Chapter Text
Dearest,
I feel certain I am going mad again.
Everything has gone from me
but the certainty of your goodness.
Hanif Abdurraqib, from The Author Writes the First Draft of His Wedding Vows
The land that shall receive thee dying, in the same will I die: and there will I be buried. The Lord do so and so to me, and add more also, if aught but death part me and thee.
Ruth 1:17
———
Cody had been on Tatooine for a little over a month when Ben finally asked.
It was night, the rough daub walls of Ben’s hut bathed in a darkness so cold and blue that Cody could almost imagine he was underwater. His only source of warmth came from the man lying beside him, their bodies pressed together in the same chaste way they had so many times during the war. In those days, huddling for warmth had all too often been a tactical necessity, the difference between dying in glorious battle and dying on some frozen rock with their extremities slowly blackening to the colour and texture of freezer-burnt meat.
Back then, their carefully maintained composure had been an artefact of professionalism. They were the general and the commander, so they held themselves apart. From the rest of the men and from each other.
Now they were just Cody and Ben, and their reasons were incomprehensible.
Cody heard the hitch in Ben’s voice before he spoke, feeling the air shift as he drew in a fortifying breath.
“Cody?”
“Yes, sir?”
He was working on dropping the sir, but it was hard. It had been instinct for so long, then briefly something more like compulsion. Now the very shape of the word in his mouth unbalanced him.
“Why did you say it?” Ben asked quietly.
This was one of the things that had changed about him. He no longer minced words.
He was so hopelessly honest now, so flayed raw that it almost hurt to look at. He conversed like a man who knew you were about to leave him; who needed to get everything out in the open before you were gone.
Sighing, Cody rolled over, grunting softly as his head protested. The pink scar at his hairline was starting to go white, but at times it still thumped with a dizzy heat under his skin. The episodes were nearly gone though, which was a relief. Cody hadn’t had a big one in over a week. Maybe that was why Ben was asking now, of all nights.
He fixed his eyes on Ben’s, madder blue in the dim light. He peered at the colour, trying to recall if he had known it before. They were close enough to be breathing each other’s air.
“Why do you ask?”
Ben considered for a moment and Cody waited patiently. “I want to understand,” he said eventually. “Is that enough?”
It makes sense, Cody mused. Jedi never can resist curiosity. I was always going to have to answer for this.
He shrugged, as best he could whilst lying down. “For all the usual reasons, I guess.”
That didn’t seem to be what Ben wanted to hear. His face twitched the same way it used to when he was trying to maintain his composure in front of an admiral. “We aren’t soldiers anymore,” he bit out. “So what does that mean?”
Cody shrugged again, at a loss.
Ben’s jaw clenched, and he sighed out a warm breath that tickled Cody’s nose. “Cody,” he said, apparently just to say it.
Cody rolled away onto his back, staring at the ceiling as he searched for words to fill the hole between them. Damn the hole, he thought. Up until tonight, they’d been doing so very well at just politely skirting around it. Now it gaped and stretched in the silence of the room, a gravity well pulsing in time with the throbbing in his head.
Why did you say it? Why do you love him?
It was like being asked why the planet turned. There was an answer, surely, but it was too massive to hold in his mouth.
“I’m sorry,” he said finally. That, in particular, would always be true. “I don’t know what to say.”
Ben let out another strangled breath. When he spoke, there was a quality to his voice that was almost manic.
“Cody, you—” he stumbled. The General never stumbled. “You’re here and you’ve told me why, but that’s all you’ve told me. I don’t understand how you—”
The General wrenched his arm free of their thin blanket to scrub a hand over his face. The movement was so abrupt that it made Cody flinch a little, and then the General flinched at his flinching. He reached out guiltily as Cody pulled in ragged breaths (when had that happened?), putting one calloused hand onto his ribs and holding it there for a long minute.
They watched each other in the dark. Somewhere far off in the dunes, an animal lowed, rough and keening.
“You’ve always meant the world to me, Cody,” Ben said, and it was like blood from an open wound. His voice was so rough, all it’s former smoothness scraped away by sand and disuse. “Even when you killed me I loved you dearly. You were my friend. My— my best friend.” Something in Cody ached. “There is no more need for penance between us. I count nothing but that. So you can stay, selfishly I’ve begged you to please stay, but I don’t—” and here he laughed like a bird’s cry echoing off of rock, “—I just don’t understand what you possibly could have found here that makes you want to!”
When Cody had fallen to his knees before his general and said you don’t understand, I loved you, I loved you and I killed you, he had planned to leave it at that. He didn’t think he needed to elaborate. In fact, Cody was fairly sure that he had covered all the necessary bases. Obi-Wan had been loved before - Cody had seen him with that Mandalorian duchess; had watched with envy as he spoke with a red face about Quinlan Vos. He was a Jedi, not a child. He knew exactly what kind of terminal condition Cody was confessing to when he sat on his sandy knees, stitches dripping blood in his eye from where they’d torn, and said those words.
Or so he had assumed. Maybe not? Or maybe…
Momentarily, he entertained the idea that maybe Ben really did understand. Maybe he understood perfectly well and was just trying to make Cody say it, trying to elicit a little praise from him for his own… what? Gratification? Ego?
No. No, Ben didn’t have an ounce of ego left in him, and he didn’t think he deserved gratification. He was in self-imposed exile, miserable and alone, and apparently determined to stay that way. That scratch in his voice, that look in his eyes, they must be pity. If not for himself, then for Cody.
Cody pulled himself up into a seated position, and Ben’s hand fell away from his chest to land with a muted thump on the thin mattress. His head spun nauseatingly, but he fixed his eyes on the man laying stricken beside him, summoning as much focus as he could through his swimming vision.
“You don’t get to tell me you aren’t worth it, Ben Kenobi,” he said, and was surprised at the furious conviction in his own words. “I love you because I love you, and that’s the way it fucking is. If you want me to think of reasons I’ll try. But I know what the hell it is I’m doing, and you don't get to insinuate otherwise.”
Cody punctuated this declaration by leaning over the side of the bed and vomiting. But, as Ben rubbed his back and fetched him a water canteen, he still felt that he had made his point.
———
The following morning cracked open like a desert gourd, slowly spilling light into every crevice of Ben’s humble abode.
After their little confrontation the night before, the two of them had spent an awkward twenty minutes cleaning up vomit before returning to bed, both silently agreeing to keep a diplomatic distance between them on the mattress. For Cody, it had been a much-needed respite from the branding iron of his general’s touch. Even if he had spent the rest of the night shivering.
Now in the harsh light of day, the words they had exchanged under cover of darkness seemed as unreal as a dream, and just as unnecessary to mention aloud.
They had woken simultaneously, as they always seemed to do. They had risen and dressed in unreadable silence before going through the motions of Cody’s daily check-up: an examination of his healing surgical scar, a probing of the bruising across his ribs, a small light shone into each pupil to test reactivity.
As Ben pocketed his torch, he asked the same simple, clinical questions he had been asking every morning for the past two weeks.
“Do you know where you are?
“Tatooine.” Cody grunted, tucking his shirt back into his pants. After a moment, he added: “Jundland Wastes. Your hut.”
“It’s a farmstead,” Ben sniffed. “What year is it?”
“26 ARS. Ten years after the fall of the republic.”
“Who are you?”
“My name is Cody,” said Cody. “I’m a clone. I was born on Kamino. I was your commander during the war.” And your killer by the end of it.
Ben hummed impassively. “And who am I?”
“Obi-Wan Kenobi.” The name slid off his tongue like the secret it was. His mouth knew it better than his mind did. “Ben.”
“Would you like to kill me, Cody?”
Cody smiled wryly, and responded in the manner that had become their custom. “Not today, Ben.”
The other man held his gaze, shadowed eyes meeting shadowed eyes. Something like understanding began to stir between them.
Then, as fast as it had come, the moment was over. Ben patted his knees in a synchronised slap and rose to his feet.
“I’m glad to hear it. Breakfast?”
———
Despite his host’s ministrations, Cody was apparently something of a slow healer these days. It had - as far as he knew - been a long time since he’d been beaten this close to death. Sometimes when he choked awake in the dark of night, slick with sweat and sick with confusion, he wondered if maybe he was dead. After all, he’d heard of stranger hells.
Cody had been laid up in this hut for almost a tenday now, sleeping and aching and puking his guts up every time his head spun. He was perennially exhausted - both from the effort of healing without the aid of bacta, and from the grating indignities of being an invalid.
Like some kind of a child, he could barely maintain himself. He choked when he ate, he stumbled when he walked. For kriff’s sake, he even got dizzy when he pissed.
It was morbidly humbling. It was the kind of experience that made him yearn for the days of being shot at.
As Cody sweated and struggled, Ben was a silent observer. Between the hours during which he was absent, doing who-knows-what, Ben simply settled himself in seated positions around their small shared living space and watched him like a hawk. He studied Cody when he thought he wasn’t paying attention, clouded eyes scanning up and down like they could see through right through him. It made him feel like his skin was being peeled from his bones.
But Cody had no interest in objecting, and thus raising his Jedi’s suspicions. The omnipresent appraisal was a vice but not a choking one, and it entertained him to wonder what Ben saw when he stared.
He wondered if Ben had noticed the way that Cody’s side was pitted with shrapnel scars, or the new breaks in his nose, or the way his right knee locked up when he moved too quickly. These changes to his body were as novel to him as they were to Ben; evidence of abuses he’d suffered somewhere in the murky water of the last decade.
And yet, Ben had sustained his own alternations too. His hair was longer, curling over his forehead, and his beard was throughly shot through with the grey that had once been relegated to his temples. There was a tan on his nose, and his knuckles were crisscrossed with so many healed cuts that they were as white and ropy as Cody’s own. He did not look like a man who had once lead armies. He didn’t look like a traitor.
Once, Ben caught Cody staring as he changed his bandages. The commander refused to back down, glaring harder until Ben blinked and his eyes slid away.
So that was the way it was. In the confines of the hut, they watched each other like nervous dogs learning to share the same yard. They floated, suspended in stasis, waiting for something to happen.
———
The thing about waiting was that Cody hated it. So, after nine days of being interminably restful, he started looking for ways to make himself useful.
“There’s no need,” Ben insisted, when he asked. “There’s nothing you can do in this state that I’m not fully capable taking care of myself. And frankly,” he added, “there’s nothing that needs to be done.”
In response, Cody lightly kicked the loose leg on the stool he was sitting on, struggling to his feet just as the crappy little piece of furniture immediately collapsed to the ground. Ben blinked down at him, unimpressed.
“That could have lasted another month at least.”
Cody did his best impression of a block of granite, the impact of which was only slightly reduced by the way he was swaying on his feet.
Ben sighed, relenting with a shrug of his shoulders. “Fine, fix it. Though please know that I would have been perfectly content to just sit on a box.”
It took two hours, but Cody fixed the chair. Ben loitered nearby with his hands folded into his sleeves, pretending not to watch.
After the chair, he addressed the broken lock on the fresher door, then the holes in his socks, then the loose vent cover over the stove.
Ben continued to drift in and out as he worked, only occasionally sneaking up to drop an irritatingly helpful tool into his hands before wandering back off to do whatever it was he did when he wasn’t just standing around, hovering conspicuously and thinking audibly. He had begun to disappear for longer and longer stretches of the day - he would come back dusty and tired, quiet, and sometimes smelling of animal blood. Cody resisted the desire to ask.
One evening, Cody found himself hunched over the table in Ben’s dining nook, fiddling with the broken handle on a screwdriver. He had been trying to re-repair the problematic vent cover when the tool itself had broken, and that offensive irony alone was been enough to give Cody the worst headache he’d had since—well, this morning; when he’d made a rookie mistake and gotten out of bed too fast.
A loud clank sounded from the kitchen behind him, and when Cody lifted his head to look he was greeted by the sight of Ben bent over, patiently filling something with water from the tank plumbed into the side wall of the hut.
“What are you doing?”
Ben grunted, hoisting the sloshing receptacle up onto the stovetop. From where Cody was sitting, it looked like a tall, conical pot with an unusual lid and a handle on one side. “I’m making tea,” he announced.
Cody raised his eyebrows, regretting it when it made his head ache. “Are you serious? You’re really going to boil away your water for tea?”
“That’s what this is for,” Ben gestured to the clunky lid attachment step atop what Cody now saw was a crude kettle. “It collects any water that boils off. I can pour it right back into the reservoir when I’m done.”
Cody snorted quietly to himself, muttering; “The lengths that you’re prepared to go to for that beverage are truly impressive, sir.”
Ben ignored him, lapsing into silence for a minute or two as the water boiled. “And how is that screwdriver going, hm?”
“It’s—” he braced himself for one more determined twist of the wrist, and the handle popped back into place. “Done, now.”
“Congratulations. Now, would you like sugar?”
Cody glanced up to find Ben standing close, hovering over front of him with the kettle in one hand and two lumpy mugs grasped in the other. For one stupid moment, he failed to comprehend the question.
“With your tea,” Ben clarified patiently. “Would you like sugar, Cody?”
“I’m having tea?”
Ben nodded and sat down across from him. “I can‘t promise that it’ll taste particularly fabulous, but it’s supposed to help with headaches. Or at least, the woman at the market said it would, and I’ve found her to be quite reliable so far.”
The sudden rush of emotion for the man sitting across from him was like taking a blaster bolt to the helmet. Obi-Wan was— well, Ben was a wreck of man. And yet somehow even as a shadow of himself, he was still so kind.
It was insufferable. It was devastating.
“What?” Ben was asking, his weather-beaten face open and concerned.
Cody had been roofied once, as part of an intelligence op on Corellia. This conversation felt a little like that.
“You’re…” He trailed off, screwing his eyes shut.
“Cody, you’re alarming me. Is something happening?”
Abruptly, Cody had an epiphany. For what was perhaps the first time in his entire miserable life, he was free to speak his mind. He was free to articulate this thing he harboured inside his chest, to dig himself in, to justify and defend it. It might be selfish, but it would never again be the darkest sin on his ledger. He opened his eyes.
“You bought tea for my headaches, Ben.”
“Yes, so wha—”
Cody levelled him with a look, and prayed desperately that his silver tongued, quick witted general would pick up what he was putting down.
Ben’s face slackened so instantaneously that it almost would have been funny if it weren’t for the borderline vasovagal response that Cody was experiencing as a result. For a long moment they just sat there, staring at each other over their steaming mugs as the gears slowly turned behind Ben’s eyes.
Abruptly, Ben stood up and started to pace. Cody gazed up at him, blood hammering in his ears even as he rested his hands steadily on the tabletop.
Finally, Ben slowed to a stop. He swallowed audibly, like he was in pain. “Is this— Are you… thinking of reasons, Cody?”
“Yeah. I guess I am.” Then, because he was a coward, “Is that… ok?”
The sadness in his general’s eyes was an infinitely deep wound.
“I won’t stop you,” he said softly.
Cody nodded. He could work with this.
———
Ten months earlier.
CC-2224 was a good soldier.
His plastoid shone like the black carapace of a beetle, and his eyes did not wander as he marched along his patrol route. He was a cog in a machine who loved to be a cog, as so much as a mindless thing is capable of loving anything.
CC-2224 was a good soldier, but he had to work hard to be that way. It was difficult sometimes, to ignore the discomfort of hot red blood soaking through the seams of his gloves, dripping down his forehead, dribbling from his nose to gather in a stain by his cheek while he slept.
It did not bother him though, because good soldiers were not bothered. Good soldiers followed
NO.
orders. NO. good
soldiers followed NO NO—
NO—
CC-2224 shook his head. He was a good soldier, and good soldiers did not allow themselves to become distracted whilst on duty.
Soon, a voice in his helmet ordered him to report to the bridge, so he did. He was instructed to stand beside one of his superiors, so he stood. His parade rest was a lovely harsh line, shoulders held taut as his hands hovered, clasped, at the small of his back.
Eventually, he was addressed directly and asked to give a report, so he did so. After, he returned to parade rest while his superiors continued the briefing. The ship commanding officer was angry, jabbing his finger into the chest of an Inquisitor as he spoke. CC-2224 thought that he should learn to show a little more respect. His arrogance was grating.
“…once again, I have received no transmission from Imperial command indicating that either you or the Third Sister would be arriving on this vessel. Your demand to commandeer this cruiser in the name of your black lord is without jurisdiction and it is certainly not a priority over our—“
The second Inquisitor lunged forwards, hand pitching out as the uniformed officer began to choke. “You will show respect, Captain.”
CC-2224 watched impassively as the man writhed and hacked.
“Enough,” said the first Inquisitor. “Save it for our prey. Kenobi cannot be allowed to escape because of your lack of focus.”
The cog blinked. Something stirred behind the shell of it’s helmet.
“Kenobi.” CC-2224 said, barely audible. “No.”
Kenobi. Kenobi. NO— Good soldiers followed
NO
Good man, that Cody— C-
Kenobi—
“CC-2224,” snapped the captain. The inquisitors were gone from the bridge. His nasal voice was hoarse. “I will not repeat myself again. Return to your post.”
Obi-W—
“CC-2224! You will return to your post.”
The cog blinked. “Yes sir,” it saluted, turning on its heel and marching away.
The cog loved to be a cog, at least as much as a cog could love anything. It’s black armour shone, and it’s eyes did not wander as it marched.