Cody is Marshal Commander, because his life and his choices are not his own, because he serves at the pleasure of the Republic.
They call him away. They redeploy him and the 212th with indecent haste.
They assign them a new general.
Insanity. As if that’s even possible. As if they could ever have any leader besides Obi-Wan Kenobi.
If it was any other time and place, it wouldn’t be this way. If the explosion had happened anywhere else – on a battlefield, on a distant planet – Obi-Wan would have been surrounded by the 212th.
Cody’s general would be where he should be – being cared for by the Vode, secure amongst his own men, with no interference and no interruptions.
He would be on his way home, to Mandalore, to an entire planet full of people who would willingly reshape the entire galaxy to keep him safe and happy.
(On his way to the arms of the man who is currently in the process of doing just that.)
But it is not any other time or place. It happens on Coruscant, and it happens in front of everyone, and the galactic hero, the famous Negotiator, is whisked into the innards of the Jedi Temple’s medical wing before anyone knows what’s happening.
And Cody…
Cody can’t get to him there.
It’s bad timing. The wheels are already in motion and Cody can’t stop them. Doesn’t want to stop what’s coming. But he thought he’d have Kenobi in custody when the critical moment finally came, and…
It’s time for a change of plan.