Archive of Our Own ^beta

"Kommand'ika!" Waxer yelled happily as Ahsoka slipped into the weight-room.

Cody sighed as he finished his set of dead-lifts, watching the familiar blue-white montrals slink nonchalantly over to the weight bench he'd claimed in the corner of the gym on the Command deck of the Negotiator. He pretended he did not see the way Ahsoka greeted Waxer, Crys, Longshot and the other Vod'e who were excited to see their khi'vod on deck, but did not stop to chat. If he let on that he sensed her presence too early, she'd balk and redirect, or pretend she was here to hang out with Ghost after all. Cody knew better, though: Ahsoka might not be a vod in the clone sense, but Cody liked to think he'd gotten pretty good at reading younger siblings, regardless of species. He had to let her come to him.

In just a few moments, his patience paid off. "Hey, Cody," Ahsoka said, effortfully casual, folding herself down onto the bench next to him. She was in her normal mission-ready wear, not dressed for the gym, but Cody didn't comment, simply giving her a warm nod and starting on his next deadlift set.

As he struggled through the set, somewhat regretting the reps he’d assigned himself, he watched out of the corner of his eye as she relaxed by increments, bolstered by the way the other men had gone back about their business, leaving the two of them in their own little pocket of quiet among the hum of gentle ribbing, the clank of weights, and the constant astringent-earth smell of sweat only somewhat smothered by antiseptic.

Finally, he blew out a breath and racked his dumbbells, sitting hard on Ahsoka's bench and grabbing his water. "So, how'd the mission go?"

The Generals and Ahsoka had been out on a diplomatic training jaunt that had gone hot, because of course it had. General Kenobi had already been ship-side for a few hours and had debriefed Cody - no friendly injuries, and only a little collateral damage. He'd sounded proud of the way Ahsoka had handled herself.

"I heard there was a bit of a kerfuffle with a local pack of rabble-rousers, but she and Anakin reportedly had it under control by the time I could disentangle myself to assist," the General had told Cody, and Cody was adept enough at reading between the lines to know that the General being "entangled" either meant "flirting" or "fighting to the death". "All told, a rather neat conclusion to a somewhat unexpected day". Cody had eyed the blaster burns on the General's cloak, said nothing, and confirmed later with the CMO Deadpan that he'd been checked over and was not lying about "no friendly injuries".

While Cody had expected to see Ahsoka at some point, given the 212th and 501st were coordinating in their next deployment, he hasn't expected to see her here, looking for him, and certainly not appearing as dejected as she did.

"It went fine," she told him, one foot braced up on the bench, leaning her face against her knee. She let out a long, world-weary sigh, and Cody only held his neutral expression with ironclad determination.

"The General said you comported yourself admirably," Cody continued, blatantly fishing in a way he could only pull off if the fish in question was below 16 years developmentally.

Unsurprisingly, the line went taut immediately. "By the general I assume you mean Master Kenobi," Ahsoka muttered. "Because Skyguy thinks I'm a big fuckup."

Cody made a mental note to write up all of Rex's squad for teaching the Commander that word. "Really."

"You heard Master Kenobi!" Ahsoka said, gaining momentum as she went. "I accomplished the mission 'admirably'. We neutralized the threat to the Senator we were protecting, prevented any interruption of the summit, and I even took out, like, twelve of them by myself. But does Skyguy care? Noooo, as soon as we were done cuffing the last terrorist, he started yelling at me!"

Cody did not mention she was dangerously close to pouting and made another mental note to be grateful that his developmental time as a teen had been approximately a year and a half. In fact, he thought, it would likely be wise to open a whole mental spreadsheet to manage this conversation. "What about?"

"A fat lot of nothing," Ahsoka assured him.

Cody raised an eyebrow and waited.

Ahsoka levered herself to her feet, starting to pace. Out of the corner of his eyes, Cody saw Longshot smother a laugh at Cody’s expense and pointedly wave Waxer and Crys away from eavesdropping too obviously.

"I mean, yes, I dropped one of my sabers, but it's not like I needed it. I have two, and Jar'kai isn't the only form I know, you know. And it worked out fine! I didn't even miss it, I got the bad guys, and no one else was hurt."

Cody didn't stop himself from letting out an amused huff. "So it runs in the lineage, huh?"

"What?"

But Cody would put a blaster to his own temple before speaking ill of his General in front of a nat-born, even--or especially—his General’s bu'ad. "Go on," he promoted her instead, which was enough to launch her back into her frustrated monologue.

"I mean, he didn't yell-yell, but he was all sharp and prickly in the force and he was so serious, and like, put his hand on my shoulder all sternly when he handed it back and I got this whole lecture." She deepened her voice in what could, generously, be in the vicinity of a parody of her master but in reality sounded like a Kamino cadet just hitting puberty. "Your lightsaber is your life, Ahsoka, care for it like the sacred object that it is.”

Cody refrained from commenting that maybe he agreed with Anakin on this one. “Yeah?” he prompted, which was evidently an acceptable response, because Ahsoka launched back into bemoaning the fact that her Master only saw her failures, never her ssuccesses, and that one little slip up shouldn’t have been that big a deal, especially with how well she saved the situation.

As she was finally winding down, and Cody had gotten through another three sets of bicep curls, he put down his weights again and looked her in the eyes. “Do you think, maybe, that your Master was afraid?”

Ahsoka looked at him like he was wearing Gregor’s pauldrons: like he was being completely nonsensical. “Cody, his name is literally the ‘Hero With No Fear’.”

Cody also refrained from commenting on that. “ I don’t know about all this Jedi...stuff...with your sabers. I can’t tell you that General Skywalker is right or wrong about that. But what I can tell you is—“ He paused, trying to put his thoughts in a way she’d understand. “Rex could beat twenty clankers with his bare hands, easy. But if I saw him lose his deece in the field? I’d be pretty worried too. He could take care of himself, but it would be a lot harder, and you know that in battle, any disadvantage can be exploited.”

Ahsoka was frowning, forehead furrowed. “Sure, but he didn’t sound scared, he sounded mad.”

Cody huffed. “I bet he did. You’ll find out, sometimes people’s emotions are crosswired. Being angry is easier than being scared, but the root of it all can often be the same.”

Now Ahsoka was positively glowering. “So you’re saying Master Yoda might be on to something?”

Cody had no idea what she was referring to, but knowing the old troll, he had about a fifty-fifty chance of being full of life-altering wisdom or, equally likely, ten pounds of shit in a five pound bag. “Sure.”

Cody could tell Ahsoka was mulling it over, so he went back to his weight routine.

“It’s not fair,” she finally muttered. “He doesn’t have any right to yell at me just because he’s scared.”

Cody tried not to think about the row he and the General had behind closed doors the week before, when Kenobi had come back from the front lines with shrapnel wounds across half his back and a smarmy grin across his whole face. The volume that Cody had achieved had shaken the command tent and had, reportedly, caused several shinies in hearing range to drop whatever they’d been carrying in the mud.

“No, he doesn’t,” Cody said, because he was very good at cognitive dissonance.

Ahsoka blew out a frustrated sigh and leaned back on her weight bench until she was flat on her back. “Whatever,” she declared, as if too tired and too world-weary to fight the injustice. “At least my saber forgave me quicker than my Master will.”

Cody couldn’t help but stare at her, blank-faced, while he tried to parse that sentence. While he was glad that Ahsoka trusted him enough as an adult in her life to come to him with her problems on occasion, he didn’t understand why it was always all the Force-damned jedi ossik when Obi-Wan was right there. “What do you mean, your saber ‘forgave’ you?” he asked because he had to, not because he really wanted an answer.

Ahsoka waved a dismissive hand. “You know, the way they get all buzzy and make your teeth ache when they’re mad at you. Like, I let Bariss use it once just to see if she liked the shorter hilts and when she gave it back it was like the kyber bit me, like it was so mad I’d let someone else use it.”

“Right,” Cody said, because she could explain it to him more, but at this point he was fairly certain that no amount of explanation would really suffice. At least, not in the state that Ahsoka was in. “Listen, if you were one of my shinies, I’d tell you the same thing—a weapon is only as good as the wielder. But killing a clanker’s a lot easier when there’s ten thousand degrees of plasma bolt cutting through it, rather than your fist.” Ahsoka scoffed, but it sounded amused. He wasn’t sure how well he’d gotten his point across, but that wasn’t a new feeling. At least she was more relaxed than she had been when she skulked into the gym.

Cody wasn’t done, though. Skywalker may have been trying to teach a lesson, but he wasn’t about to let the man’s stunning lack of emotional depth wreak any more havoc than it already had. “I’ve been taught a lot about what mistakes do to your worth, Commander, and I have to say that I have come to disagree--” Understatement of his life “--with what my trainers held over us about them. You didn’t endanger others with your actions, so as far as I’m concerned, the only real mistakes are the ones you don’t walk away from, or you don’t fix. Sounds like you fixed yours handily. I’d say you have a mission under your belt to be proud of.”

Ahsoka was looking at him with a regard that was an eerie reminder of the predator species that she was. Then without warning, she pounced, hugging him around the waist and briefly burying her face in his sweaty blacks. “Thanks, Cody,” she mumbled, then pulled away, darting back across the gym before Cody even realized what was happening. “I’ll see you when we make planetfall in a few days!” And then she was gone.

Cody watched her go, ignoring the look that Waxer was giving him: a combination of shit-eating grin and a wobbly sort of softness he seemed unable to contain around any being younger than he was. Cody was suddenly exhausted—and had a lot of questions about lightsabers that he wasn’t looking forward to getting answers to.

It didn’t matter much, immediately, because of course they careened from one engagement into another, then a multi-day space battle, then a minor maintenance scramble when one of the aft carbon monoxide alarms blasted a false-positive to half of a company for three full cycles before someone with half the braincells they were decanted with figured out where the loose wire was and that no one was going to die of asphyxiation--

“You seem troubled,” Mace Windu said calmly on the other end of the holocall, genteely sipping at a steaming, handle-less mug.

“Get kriffed,” Cody grumbled over his own mug of caf, trying to remember what he’d learned in his bio-modules about whether he could absorb caffeine faster if he stole an IV from Helix.

Mace angled his head as if to say maybe I will.

Cody sometimes wondered how General Billaba had survived Mace as a Master—the man was more cryptic than Yoda, more stubborn that Kenobi, and terrifyingly competent in all the ways that made Cody unsure if he wanted to kriff him or be him.

Instead, he found himself, of all things, friends with the man. At least, friends in the ways that their circumstances would allow—despite the tricky truths of Cody not being considered fully sentient and Mace being considered, by turns, an attack dog of the Senate, a holy avatar of the Force, or “a worthy adversary in mind and merit at every Council meeting, and yes dear, that does sometimes mean I’d like to settle it on the mat with my fists, but I’m sure he thinks the same of me on occasion” by the public, his peers, and General Kenobi. No one, least of all Cody, understood how they’d gone from aggressively respectful interactions at Council-based war briefings to regular standing holocalls that were explicitly defined as off-duty interactions, but he couldn’t help but be grateful for the strange friendship.

It also meant he had someone to ask all of the stupid questions about jetii-osik that he couldn’t bring to Kenobi. Largely, because the questions tended to be about Kenobi, and whether all of the weird kark that he did was normal or something that needed to be managed.

In this case, Cody had simply forgotten his interaction with Ahsoka and the blooming understanding of something far too big and complicated for him to have wanted to puzzle through it right then. Recalling it now, it seemed as good an opportunity as any to finally address it. He had intended to ask General Kenobi, but at least with Mace he was sure to get an answer that was more succinct and wouldn’t take half an hour to get through because “well, to understand your question, first we must probe the historical philosophers’ arguments about rationality…”

“Are your lightsaber weapons sentient?” Cody asked, unable to think of any more subtle way to introduce the topic.

Mace, for his part, did not look startled by the non-sequitor, nor by the obvious irritation on Cody’s face. He continued serenely enjoying his tea, although his dark eyes were sharp and assessing. “That’s a complicated topic,” Mace allowed. “And one that may not be fully understandable to someone outside the Jedi Order.”

Cody understood the answer for what it was – not a rebuke, or a slight on his intelligence, as it might have been from another person. Rather, it was a reminder – as there were some things a nat-born would never understand about the clones, so too there were topics reserved largely for the Jedi. Mace had not, however, indicated that the question was unwelcome, so Cody forged on.

“I’ll take whatever answer you’d give a civilian,” Cody said. “But I have three Jedi under my care and there’s enough that I don’t know as to make me a liability.”

Mace frowned slightly, considering. “I wouldn’t consider you anything so dire as that,” he responded. Then: “but I do see your point.”

They sat for a long moment in silence, each contemplating their respective drinking vessels. Mace visibly ordered his thoughts. “The Force is an energy that is in all things, and binds the universe together, but it is like any other energy in that its qualities can be altered by what it interacts with and the media it is channeled through. I can tell apart your brothers even with their helmets on, because the way they alter the currents of the Force around them is unique. So it is with all things.”

“A ‘Force signature’,” Cody supplied, following so far.

“Indeed,” Mace agreed. “The kyber crystals that power our lightsabers, however, are set apart from most substances, in that their uniqueness comes from the fact that they are not unique. Rather, they tend to mimic the resonance of the Force, the ‘signature’, of sentient beings. This resonance is not an exact copy, and may change depending on what the crystal is exposed to; and, like tuning an instrument, some are capable of only a small range of variance, and some a very wide one. But the result is that some crystals have a very high level of compatibility with a being’s Force signature—and if a living being is sensitive to that sort of thing, they can recognize the kyber’s resonance with themselves.”

Cody frowned, on the edge of grasping it, but flailing a bit in the abstractness of it all.

“In a bit more familiar way,” Mace explained. “You could consider a compatible kyber crystal akin to another part of a person’s soul.”

Cody wasn’t sure what his expression was doing, but he tried to hide the worst of his alarm. “You do mean this literally?”

Mace nodded gravely. “Completely.”

Cody, startled, stared at Mace for a long moment. In his acquaintance with the man, he hadn’t known him to be a whimsical or poetic person. Creative, certainly, and adept at distilling mystic minutae into understandable explanations but not—not metaphorical, and not fanciful. If Mace was talking in terms of souls, then this was a tenant central to the Jedi, and one not to be taken lightly.

Cody contemplated what he wanted to ask next, the questions tumbling over in his head like an ocean over a reef. The strength of his curiosity could not be stemmed by brute force, so instead he approached it strategically, laterally. “Commander Tano told me that she’d loaned her saber to another padawan, once, and that the saber was ‘jealous’.”

Mace nodded, tilting his hand in a gesture that conveyed ‘sort of’. “It may be more accurate to say that the crystal was reacting poorly to being handled by someone with a conflicting resonance. It has nothing to do with a person’s compatibility to each other, of course – friendships formed by differences are just as key as those formed by shared experiences. Rather, often, younger force sensitives are not used to the way other resonances feel around them, especially close to so delicate a device. To continue with a metaphor, it throws their instrument out of tune.”

Cody contemplated this, heart sinking. “You’re saying that another person even handling a lightsaber could make it—erratic?”

Mace shook his head firmly. “Not for mature Jedi, no. Knights and Masters should have the control and self-knowledge to not only master the variances in their kyber, but also mitigate the effects of another person’s resonance. Nevertheless—the greater one’s familiarity and trust of another person, especially way that person presents themselves in the Force, the more ‘comfortable’ a lightsaber is in their proximity.”

For a long moment, Cody could do nothing more than stare slightly to the left of Mace’s holographic image, not making eye contact with him but rather the emitter.

Mace gave the vibroknife one last twist. “There is a saying among some Jedi, that ‘your lightsaber is your life’. We are not a warrior people, and this wisdom does not come from war. It is not about having a weapon at all times. Rather, a Jedi’s lightsaber is a physical remnant of their souls. Our use of a lightsaber uses a piece of our hearts to protect the light in others.”

“Kriffing jetii osik,” Cody croaked, to keep up appearances. Mace nodded calmly, as though he agreed.

The rest of the call was a bit staggered on Cody’s part, and he feigned a reason to end it early. He needed some time to think.

He’d known that lightsabers were delicate, and were spiritually important to the Jedi. After his talk with Ahsoka, he’d even been willing to accept that they had quirks attributable only to the celestial magic that had somehow become a part of his life.

Never, however, had Cody contemplated that a lightsaber’s importance was not just symbolically sacred, but very nearly consubstantially so.

And throughout the entire conversation with Mace, Cody had General Kenobi’s lightsaber—his life, a piece of his soul—still clipped to Cody’s belt.

“Commander, just in time,” General Kenobi said warmly, waving Cody inside.

It was the first evening in a ten-day that they’d had a free few hours, and the General had marked it by inviting Cody to his quarters for tea. There was something to be said that he’d offered, after so long without rest, to spend his time with Cody. It said something more that Cody, in the same straits, had accepted. Whatever it said, however, Cody would not be the one saying it.

“The water has just heated, and Anakin gifted me a particular new blend I thought you may wish to try,” Kenobi said, gesturing at the console table that had become both a repository for piles of unfiled flimsi-work and a perch for a rapidly-expanding collection of tea-making paraphernalia. “It is meant to be flavored with notes of shuura fruit, if I recall correctly.”

“Thank you, sir,” Cody said as the door closed behind him, skillfully ignoring the General’s look of irritation at the honorific as he deposited a small sleeve of unremarkable, grey-wrapped ration cookies next to the self-heating kettle. “I pilfered these from Knives.”

Despite the ordinariness of the offering, Kenobi’s eyes lit up, and he gifted Cody with a knowing twist of his lips. “Lets hope our dear Mess Sergeant never finds out about your thievery, then, my dear. I understand he came by his name honestly.”

Cody took the offered corner of the couch, which was shoved into the corner of the stateroom. “Stateroom”, he’d learned early, was a grand term in other contexts. On a naval ship, however, it meant little more than “separate bedroom and workspace”. Beyond the door to Cody’s right was the sleeping chamber, but where they sat now held Kenobi’s work desk, terminal and consoles, bridge readouts, and a set of uncomfortable furniture for entertaining important nat-borns who came aboard and, more often, where command staff could be found at odd hours arguing over battle plans and crew rosters and policy recommendations and, sometimes, a round of dejarik.

As was their custom, Kenobi took the cushion next to Cody, not the chair across. It was a practicality when the room was full, putting the highest-ranking officers together so that presentations and complaints could be made to them both. When the room was empty, it was simply routine—a mundane proximity that was remarkable only in its unremarkableness, the familiar not-quite-heat of the General’s knees knocking gently against the plates of Cody’s lower armor.

For a moment, they took their tea in silence. Cody savored the sweet earthiness of the beverage, mentally comparing it to several of his past favorites, noting the absence of tannins and the floral scent. He composed a mental score out of ten for flavor, temperature, stimulation, color, and odor. Just as he was coming to his conclusion, Kenobi asked: “Do you like it?”

“I do not,” Cody said with confidence, setting the cup down. “Or rather—I don’t dislike it. But I do not prefer it.”

Kenobi smiled at him as though Cody had offered him the highest compliment, beaming readily as he reached again for the kettle. “Can I interest you in caf, instead?”

This one was a bit harder for Cody, as it meant he was troubling Kenobi to again do something for him, as well as wasting tea. Still, he’d practiced this, and he ultimately felt good nodding and saying, “Please.”

Kenobi fairly shone with pride as he stood up to prepare the instant caf. He didn’t say anything else about the exchange, as that would ruin the game, but he radiated satisfaction all the while.

It was that obvious happiness that finally allowed Cody to sit back and enjoy his own sense of baffled pride. Even a few weeks ago, he’d have finished the cup, because it was a gift and because he didn’t want to offend the General and because it wasn’t bad exactly and because he was expected to and--

And the General had, eventually, noticed. He’d encouraged—verbosely, patiently—Cody to consider his own preferences, and enforce them, especially when they were socializing just the two of them. When Cody had admitted that he was not sure what his preferences were, exactly, the General’s eyes had taken on a soft, inward cast, then sharpened with a frankly unsettling determination.

“Then you’ll just have to practice deciding, won’t you?” Kenobi had said, and Cody had—well, he’d liked that idea, actually. And his first act of deciding was just that: deciding to play.

Now, supplied with a new beverage and resettled on the couch, Cody caught sight of the bandage on the back of the General’s off-hand. It wasn’t a new development; it had been in place most of a ten-day, since an engagement or two ago. What Cody had only just noticed, however, was that it wasn’t a bacta patch, but a sterile adhesive bandage.

“That hasn’t healed yet?” Cody asked, surprised. The wound was a shrapnel laceration, which most bacta could remediate in two-to-four days.

The General’s eyes widened and he aborted a knee-jerk attempt to hide his hand—but not before Cody saw.

“It’s healing at a medically normal rate,” the General offered instead with an airy gesture. “It just takes a little time, is all.”

The explanation was not outside the bounds of normal and believable, but Cody suddenly simply did not believe it. It was the forced casualness, not the content, that was making Cody suspicious. “I know you’ve had that wound for more days than is ‘medically normal’. Is there—is there some extenuating issue?” Cody was trying not to ask his commanding officer about personal medical information, but he could admit to being baffled. Although the General had a well-documented discomfort in medical situations, he was not a ‘runner’ like General Skywalker reportedly was. In fact, General Kenobi was nothing if not rigidly strict with his own care: he showed up precisely on schedule for physicals, exams, and vaccinations; always reported for post-battle evaluation; and spent exactly the required recovery time in the med-bay when injured. If anyone but Cody and CMO Deadpan noticed that “exactly the required recovery time” meant “ and not a minute more”, well, they hadn’t mentioned it. A good example for the men was needed, and Kenobi largely provided it.

For his part, Kenobi chuckled with more-or-less unforced amusement. “No, no extenuating circumstances. Adhesive bandages can take up to eleven days, I think, to heal damage like this, even with the application of topical bacta.”

Cody’s stomach dropped. “I hadn’t seen that we were so low on bacta supplies that you have to resort to topical, rather than bacta patches. We’re scheduled for another shipment in a ten-day, but if I’ve missed--”

“Cody, peace,” Kenobi hurried to interrupt, eyes widening. “It’s not so dire. Really. Inventory of our regular bandages is as expected, and there isn’t something you’ve failed to notice.” He looked troubled, earnest. “I feel as though we’re having two very different conversations.”

Cody was busy getting his breath back after thinking he’d missed an important quartermaster report. “I don’t understand, sir. If we’ve still got bacta bandages, why aren’t you using one?”

“I didn’t need one?” the General’s reply came out as a question. Cody blinked at him. “Cody. We’re not in battle, and the laceration will heal fine with the stitches Deadpan applied and a standard cloth bandage.”

“Sir, I think the use of the word stitches belies the word fine.”

The General scoffed, but gently. “There is no reason to use our limited—do breathe, dear, we’re at a standard level but bacta is not to be squandered—supply on something that will heal on its own.”

Cody felt something in him rear back like a startled nuna, even as he fought to keep his expression neutral. “The use of bacta on a wound is not what I’d call ‘squandering’, sir.”

The General frowned, raised his chin. If the man were not Cody’s superior officer, he might refer to it as his ‘Bitch Defense’. “And I wouldn’t imply that utilizing the same medical care that I’d receive in any standard civilian hospital is particularly neglectful or worthy of censure.”

Luckily for both General Kenobi and for Cody, Cody had practice breaking through enemy defenses, even when those enemies resolved themselves to be snitty jar’shebs’e. He gave it back with both barrels.

“While that’s a succinct quip, sir, it deliberately ignores the context of the situation, and presents a false equivalency to a peacetime situation in which you, a private citizen who was not, say, the lynchpin holding together a war for the fate of the galaxy, would have the luxury of time to pursue unaided healing, for an injury that is out of the ordinary for your lifestyle.” Cody let the blank mask of logic descend on his face, relaxing his muscles deliberately and reading out the facts as though they were printed on a report behind his corneas. “If the difference between these situations are difficult to grasp, I would be happy to brief you on them.”

The General’s mouth twisted sourly, and he fairly pouted at Cody. Cody did not drop his droid-face expression, which he knew General Kenobi hated. After a moment, Kenobi deflated against the couch cushion, crossing his arms.

“I object to ‘lynchpin’,” Kenobi muttered.

“I’ll take that under advisement,” Cody replied.

He looked at the half-full mug of caf in his hands, quietly mourning, before levering to his feet. He perhaps should not have been quite so vocal with his disapproval, but he needed Kenobi to listen to him and understand how illogical, and even dangerous he was being. Cody was fairly certain he had not crossed a line, only toed it. Nevertheless, it was clear that their careful evening of camaraderie was over, which was a shame. It was best now to beat a strategic retreat; Kenobi was certainly annoyed with him now--

“Cody, are you leaving?” Kenobi interrupted him, sounding almost alarmed.

The tone was so unexpected that Cody paused, turning around without thinking about it. “Sir?”

Kenobi was on his feet as well, peering at Cody, swaying close but not touching. “I didn’t realize that you were that cross with me, Cody. I do understand your point, although I might be about petulant about admitting it. But certainly you aren’t so angry that you have to leave--”

“No!” Cody interrupted, a little too loudly, a little too full of both upset and relief. “I—I was very candid with you, sir. I assumed you’d be angry with me, and it would be best if I removed myself.”

“Cody,” Kenobi said, his blue eyes unfathomable, his brows tilted sadly. “I’ve never been anything but delighted when you are candid with me.”

Cody closed his mouth so fast his teeth clicked together.

“Not that I will always agree with you, of course,” Kenobi went on blithely, flapping a hand. “But I think that’s good for me, and perhaps for us both. Nevertheless—your opinion is one that I respect, commander. So it pleases me to hear it, even at my own expense.”

Cody was fairly dizzy with nearness, with significance. He could not keep his focus on the General, had to look just slightly to the left of his ear.

“You should consider doing less ‘at your own expense’,” Cody said with the only boldness left in him. “’Lowest technically acceptable’ is not all that you deserve.”

Obi-Wan stepped closer to him, so close that Cody was afraid that their chests would bump, or their noses. “Not at the expense of my men,” General Kenobi said, his voice a soft, careful whisper.

And Cody was helpless to argue, the words not marching as ordered to his tongue. Instead, he accepted the statement as it was given, and resolved that this was only a battle lost, not the war.

After a moment, the General simply stepped back and gestured toward the couch, an offer rather than an order. Cody took it, because, order or not, he had no desire to disobey.

Once Cody identified the pattern, the evidence of it was everywhere. Cody almost found himself impressed. Alpha-17 had once called Cody “a manipulative little shit” and “a masterclass in malicious compliance”, a title which Cody wanted on a plaque. He was beginning to realize, however, that he had nothing on General Kenobi.

The man, crucially, never crossed the line. That was the most irritating part—if he had, Cody could have put a stop to it. But the General was exemplary in how close he skated to the bare minimum.

He ate regularly, the same optimized, nutritional rations that the men ate, although in an amount and configuration formulated for baseline humans without a vod’s enhanced metabolism. He was even instrumental in the occasional pleasant supplement—spices, sugar, fresh vegetables. What he did not often do, however, was partake in that supplement unless it was specifically offered to him. When Greaser found himself with extra sugar, butter, and flour, Kenobi never saw himself with his own shortcake—or if he did, it was snuck onto Wooley’s tray, or Crys’.

Wounds were dealt with quickly and efficiently—but more and more, Cody saw evidence of Obi-Wan’s refusal of bacta in favor of slower, less efficient treatments.

Kenobi socialized with his officers, hosted curated office hours for the rank-and-file, walked the field hospitals during engagements, and made time every Centaxday to review escalated grievance reports. He was there for his men—but always at the exactly appropriate arm’s length away and half step ahead. After a hard battle, Kenobi retreated from view of his troops, letting them come down in the messy, terrible ways that they needed to. At first, Cody had thought that was by preference. But as the gears of war ground on and the shadows in the General’s gaze grew deeper, Cody began to come to the unsettling conclusion that he himself had made an inexcusable mistake: he’d taken Kenobi for granted. He’d assumed.

The exhaustion was starting to show. How Kenobi was first-in, last-out, staying on the ground until only the cleanup LAAT/i’s were left. He was always on the skeleton crew during shore leave. Breaks for the men were taken up by solo missions or Council business or running herd on the mess that was the 501st’s command team.

It was everyone’s needs first, every act of service both asked and implied. Sparring with Anakin, lessons with Ahsoka. Careful machinations to engineer breaks and slack for Cody himself—files mysteriously completed, meetings surreptitiously canceled, choice leave assignments—and all at once, enough was enough.

Cody finally found himself unable to keep quiet, unable to control his scowl, as the 212 ^th settled in for a rare shore leave on a routine ship maintenance stop on Corellia. It may not have been the most aesthetic of surrounds, but Coronet City presented more than enough opportunity for the men to let off steam and find something hopefully non-destructive to do.

Cody had been required to attend an initial transfer authority meeting to remand the ship to the Corellian Maintenance Corps. Afterward, however, he found himself with his duties cleared off the roster—that he himself had developed—and, very politely, he decided to snap. He strode through the mostly-empty halls of the Negotiator, and let himself into General Kenobi’s office, unsurprised to find the man bent over his holoterminal with a frown.

“Sir,” Cody demanded, betrayed. “Did you alter my spreadsheet?”

The expression on Kenobi’s face as he looked up at the sudden intrusion almost made Cody regret his sharp tone. The General’s forehead was pinched, his gaze unfocused, mouth drawn down into a concentrated moue. He looked as if he were in pain, only smoothing out his face with effort as he registered Cody’s presence.

“Commander,” Kenobi answered almost-evenly. “Only a churl would recklessly alter something so sacred.”

Cody grunted, unimpressed. “You said it, not me.”

Kenobi’s gaze twinkled. “I should know better than to expect you not to notice.”

Cody held strong in the face of such overt charm and obvious conspiracy. It was a challenge. “You should.”

The General’s serene smile remained in place, but he collapsed back in his chair with rounded shoulders and a weak wave of is hand. “Well, what’s done is done. You’d best enjoy your unexpected shore leave, Commander. You’re off duty.”

The worst part was—Cody wanted it to be true. He was jonesing for a drink, a nap, and a chance to sit down for five minutes. Part of him, a large part of him, wanted to take the kindness for what it was: a kindness. A reprieve.

But not at Obi-Wan’s expense.

Not like this.

“And you, sir?” he demanded. “Don’t you also deserve a break?”

“Oh, I’ll have one,” Kenobi promised with his wry little smile. “Two days without Barlex coming by with requisition forms or Crys trying to explain to me some opaque nuance of an instrumentation failure? And with Gregor as leave officer, if any of the men finds themselves in trouble, I simply do not need to hear about it. A quiet few days is exactly what I need.”

“This isn’t the comforting assurance that you think it is,” Cody promised, leaning over the desk with a hand braced on the surface. He felt out the edge of the problem, trying to put a finger on why he couldn’t just let it go.

Part of it was that Kenobi—with Cody alone—just looked so defeated. Cody was not used to General Kenobi looking defeated. He was always the banner at the head of their strikes, the last to give in, the rallying cry of them all.

Now, here, in his single layer of casual robes and ensconced in his oversized desk chair, he looked the way that Cody felt most of the time: small, worn, and grey.

The conversation they’d had here in this room a few weeks ago, about bacta and time and duty and burden, came back to Cody, and he went with his instincts.

“You deserve rest too, sir.”

It wasn’t the bomb-drop that he’d hoped it would be. Kenobi didn’t even seem surprised that his was Cody’s argument. His wry smile grew smaller, deeper, more knowing.

“Thank you, Commander,” he said. “Truly. But this isn’t about who ‘deserves’ what.” He let out an amused huff. “I’d daresay that if it was, you yourself would have far more chances for meaningful leave. I simply see an opportunity to allow you some of that rest, and, further, see no reason not to take that opportunity.”

“At your own detriment, sir?”

“Cody,” Kenobi sighed. “I’d hardly call this a detriment.”

“Of course not,” Cody muttered, his frustration loosening his tongue.

Kenobi frowned, expression equal parts annoyed and confused. “Commander?” he asked, sharper than he’d been so far.

“How long,” Cody asked him, “can you keep this up?”

Kenobi drew himself up now, standing from his desk to finally meet Cody’s gaze head-on. It was abrupt, intimidating, but in Cody’s eyes he just looked scared.

“As long as I must,” Obi-Wan said. “If a small sacrifice on my part can bring the slightest bit of relief in this hellish war—then, Cody, I will not hesitate.”

And Cody would not flinch. “This war is not your sole burden to bear.”

General Kenobi’s answering smile was heartbreaking, because it was admission and apology all in one.

He appeared to give in, but Cody couldn’t relax. “Would you be content if I reverted your spreadsheet back?” Kenobi asked.

No. “I would.”

Moments later, Cody’s duty roster was as pristine and fair as it had been that morning. Nodding with satisfaction, Cody rode his private boldness into the ground.

“Thank you, sir,” he said, then, swiping a datapad off Obi-Wan’s desk, Cody dropped right onto the couch.

“Cody—”

“I’d best get through this, sir,” Cody interrupted, not looking up. “So that we can both get to our leave. I assume we’ll be finishing up our duties at the same time.” They’d better be, at least—Cody had designed the spreadsheet that way.

Kenobi threw up his hands with a very small, very genteel growl, collapsing back into his chair and glaring at Cody.

It was a victory sweeter than any he’d seen on the battlefield.

In fact, victories on the battlefield more and more often rang hollow and cruel. With every objective neatly obtained, Cody felt more of his brothers—his brothers— slipping from his grip. Most slipped through on their way to march onwards—and not all at the end of a droid’s blaster. Those were horrible, but at least they were clean. Worse were the brothers who died on operating tables, of field infections. Of blunt force in collapsing buildings. Of neglect, of—of lightsaber wounds, clear, red, and blazing.

Cody sported his own burn for a time, having come a little too close to Grievous’ whirling dervish. The burn healed slowly, and he watched in morbid fascination and painkiller-haze over the next few days as the wound puffed and settled, pulling shiny taut skin overtop itself like a blanket. It throbbed for weeks, still so hot as it touched his blacks, and Cody tended to it as though it were a bonsai tree—with care and respect and a deep, bewildered discomfort that something so simple was beyond his understanding. The next time the General’s saber fell into his hands, a ten-day later in the midst of battle, he lit it and watched it hum and burn, thinking about Waxer, about Wolffe, before sheathing it once more for safekeeping. When the General took it back, he misjudged his proximity, knocking Cody’s bicep—and the injury—as he pulled back. Cody bit his tongue until he tasted blood, but he didn’t flinch.

Engagement followed engagement. Their next was short, but intense; a joint campaign with the 501 ^st . Cody and Rex were left to do what they were made for while the two-and-a-half Jedi – and bets were still open as to whether Ahsoka or Anakin counted as the “half”—ran off to attend to some strategically asinine council business.

In the interim, the fighting was relentless, such that even when Obi-Wan missed a check-in, then two, there was nothing Cody could do but fight harder , grip his blaster tighter, and ride the fear straight through to the bitter end. Rex stood beside him, a baby-brother-shaped pillar of strength, and Cody both loved and hated him for it.

The Jedi came back eventually. Of course they did, all leaning on each other and limping pell-mell into the clean-up crew who were scouring the battlefield for live clankers and dead brothers. The Jedi had been gone for forty-seven hours, during at least thirty-two of which Cody hadn’t known if they were alive or dead. Even when the relief—or perhaps the bone-deep exhaustion—threatened to take Cody out at the knees, he could do nothing but point them adamantly towards the medic’s shuttle and turn back to his duties. There was no time for anything else, nothing Cody could offer but a brisk once-over from ten paces. The details he could glean were unhelpful—a seeping cut across one of Ahsoka’s montralls; dirt and dust caked into Anakin and Obi-Wan’s hair.

“Onto the ship,” he ordered, and he didn’t know what was in his expression or his voice that let him get away with it. They did as they were told, meekly and exhaustedly.

There was no reason for Obi-Wan to cross the space between them; the ship was in the other direction. Cody had no excuse to walk over and put his hand on the man’s shoulder, feel for trembling or blood, reassure himself that he was seeing a flesh-and-blood man and not some desperate mirage. So he didn’t.

There was no reason for Obi-Wan to look behind, to seek Cody out, to give him a tired smile through a split lip and a cheeky tip of his head. Obi-Wan did anyway.

Cody kept working.

As soon as Deadpan pronounced the Jedi ‘fit for duty’ and gave Rex and Cody a hairy stink-eye for the amount of stim patches slid under their blacks and against their wrists, an efficient transfer of authority was undertaken on the bridge, relinquishing control of the men back to Generals Kenobi and Skywalker. The Jedi did not explain themselves; neither Rex nor Cody rated a formal debrief of whatever ossik that had taken priority over pitched battle. But later, much later, into Dorn shift, after the casualties were counted and the hyperdrives were primed, after they’d hopped into hyperspace and were far away, Obi-Wan gave Cody the broad strokes.

“...and, of course, the structure was not stable to begin with, so that amount of pyrotechnics was the final straw.” Obi-Wan explained with a pained sigh. He’d had a chance to take a sonic and get the grit out of his hair, but Cody did not think he’d slept. He didn’t even have the advantage of the fourth stim patch Cody himself had indulged in, knowing he was reaching the edge of his own good sense but needing, needing, to see this through. “So much history—a waste. Although the area was free of the Jedi archaeology that the Council suspected was present, it did hold a host of other culturally important artifacts. It’s far too bad the local fauna was so determined that we leave in pieces—and that attracted a contingent of droids. Still, I find the resolution to be overkill--”

The General was rambling, but Cody did not mind. Although the privilege was likely the result of Kenobi’s sleep deprivation and adrenaline crash, it was a wonder to see him at his least-functional. Cody had been witness to the state before, but only briefly, brightly, in the mad heat of battle. Not after, not like this. It made him wonder—if Cody was not here, who would Kenobi be speaking to? Who would be making tea at his console table, bringing it to the couch, easing Kenobi’s shoulders down from around his ears?

Would anyone?

“Thank you, my dear,” Obi-Wan said softly, distantly, taking the mug from Cody and staring at it for a moment, as if contemplating the contents of a pond. The crash would be soon, then.

That was good. Cody needed to put Obi-Wan to bed, so that he could go back to his own quarters, clean his deece, and finally, finally sleep.

“Surely cleaning your weapon can wait until morning?”

Cody startled, blinking rapidly at his own mug of hot water—it had sounded better than trying to stomach Obi-Wan’s horrible pear tea, or risking caf—realizing he’d said the last part out loud.

“Your weapon is your life,” he intoned automatically, filter amazingly shredded—how was he just finding that out? He tried to cover. “That is, the Kaminoans—the trainers. They taught us--Well. Someone’d have my head for having my service weapon in less than perfect order, especially if it malfunctioned when I needed it.” It wasn’t a smooth explanation, but Obi-Wan nodded as if he understood. He might have just been trying to be polite.

Frowning, thinking again of—well, of all the things that had been in the back of his mind since Ahsoka had first sought his advice—he asked: “How do you care for yours?”

“My—my blaster?” Obi-Wan asked, befuddled and somewhat adrift, before he took a deep breath and rallied. “Oh, you mean, my saber?”

Cody nodded, gesturing vaguely. “I assume you—clean it? Or does it just. Do that by itself?” he finished lamely, knowing that was the wrong answer but not quite capable of putting his finger on why.

Still, Obi-Wan, in his infinite kindness, did not so much as snort at the ridiculous question. He shook his head, expression earnest. “No, there is a process, which has a similarity to field-stripping a rifle, I suppose. I could perhaps teach--” he stopped himself, looking lost.

“Sir?”

“Sorry, Cody, I’m afraid that I’ve been rambling,” Obi-Wan said with a self-effacing grin, looking down and blinking slowly. “I think we should both, finally, get some rack time.”

Nothing ever had sounded so sweet. But Cody had to push, anyway. “And you will?” he prodded.

In response, Obi-Wan let out a face-shattering yawn. His hand flew up to cover his mouth, eyes wide and startled. “Oh dear.”

Cody threw his head back and laughed, loudly and freely, tears forming at the corners of his eyes.

“Well, rather,” Obi-Wan sniffed, but his cheeks were dusted pink, and he looked glassy-eyed as his gaze met Cody’s.

“Alright, I believe you, then,” Cody agreed, levering to his feet. “Sleep well, Obi-Wan.”

“Sleep well, my dear,” Obi-Wan replied softly. “You’ve done well today.”

It wasn’t until Cody reached his own quarters, hurled himself through the ‘fresher, and was flat out in bed that, as he dropped off the precipice of sleep, that he realized he never had cleaned his blaster.

Cody woke far too early, but it was to Longshot and to a cup of starship-fuel-grade caff, so he let it slide.

“I’m on Commander Duty today,” the vod said, hurling up a jaunty salute as Cody staggered to his door in only his bottom blacks. “And the boys say they’ve been missing you in the mess, so sounds like my first duty is to get some food in you.”

Cody muttered something uncomplimentary and slid the door shut in his face. Unperturbed, Longshot keyed it right back open—Cody had, once again, forgotten to hit the manual lock—and waited patiently while Cody dressed.

“I won’t tell the command team you forgot to clean your armor after the engagement,” Longshot promised with faux-innocence. “I’m sure they’d never let you live it down.”

Cody threw his detailing brush at Longshot’s head, switching to a polishing cloth as he continued with his hasty scrub-down, the lack of rest after such an arduous battle feeling like a hangover. Guiltily, he holstered his service weapon, promising silently to care for it as soon as he could shake his troopers’ misplaced watchfulness. He certainly couldn’t do anything about it now, or he really would never hear the end of it.

“I’ll alter the next rotation’s range assignments so you get Esk run,” he promised as he clicked on his boots. Longshot’s eyes lit up.

“Wizard, it’s the only part of the gun range where the sound-dampeners actually work and the reverb from the hull doesn’t threaten to rattle your brain right out.”

Cody just grunted, standing to go. “Well? I thought we were eating.”

Longshot followed him out with a smirk.

When they got their food and went to sit, Cody was gratified to see most of Ghost already scattered across clustered tables. He was greeted with a few hasty waves of cutlery, and Crys’ customary cup of tea—he’d picked up the General’s bad habit—half-raised in a lazy toast.

The last battle had been tough on everyone, but casualties were relatively few; everyone was just exhausted. Still, Ghost took care of their own as best they could. Cody had been half-expecting the escort, as someone always did come to find him after an engagement if he was deemed to not be recovering acceptably. A few minutes later, Boil dragged Deadpan in by the elbow as well, and something in Cody settled further, watching his men bully and nanny each other into food, banter, and even a few cracked smiles.

Cody surreptitiously texted Rex under the table.

[CC-2224] How are you?

Rex replied immediately, with a selfie taken on his wrist-comm of himself buried beneath a Pile of Torrent.

[CT-7567] lol

[CT-7567] hows the gen?

Cody frowned at his own comm, trying to parse the question.

[CC-2224] Fine? Hopefully asleep.

[CT-7567] o good. K ommandika said he pulled a miracle to get them home yesterday

Cody’s heart sank without his permission.

[CC-2224] Is that so?

[CT-7567] go be intimidating elsewhere. I dontknow anythng else. Tano’s just mad hes allowed to drop his saber and shes not

[CC-2224] His saber appears to be in his possession.

[CT-7567] yeah well it wasnt for at least half their mission if the menace is to be believed

Cody grit his teeth, chugging the rest of his caff and standing. He gave Ghost a nod and, likely seeing that he’d eaten and hydrated, they looked appeased and willing to let him go about his day. One-handed, Cody typed out his response.

[CC-2224] Get some rest. You did well yesterday, Rex. If your General tries to pull you into shenanigans before you get at least a full cycle of downtime, he’ll answer to me.

[CT-7567] thx

[CT-7567] buir.

Cody snorted and let the conversation die, already working through the problem set as he prowled the halls of the Venator. He hadn’t missed that Kenobi was nowhere to be found that morning, and even after Cody gave him the benefit of the doubt to check the command staff gym and the officer’s recc room, there was neither hide nor hair of him.

So, he likely hadn’t eaten, and no one was making sure he got sleep—or woke up. Gritting his teeth, Cody realized that this wasn’t unusual. How many times had the vod’e been left to recover in peace from a hard campaign, far from the surveilling eye of their General? Nearly all of them. And it could be politeness, or the General’s fierce and strange moral compass to give his men their privacy, but the sinister fact was that it once again came at his own cost.

As Cody stalked on, now certain of where he was headed, his hand absently found its way to his belt—and the saber-holster that he’d clipped there, nearly two years ago.

Your lightsaber is your life—

--physical remnant of their souls—

--at least half the battle—

“Ah, Cody, come in,” General Kenobi said, and Cody realized he’d made it to the General’s quarters, knocked, and had his knock answered, all without his conscious approval.

He rallied fast. “Sir,” he answered deferentially, stepping neatly inside.

Kenobi looked—off. It took Cody a moment to understand why. The man was standing in the middle of the anteroom in long, soft pants and a long-sleeved shirt, but with his dark brown outer robe draped overtop. It was still dust-worn and battlesmoked, likely thrown on in a hurry. Beneath the pants legs peeked the soft felt of house-slippers.

Cody was no stranger to Kenobi in the middle of the night; no stranger to waking him at terrible hours for this fire or that. They shared a command tent in battle for kriff’s sake, sleeping in cots on either side of a support pole, cramped so close they could easily lock hands across the divide.

But this? This was another kind of intimacy. It was a soft exhaustion; not the weariness of battle or the strained half-alert adrenaline of a code red. It was a falling apart , an after, and Cody felt a tug knowing he’d tumbled Obi-Wan from his bed, from the warmth of real rest; and Obi-Wan had come anyway, knowing it was Cody at the door.

(He knew. He always knew.)

(And Cody knew then. He’d always known.)

“Sir,” Cody said, voice cracking, bottoming out on the word. “It’s about our conversation from last night.” He took a breath, and shoved his trepidation down deep. The request he made next surprised even him. “Would you show me how to care for your weapon?

Obi-Wan blinked at him, lips parted in a bemused moue. “Cody, are you quite alright?”

Cody wanted to laugh, if only because he felt deeply not alright at all. And Obi-Wan looked worse than he felt. Instead, he said, “I find it in my possession more often than I should. I’d--” he took a gamble, deploying his weapon, “I’d feel more secure if I knew how to care for it properly.”

Cody could have thrown himself out of a moving LAAT/i, because—what did it say about him, that he knew this tactic would work? What else had Cody missed?

And work it did. Obi-Wan looked positively alarmed, faced with an irresistible lure—the chance to care for another being, to do Cody a favor. And Cody felt like the bottom of a boot-tread, playing dirty like that, but it would benefit Obi-Wan in the end. Cody swore it would.

“Well. It’s not terribly complex, to at least field strip it. You certainly don’t need to be force sensitive. Sit down and I’ll fetch it, and the tools.”

Cody waited until Obi-Wan had disappeared into his sleeping room. He did not sit down. Instead, he crossed to the hot water boiler and began making tea.

After the General returned, it took them long moments to be arranged to Obi-Wan’s liking. He deemed the desk too uncomfortable to work at together, and their customary positions on the same couch to be too awkward. The caff table was too short to be a work surface—unless one knelt on the floor. And, given that Obi-Wan was in fact a Jedi and did in fact have a preponderance of meditation pillows because of this designation, that is exactly what they did—Cody with his back toward the couch, Obi-Wan with his back toward the door.

Obi-Wan laid the saber on a soft-looking micropoly cloth that he’d draped across the table. Next to it, he lay a ring of brass plated tools, each with a differently shaped head. Some were flat, others pick-like, and two or three resembled wire brushes in various thicknesses and sizes.

“You must understand, of course, that the traditional way to go about this is strictly telekinetic. Younglings are taught to care for their weapon with nothing but their connection to the Force to guide them. It is a difficult lesson, but a necessary one,” Obi-Wan began, warming to his subject almost immediately. Cody concealed his fondness at watching the man drop effortlessly into the role of a lecturer, focusing on instead memorizing and internalizing every instruction. “The process for selecting one’s first crystal is intensely personal, but it is often not until this lesson, that of assembly and disassembly, that the younglings truly understand that their crystal is part of themselves.”

Cody suppressed a shudder, staring at the saber between them. It was one thing to hear this from Mace, and another, somehow, to have the significance of the saber confirmed by Obi-Wan himself. For a moment, he doubted his plan. As if he had any right to--

“What...is that?” Cody asked, brow furrowing as he pointed to a spiderweb of cracks near the head of the emitter.

Obi-Wan peered at his weapon, turning it towards him. “Oh, that. It took some damage yesterday. Silly mistake, honestly, but when the droid flung me into the wall, my lightsaber left my grip and was flung into the one opposite.”

Cody’s body flushed hot, then cold, the image in his head dire. “That was not...part of your informal debrief,” he said, gritting his teeth.

Obi-Wan flapped a hand dismissively. “Yes, well, it was all a bit chaotic for a moment. It’s fine, of course. Doesn’t damage the integrity of the weapon.”

That was not the point, but Cody could not find a way to voice his sudden upset before Obi-Wan was moving on.

“In any case, it will be a perfect case study to show you how it all comes together. Now, as I said, telekenetics is a traditional tool, but there are many reasons why it would be impractical for exclusive use, so there are manual tools that can aid in lightsaber maintenance…”

Cody wrenched his mind back to the words that his General was offering. When Obi-Wan paused to demonstrate, he reached out his hand almost without thought.

“Could I--” Cody swallowed, unsteady. “Could I do it?”

For the second time that morning, this seemed to stymie Obi-Wan, but he recovered quickly.

“Of course, Cody,” he murmured. “It—it would be a good way for you to learn.” Carefully, he slid the saber and its cloth rest across the table. “I’ll show you where the screw-catches are.”

And so Cody, with hands that were too disciplined to shake and yet somehow not too battle-roughened to be gentle, prised open his General’s beating heart.

Inside was a maze of cathodes and wires, complex and inert but still humming with purpose. Within them nested a metal cylinder, and Cody knew it to be kyber; he could feel it in his teeth.

“You needn’t be an electrician, although it may look intimidating,” Obi-Wan offered, misinterpreting the source of Cody’s overwhelm. “You needn’t do much at all, really. Just check and make sure none of the wires are loose, or that moisture hasn’t corroded the attachment points. Lightsabers are hearty, but accidents are known to happen.”

That caused Cody to snort inelegantly, but at Obi-Wan’s encouraging look, he pressed his fingers inside the saber casing.

Gently, he parted the wires, feeling the plasti-coating slip coolly against his fingertips. He gave the first an experimental tug and, finding it secure, felt more confident on the next, and the next.

“A visual inspection is usually sufficient,” Obi-Wan said, dryly but softly. “You needn’t check each one.”

“Does it help, though?”

“Oh,” Obi-Wan paused. “Well, certainly its thorough; I just cannot often find the time.”

Cody looked up to find Obi-Wan staring across at the saber in Cody’s hands.

“This is important,” Cody said.

Obi-Wan opened his mouth, but did not voice a dissent, and Cody continued with his work. He felt along every wire, inspecting them carefully for damage or neglect. At the base of one, he found a few discolored patches. He raised his eyes to Obi-Wan again, who looked somewhat distracted.

“It’s a surface blemish,” Obi-Wan responded to Cody’s questioning eyebrow. “Not corrosion.”

“Is that what the wire brushes are for?” Cody asked, gesturing at the ring of tools.

“Yes, but it’s not necessary to--”

Obi-Wan trailed off as Cody picked the smallest brush from the bunch, working at the stain with short, gentle strokes. The metal around it lightened considerably, and out of curiosity, Cody continued to brush at the casing, knowing Obi-Wan would intervene if it would do damage. It was satisfying to see the way the rest of the casing responded to the polish, brightening subtly even where it was not obviously stained.

“Cody, you don’t need to do all that,” Obi-Wan suggested.

“Am I hurting it?” he asked, curious but knowing the answer. When Obi-Wan shook his head, Cody nodded and continued, completing his task with concentration and care. When he was finished, he looked to brush the outside of the casing as well, until he saw the damaged portion again.

“How do I fix the emitter?” Cody asked, frowning at the thin, spidering crack.

“The part--” Obi-Wan’s voice wavered. “Apologies. The parts are modular, they’ll just twist off. I’ve got--” he stood in a single, strained motion, striding to the sleeping chambers with a stiff gait. He was back in moments, with a new emitter head clutched in his fingers. He held out his hand for the lightsaber.

“Will you allow me to do it?” Cody asked.

Obi-Wan froze with wide eyes, and they flicked from Cody’s face to the weapon in his hands and back again.

“Please?”

Silently, deliberately, Obi-Wan reached across the table and dropped the replacement piece into Cody’s waiting grip.

It was easy. Obi-Wan had been right; with a firm twist of his fist, the damaged emitter came free. Cody frowned at the grit that had subsided into the threads that held the piece together. He brushed the worst of the grains away, then, tugging at the corner of the cloth where the tools were arranged, he used the edge of it to polish the rest free. Only then did he screw down the new emitter-mouth.

Cody felt his heart beating in his ears as he bent to the work, his fingertips alight with every new sensation of metal curves and screws against his skin. He’d picked up this weapon so many times, but never had he dared to touch it like this. He’d worn it pressed so close to his body, but never had he known how to care for it, the way it deserved.

More fool him, for not learning sooner. It felt so right and so precious to be able to do so now. The saber was a marvel of technology, ruthlessly efficient and serviceable, but Cody could clearly see that it had been touched only with necessity for so long.

Cody felt the hot metal under his palms and he held it with reverence and felt something else building in him, rising quickly like the waves under Tipoca, hurling into the back of his throat and behind his eyes. He held the weapon and he loved it. It kept Obi-Wan safe, but more than what it did, Cody loved it for what it was.

Without conscious thought, without knowledge or permission, Cody felt his hands stray toward the carved cylinder in the middle of the nest of wires. It was easy, now, to see how it fit into the rest, and how simple it would be to slide out. His fingers caught on the ridged grooves of the coupling, twisting it with care, and there was a pressurized hiss as the kyber well began to emerge from the bottom.

“Cody,” Obi-Wan interrupted, voice barely a whisper. It caught like barbs in his throat, rough and unsteady. “I—It does not require all this.”

The wave of emotion that had risen in Cody sharpened, acid behind his teeth and beneath his tongue, reminding him why he was here, what he meant to do. He looked up to meet Obi-Wan’s gaze, but found it flitting elsewhere, just out of his reach.

“It does, Obi-Wan,” Cody said, and his voice was too loud, too hard for such a fragile moment. “It—you--deserve more than fit for duty.”

“Cody, it is adequate, it is functional--”

“That’s what the Kaminoans would say about us,” Cody said. “No matter what happened to us, if we could still fight, it was alright. We were ‘adequate’ and ‘functional’.”

“And that’s perfectly barbaric,” Obi-Wan snapped, voice immediately full of ice and ire. “You are a man, not a product. You all are, and you deserve more care than what is 'adequate'"

"And yet,” Cody asked, “is this weapon not as yourself?”

Obi-Wan's eyes widened. He subsided, sinking backward. “Who told you that?” he asked, not accusing, sounding lost.

“Anyone I could think to ask,” Cody replied.

“You’ve been—asking?”

“There is so much I don’t know about you, about the Jedi,” Cody said. “I’m tired of stumbling in the dark, not when I am finally at the edge of understanding.”

You are, you are , the kyber whispered to him. Kote! It called him by name.

So Cody slid the cylinder free. From the end of it, he shook out three small crystals, and they sat primly in the palm of his hand.

He stared . Cody could no more wrest his attention away from them as he could fly. The crystals were so small, delicate, and clear—but for a vein of ice-blue, and a certain backlit tint. They appeared inert, but against his skin they were warm and they pulsed. They were alive, beating like a heart.

Obi-Wan’s heart.

As Cody thought it, the kyber flared with light, blinding bright, warm and unmoored. Instinctively, Cody folded his fingers around them, and they continued their rapid pulse, at once unworldly and fragile. Cody wanted to hold them inside his chest for safekeeping so he could protect them forever, until he marched toward the stars.

He pulled his fist to his ribs, hunching his shoulders, dipping his head. Reverently, like bowing to a stellar saint, he pressed his lips to his own knuckles, daring not be closer.

A sob echoed from across the table, and Cody’s head jerked up.

“Obi-Wan?”

Tears ran unchecked down Obi-Wan’s cheeks and his fingers were pressed, shaking, to his lips. “It hurts.”

Cody almost dropped the crystals in his panic, and he thrust his fist back over the dropcloth so he could deposit them gently, but Obi-Wan’s own hands shot out and curled around Cody’s, keeping it closed. The tears continued to come, and they fell against the table. Cody couldn’t even find the words to ask what was going on, what had he done wrong, but Obi-Wan didn’t need him to.

“I’ve never had anyone—I didn’t know.” He stopped himself, visibly gathering his voice back to him. “I didn’t think you saw me,” Obi-Wan murmured.

How dare the galaxy destroy Obi-Wan’s senses so thoroughly, to deprive him of this? Cody met Obi-Wan’s eyes full-on, the blue expanding into every corner of him. “You’re all I’ve ever seen.”

Cody’s hands were so warm where Obi-Wan held them. Obi-Wan looked away, but he did not let go.

“It’s not your place to have to care for me,” Obi-Wan said plaintively, and in the words Cody could hear an old fear in him, though Cody did not know the shape of it. The ire rose instantly.

“Hang my place!” Obi-Wan startled at the volume, but still did not pull away. Cody went on. “The galaxy would tell me my place—that I am destined for war and for nothing else. Would you presume to tell me the same?”

“Never,” Obi-Wan breathed in horror. “No, Cody—I just—It is I that ought to take care of you.”

Such selfless nonsense . Cody wanted to rage. Of all of the beings in all of the galaxy that owed debts to the vod’e , Obi-Wan would not be one of them. He had so many words on the end of his tongue, his free hand curling into a fist, thinking to fling himself at the universe itself, make the fabric of it bleed.

But the misery in Obi-Wan was a palpable thing, and Cody could no more exacerbate it than he could let this go.

Cody, instead, did the harder thing. He willed his voice to gentle, to back down off the edge it was teetering on. “And you do.” Their hands were still clasped, elbows braced against the table. He squeezed the kyber tighter. “We care for each other. Let me be your equal in this.”

“It’s not fair.”

Cody nodded. “I know.”

Slowly, Obi-Wan withdrew his hands, pressing them instead to the table-top, flexing ever so slightly against the surface.

“You are my equal in all things, Cody,” Obi-Wan said, subdued.

Cody understood. He might have replied, but then the crystals were speaking to him again, insisting. Curious, he followed their urgency, peering inside the casing that held them. It was discolored with age, undamaged but needing a thorough polish. Cody finally released the kyber from his hands to sparkle against the micropoly, instead turning his attention to their home.

His heart sank as he did. This was the regard that Obi-Wan had for his own soul. And that was something that Cody could not fix, nor polish away. All he could do was this. He thought it over and over as he slid the brush inside the case, softly circling it, coming back again and again to spots he’d missed. He thought it as he pressed another cleaning cloth inside to dust the corners; he thought it as he completed his work, sliding the crystals back home with a grateful chime, piecing the weapon back together until it gleamed dully, beautifully in the flourescent lights.

This is all I can do, Cody thought desperately. Inadequate though it was, though, he would do it over and over again, if he was allowed. He would do anything he could to protect the pieces of Obi-Wan’s heart; just as those pieces would in turn shelter him and his men.

Facing the emitter toward himself, Cody offered the weapon back to Obi-Wan, who took it with trembling fingers.

“This is enough,” Obi-Wan promised him, shocked and quiet still.

“It has to be,” Cody acknowledged, fierce and lonely. They regarded the lightsaber held between them.

This would have to be enough, until the end of the war, until they were someone else, both of them, until their places in the galaxy were not nailed into their shoulder blades and the backs of their skulls.

“So keep it safe for me,” Cody said, even though it was not his right at all.

“For you,” Obi-Wan agreed, “I will try.”

This is enough, the kyber sang, and this time, it felt like only joy between them.