Archive of Our Own ^beta

Sidious waited until the door had fully closed behind his visitor before leaning back in his chair and letting himself smile. For a moment, he allowed himself to indulge, reaching out to feel the delicious echoes of that anger, that rage, the resentment, the fear —so powerful already, and the boy wasn’t even Fallen, yet.

But he would Fall, in the end. Oh, he would. Sidious could taste it already, victory tantalizingly close. Anakin Skywalker would Fall. He would become Sidious’s. And once he did, the culmination of the Grand Plan would be upon them. At last, Sidious would have his victory.

Skywalker had come so close to Falling already, swinging ever closer towards the Dark as this war dragged on. It was a beautiful thing to watch, the corruption of that Light. Sidious might have resented the lengthy process it had taken to get to this point—a decade already, and still, it would be a bit longer—had it not been so satisfying to watch the process.

The boy was already his. All that was left was for him to take that final step. He already resented the Jedi, already saw them as weak, callous, uncaring—the opposite of everything Sidious had presented himself to be. Yes, by now, it was only a matter of time.

But, admittedly, the process was dragging on longer than Sidious had thought it would. He had ensured that, by the time the war began, Skywalker was too volatile for the pressures that would be placed upon him. There was no way he would be able to cope while remaining within the Light—and yet, somehow, he clung to those last tethers to it. By now, of course, Sidious knew why.

Obi-Wan Kenobi.

The boy—oh, yes, he was still a boy as well, too young when he became Skywalker’s Master and still too young when they had given him the rank itself—had been a thorn in Sidious’s side for far too long already. First, he had the gall to not only survive Naboo when his Master died, but he also managed to take Maul out of play. Then, once Sidious had taken office and begun manipulating the mission assignments given to the Jedi, sending Kenobi on the most difficult and dangerous to be found, altering the briefs to mask the danger in them, he survived all of those as well. And the war itself had been brimming with opportunities to kill Kenobi at last: every time he sent Dooku, Grievous, or Ventress after him, Sidious eagerly awaited news of Kenobi’s death. But it was news that never came.

It was baffling, truly—how could he have managed to survive everything Sidious had thrown at him? He was hardly that powerful in the Force, of middling ability at best. Despite the glowing reputation he’d cultivated within the Order, Kenobi was a mediocre Force-wielder at most. So how was it that he continued to survive the unsurvivable?

Had Kenobi been any less rooted in the Light, then his survival would hardly have been an obstacle. Sidious wanted Skywalker, that was true, but he would have accepted a package deal. But not only did it seem utterly impossible to push Kenobi into a Fall, it seemed equally impossible to push Skywalker over that edge so long as he remained attached to Kenobi. His former-Master served to provide those last tethers to the perverted Light Side of the Force—which was equally as baffling as Kenobi’s ability to survive. Sidious had carefully stoked Skywalker’s anger and resentment towards the Jedi as a whole, but more specifically, he had focused on Kenobi. And Skywalker did resent him, there was no doubt about that.

But Anakin Skywalker loved Obi-Wan Kenobi just as much as he hated him. And that was a problem.

If not for Kenobi, Sidious would likely have put an end to this farce of a war already. Victory was within reach, just waiting for Sidious to seize it—and yet, he couldn’t. Not until he could guarantee that Skywalker would be on his side, in the end. Should Skywalker fight against him… That could be enough to jeopardize the Plan. And he simply couldn’t have that.

But Kenobi would not Fall, and he simply would not die. Dooku, Grievous, and Ventress alike had all tried and failed countless times by now. And it was far too early to activate Order 66—his hands were damnably well-tied until he could be assured of Skywalker’s loyalty. It was a truly maddening conundrum. He had considered sending Kenobi undercover, on a mission that would require faking his death, and forbidding him from telling Skywalker specifically, claiming they needed the boy to sell the cover, but… That may not be enough—nor could Sidious guarantee that Kenobi would obey that instruction. When it came to Anakin Skywalker, Kenobi was not always the perfect, rule-abiding Jedi he appeared to be. No, Kenobi truly needed to die—and yet all of Sidious’s tools had failed to accomplish that task.

Perhaps, though… Perhaps there could be a way. He would never have to touch Kenobi, never have to make an attempt in-person, to kill him. Oh, there would be risk in it, should the Jedi figure out how to stop him, should they sense who was behind it, but…

No great reward came without a bit of risk—and, as the saying went, if one wanted something done right, one simply must do it oneself.

Yes, one way or another… Soon enough, Obi-Wan Kenobi would die.

Cody subtly glanced at the chrono on his vambrace and tried to keep from frowning. It was 0815, and the General still had yet to join them: he was late. General Kenobi was never late, not for something like this, a routine, pre-arranged meeting. And he had already sent out queries to every officer and squad leader onboard the ship, asking if anyone had seen him this morning, either in the general mess, the officer’s mess, or the training rooms, but… Nothing. No sign of him.

Something was wrong. Cody wasn’t Force-sensitive, but even he thought he could actually feel that something was amiss, here.

“I wouldn’t worry too much, Commander,” Boil said, leaning over to him and speaking quietly, a bit of a smirk on his face. “Maybe our prayers have been answered, and he finally overslept, for once.”

Cody scoffed. General Kenobi never slept enough, and oversleeping was firmly outside the realm of possibility. It was far more likely to find the General doing datawork in his office or working through katas in the training rooms in the middle of the night cycle than it was to find him sleeping. In one of his brothers, Cody would have worried that the insomnia was a symptom of battle fatigue, but General Kenobi had come to them like that. It just seemed to be the way he was wired—Cody could understand that. The Alpha batch had all been chronic insomniacs, too.

But the point remained: both everything Cody knew about his General and the bad feeling starting to form a pit in his stomach told him that something was wrong.

He got up, grabbing his bucket and tucking it under his arm, and the other officers at the table fell silent. “I’m going to fetch the General,” he said. “I’ll be back in a few minutes, I’m sure, so don’t wander off.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it, sir,” Gregor said, and Cody scoffed again, resisting the urge to roll his eyes. Of all of the brothers here, Gregor and Boil would be the two most likely to do just that, sneaking out when they thought they had a chance. Still, Cody was anxious to get on with it, the bad feeling growing ever stronger with every minute the General was late, so he didn’t deign to respond to that, just shot Gregor a warning look on his way out the door.

The General’s quarters were just down the hall from Cody’s and not far from the conference room they usually used for these meetings, so it was a blessedly short trip there. In under two minutes, Cody was at his door. He tried the chime, first, but got no answer. He tried again, and then a third time, but there was still no sign of movement inside the room. That worry grew stronger.

“Sir?” Cody called, resorting to banging on the door. Plastoid against a metal door could make quite a racket, and a few of the brothers down the hall working on some sort of maintenance paused to stare at him. Cody paid them no mind, continuing to pound on the door. “General? Sir, are you in there?”

And yet, there was still nothing. Not only was General Kenobi an insomniac, he was also a light sleeper, stirring at the faintest sound. So, either he wasn’t inside his rooms, or— Or he couldn’t respond.

The worry crested into outright fear, and Cody did something he’d never done before: he punched his emergency override code into the pad beside the door. He’d had one since the beginning, as did the medics, just in case, but he’d never had occasion to use it before. He hoped that he was just being silly, and the General wasn’t even inside, but—

He had a terrible feeling that something was really and truly wrong.

The lights were off inside the room, and Cody hit the controls for them on his way in. The General was, in fact, still in bed, and he didn’t move or respond when the lights came on, and Cody rushed over to him. It did look as if the General was just sleeping, and he was still breathing, thank the Force, but he looked paler than usual. Cody reached for his arm, wrapping a hand around his wrist and timing his pulse for a few seconds. It was still slow, but the kind of slow that came from peaceful sleep, not a concerning sort of slow. There didn’t seem to be anything wrong, but the General just would not wake up. 

“General? Sir, can you hear me?” Cody said, leaning over him. He got no response. Setting his bucket down on the beside table, careful not to knock over the stack of datapads there—and that told him that the General had been working instead of sleeping again last night, as per kriffing usual—and resorted to putting his hands on the General’s shoulders, shaking him.

Nothing. The General was limp and still and if it weren’t for the fact that he was still breathing, and Cody had felt his pulse already, he would’ve thought the man was dead. Desperate for an answer that made sense, Cody quickly stripped off his vambraces and gloves, then felt the General’s forehead and cheeks; he didn’t feel warm, either—slightly cooler than Cody’s own skin temperature, in fact, but that, too, was normal, just one consequence of Force-use, the General had explained, making them perpetually cold—so it wasn’t a fever.

Swearing under his breath, having exhausted all of the options he could check on his own, Cody let his training take over, maneuvering the General into the recovery position. Then, he hit his commlink controls. Suture, their CMO, was still in that conference room with the others, and they would undoubtedly hear this call as well, but this was too important and too urgent to try to be discreet about it.

“Commander,” Suture said, voice tight. “Where?”

“The General’s quarters,” Cody said. “He’s unresponsive, I don’t know for how long. His breathing is good and pulse is a little slow, but steady, and I already have him in the recovery position.” Cody paused, gently putting a hand on the back of the General’s head, feeling for knots or lumps. “No sign of head trauma.”

“Okay,” Suture said. “I’ll be there in a minute. Stay there, get a proper timing on his pulse for me.”

“Will do,” Cody said, and ended the call. He was thankful for the orders—they gave him something to think about that wasn’t his fear for his General. All the osik this man had survived in the field, and something had happened to him here, on the Negotiator? It was unthinkable. It couldn’t be real.

Shaking his head to clear it, Cody returned his hand to the General’s wrist, and carefully started counting. Suture would be here soon enough, and then they would figure out what was wrong with the General.

Everything was going to be fine.

Before the war, emergency calls from Jedi in the field had been a blessedly infrequent occurrence. Most of them had been close enough to one of the many MediCorps bases to be able to seek aid somewhere in the field, and the most Vokara had generally heard from field Jedi was when their healers at those bases need to ask her opinion on an unusual case; only the Jedi with truly complex histories needed her input specifically from the beginning of their treatment. But once the war had begun… The MediCorps bases were now all but nonexistent, their members spread thin, now, embedded within the various units within the GAR. The calls had become more common, for that reason, those field Jedi reaching out to her first to ask her opinion on whether it was truly necessary to seek out one of the MediCorps Jedi, or if they could get by with traditional healing techniques.

So, when the Padawan on duty at the reception desk came to tell Vokara that there was a priority call holding for her, Vokara was already rising and turning to the cabinet holding the patient file datapads she kept even as she asked the most important question she needed to: “Who?”

“I, ah, didn’t get a name or a number, Master,” Padawan Cherra said, shoulders slumping a little. “But they’re a trooper: the CMO posted with the 212th, on the Negotiator.”

Obi-Wan, then. Vokara pursed her lips, nodding to Cherra, and then opened the cabinet. Obi-Wan’s file was right on top, of course—with the trouble that one got into, she never bothered filing it away with the others sorted in alphabetical order. With that, Vokara shooed Cherra away, back to the reception desk, and headed down the hall to the dedicated long-range comms room kept down here for just this purpose. She focused on booting up the datapad to her patient summary page, highlighting all of the most serious injuries and conditions Obi-Wan had made it through so far in his short life.

Flicking on the terminal, Vokara only had to wait a few seconds before the call was transferred over. “This is Master Healer Vokara Che. And you are?”

“Master Che,” the trooper said. They looked very nearly identical to most of the others she had met, save for the longer-than-usual wavy hair and sideburns.  “This is CT—”

“I was asking for your name,” Vokara said. “Not your number.”

“Captain Suture, CMO of the Negotiator and the 212th.”

“Thank you, Suture. Now, what is wrong with Obi-Wan?” If Suture was surprised at her brusque manner, they didn’t show it, though Vokara would have been more surprised if they had been. Though her no-nonsense manner was somewhat uncommon amongst most Jedi, it was very common amongst healers of all sorts.

“He was found unresponsive in his quarters this morning by Commander Cody,” Suture said. “The Commander went looking for him because he was late for the morning briefing, so we have no idea how long it started before he was found. He hasn’t stirred since, even after being transferred to the medbay. His vitals are stable and in healthy ranges, his pupils are reactive to light, no signs of head trauma, and I’ve run every panel I could think of. I’m not picking up any signs of illness, physical trauma or injury, or any condition that could cause this. His blood sugar is even surprisingly fine, given his eating habits.” Vokara huffed, not quite a laugh, and tapped the summary onto her ‘pad as Suture spoke. Yes, she was well aware of Obi-Wan’s forgetful nature when it came to caring for himself. “Given all of that, I have to conclude that this is likely something to do with the Force. And before you ask, we’ve been in transit for the last week with only a brief supply transfer stop, so there’s been no opportunity for him to give himself Force exhaustion. Still, I double-checked his m-count anyway, and it’s stable, too, and right in the range his file lists.”

“Hmm,” Vokara hummed. “How long, exactly, has it been that you can confirm?”

“Six hours since he was found, but almost certainly more,” Suture said. “He hasn’t actually been seen or spoken to since last night around 2300.” Vokara nodded.

“It may be a vision,” she said. “He was prone to them as a child, though he largely outgrew them besides brief flashes of premonitions. But he became similarly unresponsive during those visions; it sounds much like what you are describing.” Vokara paused, flicking back through his file to the oldest portions. “The briefest vision I have on record for him is two hours, and the longest was two days, though after the first day, I believe it transitioned into Force exhaustion. The average length was five hours.”

“And you think that’s what this is?” Suture said.

“If another Force-user was able to probe at his presence and feel the currents around him, they would be able to confirm that for us,” Vokara said. “However, given that there is no one else with the ability to do so available to you, I must take my best guess. This sounds like what I recall his visions to have been like, and we are not yet outside the normal range of time for one. Continue to monitor his vitals and check his responses to external stimuli, for now, but there is little more you can do at the moment. If he hasn’t come back around by tomorrow morning, comm me back.”

“Yes, Master Che,” Suture said. “If it is a vision, will he require any special care after he comes out of it?”

“He will likely be disoriented,” Vokara said. “It’s difficult to tell, after a vision, what is current reality and what was part of the vision, whether it be of the future or the past. Ensure he’s surrounded by familiar troopers who can keep calm and have good patience; they may have to remind him multiple times where he is, who they are, and when this is. He may also be nauseated, so prepare to keep him on a liquid diet for a few days. Nutrient shakes used to do the trick; he’ll tell you on his own when he’s ready for real food, if that is the case. Fatigue is also normal for the next day or so after a vision.”

“Understood,” Suture said. “Thank you, Master Che.”

“We come to serve, Suture ,” Vokara answered with a little bow. “Keep me updated.”

“Yes ma’am,” Suture agreed, and he didn’t waste any more time on pleasantries before cutting the connection. Vokara stood there for a few moments longer, wrapping up the consult notes in his file, and then she let out a slow breath. It was always such a relief when one of these calls ended this way.

She had known Obi-Wan since he had first been brought to the Temple at three years old, his primary Healer ever since then. He was as special to her as if she’d Found him herself—to know that she didn’t have any true cause to worry about him just yet was a great relief.

But, Vokara reminded herself, she did have plenty of other patients to worry about, thanks to this war. It was time to get back to them—she could do nothing for Obi-Wan now but wait for more news of him.

“You know, Commander, there’s nothing you can really do for him right now.” Cody didn’t look up from his ‘pad, and he buried the urge to snarl at his brother, letting out a slow, deliberate breath and continuing with his formwork. “I’m serious. Just sitting here isn’t going to do either of you any good.”

“I’m not leaving,” Cody said, and he considered it a victory when his voice came out mostly-even, only a little terse. Suture sighed, coming closer and adjusting the blanket covering the General.

“Our brothers are worried, too,” Suture said. “The fact that they’ve barely seen you since you found him, and we’ve been ordered back to Coruscant, now, to take him to the Temple… They’re all worried. Seeing your face would do them some good. I’m not sure they believe me anymore when I try to tell them that physically, he’s fine.”

“This is not ‘fine,’ Suture,” Cody said, finally looking up, glaring at Suture. His CMO huffed, shaking his head.

“You know what I mean,” he grumbled. “By normal medical standards, he is fine—he should be fine. That means it’s Force osik, and we’re already on our way back to the Temple. They’ll sort him out—this is their arena, not ours. The boys just need to hear that reassurance from you.”

Cody stared at Suture for a beat, then shook his head and looked away. He glanced at the General, first, still so pale, unmoving, looking for all the galaxy like he was just sleeping—as he’d looked for four days, now. He couldn’t look at him for long, though, and quickly turned his eyes back to his datapad.

“I don’t think I can,” he admitted. “I’m too worried, Suture. It’s not going to be very reassuring if it comes from me right now.”

“Cody,” Suture sighed. “Brother. They’re Jedi. Sometimes, their magic Force does weird shit that no one else can explain. But this shit that’s weird to us is normal to them. And this is what you do when you have a case you can’t treat on your own: you consult with a specialist. We are taking him to the specialists in Force osik, and that’s all we can do for him right now—but I wouldn’t be too worried just yet. You’ve seen the kinds of insane stuff Jedi can do together. Once we have someone who can… feel whatever the problem is, they should know what to do.”

Cody leaned back in the uncomfortable plastoid chair he’d been camped out in for four days, now—almost consecutively, except for the nights, when Suture pried him up and forced him to go sleep back in his own quarters—and scrubbed a hand over his face. “He’s told me before that even Jedi don’t always understand the Force.”

“And our General beats impossible odds all the time,” Suture said. “And he’s not even up against the impossible, right now—just the unknown. Let’s just get him back to the Temple and see what Master Che has to say before we start worrying, alright?”

“I can’t help but worry, Suture.”

“But you can control how you show it, and how you act on it,” Suture pointed out. “Look, our brothers need your reassurance more than the General needs you watching over him right now. So get out there, grab some dinner in the mess instead of eating here again. Show your face, tell ‘em again that it’s just Force osik, and we’re taking him to the head Healer, but he’s safe and stable for right now. Okay?”

His brother was right, and Cody knew it. The General, by all appearances, was just sleeping—he was still somewhat reactive, so Suture wasn’t calling it a proper coma, thank the Force—but their brothers… They all adored General Kenobi, and they were going to be worried about him, too. As of right now, only their medical staff and Cody had seen the General since Suture had admitted him.

“I’m coming back after latemeal,” Cody said, in a stiff tone that brooked no argument.

“Fine,” Suture said. “You’re still going to leave before lights out, though, and sleep in your own bed. You’ve given the General enough shit for sleeping in those uncomfortable chairs, and I will not hesitate to tattle on you once he wakes up if you even think about disobeying that order.”

Cody rolled his eyes and just grunted an acknowledgement. Suture gave him a triumphant smile as Cody set his ‘pad down on the table beside the General’s bed and began putting his gloves and vambraces back on. Pausing to reach out and smooth back a bit of hair that had fallen into the General’s face, Suture then turned to leave, and Cody reluctantly stood to follow him.

He turned back to the General for a moment, though, and hesitated before reaching out to put a hand on his arm. “I’ll be back soon, sir.”

But, for now… Suture was right. He had a duty to his brothers as well as to his General, and General Kenobi would never forgive him for neglecting them in favor of him—especially not when there wasn’t really anything Cody could do for him.

(And shab, but that was the hardest part of all of this. There was nothing he could do. Whatever was happening, General Kenobi was up against something Cody couldn’t see, understand, feel, or fight. And that was making the worry that much worse.)

Grand Master Yoda looked as ancient as he truly was, now. His ears and eyes were both downcast, his shoulders hunched, and he was leaning heavily on his gimmer stick. Still, Vokara bowed properly to him, and behind her, Commander Cody leapt up to salute.

“Sir!” the Commander said.

“Master,” Vokara added.

“Hmm,” Yoda hummed. He waved a hand at both of them and then hopped up onto the bed, settling himself down beside Obi-Wan, peering at his face. Obi-Wan looked… not quite peaceful, now—more… blank. It was more frightening that Vokara wanted to admit.

As was the fact that even she had no idea what was happening to him.

Yoda didn’t say anything, didn’t address either of them further, and both Vokara and Cody slowly sat down on their respective chairs, settled on either side of Obi-Wan’s bed. They watched in silence as Yoda used an admittedly frivolous application of the Force to set his gimmer stick on the table against one wall, and then he reached out, putting a hand on Obi-Wan’s shoulder, his eyes closing. His breathing deepened and slowed, and Vokara felt his expansive, weighty presence reaching out, filling the room around them and surrounding Obi-Wan.

Or, rather, surrounding whatever was surrounding Obi-Wan in return.

Vokara had never felt anything like it before. When she had first reached out to Obi-Wan, there had been nothing. A sense of a void where she knew a presence should have been. At first, she had feared the worst, wondering if he was somehow braindead, now—it wasn’t unheard of for Force-sensitives to be pulled so deeply into its currents that, while their bodies still lived on, there was nothing there in their minds. Though that was incredibly rare amongst those who had had proper training, and Vokara knew that Obi-Wan had been trained for this, trained to use his bonds as a path back to himself, should he ever dive deeply enough into the Force to begin to lose his sense of self.

But she had been determined, refusing to accept that was what had happened until there was simply no other possible option. It had taken two days and sixteen hours of meditation, but she had finally found something: it wasn’t a void, in truth. It was shielding unlike anything she had ever seen before. Normal mental shielding could be raised and lowered at will, strengthened when they needed to protect themselves and weakened when they wanted to reach out. But these shields were impenetrable, and they were certainly not Obi-Wan’s shields, not his doing.

And they radiated the strongest, most chilling sense of Darkness Vokara had ever felt before. That had left her with no room for doubt: someone had done this to him, though how or what to do about it, she still didn’t know.

So she had called for Grand Master Yoda, stepping into her private office to explain the situation, away from Commander Cody. The 212th had been given two weeks’ leave on Coruscant, and they were all hoping Obi-Wan would be healed by then. But the Commander had yet to leave Obi-Wan’s side for longer than it took for the other clones who were always in and around the Temple to come in and drag him off to one of the refectories for a meal—he even slept here, forcing Vokara to order one of the Padawan-Healers to fetch a cot for him. As… reassuring, in a way, as it was to know that Obi-Wan had such a steadfast Commander at his side in this war, one who sat at his bedside even when they couldn’t be certain that he was even aware of their presences when no one would have blamed him for spending this time to catch up with his brothers…

Well, it was also a nuisance. Vokara was so reluctant to admit to anyone else that she didn’t know what to do —not because she hated admitting ignorance, mind, but only because she knew how important Obi-Wan was, both to others on a personal level—he really was incredibly loveable, and very well-regarded amongst their Order—and as a High General in this war. Admitting that he was ill in some fashion and that they did not know how to help him was likely to cause a wave of panic. Vokara wanted to avoid that outcome as long as she possibly could, and had only admitted to Commander Cody that she wanted a second opinion.

Vokara shook her head to clear her thoughts, suppressing the urge to reach up at stroke at one of her lekku, a self-soothing gesture she thought she had outgrown in her apprenticeship, though it still cropped up from time to time, in difficult cases like this. Similarly repressing a sigh, she forced herself to close her eyes and focus on her breathing, guiding herself into a light trance.

She felt it when Yoda began to retreat, though she had no idea how long it had actually been. Vokara surfaced from the Force as he did, looking to him, hopeful for answers, some plan of action. If anyone could break through that Darkness now surrounding Obi-Wan, it would be him.

But Yoda looked… exhausted, and—how she even dared to think it, she didn’t know— worried.

“Great Darkness, that is,” Yoda said.

“Generals?” Commander Cody spoke up, his voice even, but belied by his presence. He had obviously been taught how to shield, but with the strength of his feelings, his concern and his fear, those shields kept slipping; when he realized, he would bring them back up, only for the cycle to begin again. Vokara had already made a mental note to ask if he had ever tried meditating himself, because attempting to shield those feelings without actually coming to terms with them and releasing them, letting them go, nothing would change. “What happened to him?”

“Some Darkness has wrapped itself around his mind, his presence,” Vokara said. “How, though, I’m not certain. There were no Force artefacts onboard the ship, or any that he came into contact with recently?”

“Not for the last three months, when we went on that retrieval mission to Kaedor,” Cody answered promptly. “And even if there had been any artefacts onboard, the General always uses proper containment procedures—and he ensured we were all trained in and using them ourselves.”

“Of course he did,” Vokara said, a hint of a smile on her face.

“The Shadows and the Archives, I must consult,” Yoda said. “Continue meditating with him, you must, Master Che. Find a weakness in those shields, you must. Reach him, you must.”

“Yes, Master,” Vokara agreed. Cody was frowning outright, then, the first crack in his outwardly blank mask she had seen so far, his shields slipping again as the fear crested higher. No doubt he’d just realized that they had no idea what to do for Obi-Wan, either. “Perhaps you would like to meditate with me, Commander?”

“I… suppose I could, General Che,” Cody said.

“Master Che, dear,” she corrected him automatically.

“Master Che, then. But it would depend on the type of meditation,” he said. “The General taught us a few kinds, but I was… more successful at some than others.”

“If he is aware of us, the more you can manage to quiet your mind, the easier it will be for him to sense your presence,” Vokara said, and the Commander squared his shoulders, his turbulent emotions already starting to settle into determination.

“Just tell me what to do, Master Che.”

The ground shook, the only warning he had before a blast of heat and force hit him. He flew forward, trying—and failing, as usual—to control it with the Force, landing and skidding along the ground. He’d been lucky, as usual, far enough away from the mortar that he hadn’t been caught very badly: just a few burns, and the usual “road rash,” as the others called it, along his arm and side where he’d landed and skidded along the so-called “road,” really just a rocky, relatively flat stretch. Everything hurt—it felt as if his body was just one large mass of bruises, scrapes, cuts, and burns by now—but there was no time to dwell on it.

He had, at least, managed to keep a hold of his blaster, and he scrambled to his feet, stumbling into the cover of one of the crumbling buildings not far off the road. Nevian and Kerra were already there, leaning to the side to shoot before darting back again to dodge return fire, trying to cover the others’ retreat. They nodded to him, the only acknowledgement of his survival any of them had time for, and he took just two seconds to steady his breathing before hefting the too-large blaster up again and starting to shoot right along with them.

He tried not to notice the other bodies on the ground, those who’d been closer to that explosion than he had, but it was impossible not to—not when he knew who they were. Two of them, Beriik and Pasha, were completely still, and he knew they were dead. But Morrin… Morrin was still screaming.

But they weren’t going to make it, he could see that, too, so he forced himself not to break cover to run back for him. There was nothing more he could do—he’d already had his chance, he could’ve done something, could’ve thrown them out of the blast radius with the Force, could’ve halted it in its tracks, could have done something, anything, to save them, but— He just hadn’t been fast enough, hadn’t been good enough, hadn’t had enough control.

Just like always. It was no wonder no one had wanted to take him on as a Padawan.

He just didn’t know what to do. Using the Force in the Temple had been so much easier, where it was calm and Light, but this… Here, surrounded by pain and anger and hatred and death, the Force was so Dark, and he didn’t know how to reach out to the Light when the Dark was omnipresent like this.

It was so Dark—

“General,” someone said, and the voice was familiar, but it was too deep to be one of the other Young. He listened, because he knew, somewhere deep inside him, that he could trust that person, that he needed to listen to them, but he didn’t stop shooting—that was a good way to get killed, and, far more importantly, it was a good way to get others killed. They were counting on him.

He couldn’t fail them.

(He already had.)

“I’ll be right back,” the voice said, and he ruthlessly stamped out the panic that wanted to rise at that, because if they left him, he couldn’t protect them, and he might not have remembered who this was, but he knew they were important, and if they were separated and they died—

But duty had to come before anything and everything else. He knew that, so he would let them go.

He just hoped they would succeed in whatever their mission was.

“I’m just going up one level, to that refectory that serves the spicy stir-fry you always said you wanted me to try,” the voice said, and that had him faltering. He stopped shooting for just a moment, pretending that he had to check his blaster, pretending like it was overheating so the others wouldn’t realize how rattled he was, but—

That didn’t make any sense. Refectory? The spicy stir-fry? That sounded like they were talking about the Temple, but— It couldn’t be. This wasn’t the Temple.

Everything was so Dark, and the Temple was too Light to be like this—

“Or I could stay, and ask someone to bring me some,” the voice said, and he let out a breath. That was… better. They weren’t leaving, and if they didn’t separate, he could cover them. He could make sure they stayed alive. He couldn’t let any more of them die.

(Force, they were all so Young —)

“Padawan Cherra’s going to bring me some,” the voice said, and Ben froze, thinking that through. He remembered that name, he thought, but he couldn’t picture a face, but— That didn’t make any sense, either. There were no other Jedi here—no, there were no Jedi here. He wasn’t one, anymore.

Force, how he missed his lightsaber. He missed the Temple, too, but his duty was here, the Force had been so clear on that, even if Master Jinn hadn’t seemed to sense it. His lightsaber was just more immediately relevant and therefore important than his memories of the Temple.

“You know, I thought she was just trying to make me feel better, at first,” the voice said. “Master Che, I mean. She said that you seemed… a little calmer when I’m around. But I’ve been watching the heart rate monitor, and it almost seems like it’s true.”

Well, none of that made any sense—except for the part where he was calmer with them around. He still couldn’t place who they were, but he knew they were important. He needed to keep track of them, to cover them, to protect them.

But he couldn’t dally anymore, and Ben threw himself around the corner and back into the fight, taking aim at a small group of Elders emerging from the dust and smoke from yet another explosion—

The voice let out a sigh. “I’m not even sure if you can hear me,” they said. “But Master Che thinks it’s possible, and I… Well, if all I can really do is let you know, somehow, that I’m here, then I’ll do it.” Oh. That was… nice. He smiled even as he ducked to avoid blasterfire, and kept listening to that voice. “We’re all worried about you, you know. I think I managed to talk Master Che into letting some of the others visit, though—Ghost Company, at least—”

He froze, the words triggering memories. Ghost Company. They were part of the 212th Attack Battalion— his battalion. He… He was a General (again, and kriff it all, how he wished that he could’ve had enough of war by now—he certainly felt like he’d seen enough of it for a lifetime, but the Force, it seemed, did not agree.

If it was his duty to fight, to go to war, then that was what he would do, of course. But that didn’t mean that it didn’t cut straight to his heart when he had to march into yet another battle).

One of the Elders shot, and the bolt cut straight towards him, but he was frozen in place, he couldn’t move, he was so confused — He was so exhausted, so drained, and everything was so Dark—

Just as the bolt hit his chest, he felt a hand take one of his, squeezing gently. There was no pain, except that everything was already painful, so maybe he just hadn’t truly felt it, but then everything went dark in a literal sense, and there was only that voice, and the feeling of a hand holding his—

“It scares the osik out of me, you know,” the voice said, low and a little rough, their hand squeezing just a bit tighter. “Knowing that you’re fighting a battle I can’t cover you in. But I know you—you’re a fighter. More than that, you’re a survivor. I have to believe you’ll make it. I just… I hope it’ll be sooner than later, General. We need you to come back to us—”

Cody, some part of him realized. That was Cody. Where was Cody? Where was he? What was happening?

Trying to open his eyes met no success, unable to properly feel most of his body, aside from the hand Cody was holding. He—Obi-Wan, he was Obi-Wan, Jedi High General Obi-Wan Kenobi, not Ben, General of the Young of Melida/Daan anymore, that had been a lifetime ago—reached for the Force and almost recoiled in horror at the Darkness that rose up to meet him. But he didn’t pull back, didn’t turn away—he knew how to get through the Darkness, and he had to, because Cody needed him. He’d said so himself.

Careful not to draw it into himself, he slowly, deliberately began to push, trying to break through that Darkness, and—

Oh, Force, that hurt, that hurt more than Rattatak, more than Zigoola, it was like being set on fire, excruciating, agonizing pain, but still, he didn’t stop. He could endure, he could, he could, and he would. He kept going, and going, and going, until—

Obi-Wan thought, for a moment, that he had broken free of that Darkness. He thought, at first, that he had simply woken up, coming back to awareness. His surroundings came into view, and he immediately identified it as a room in the Halls of Healing—the Temple. He was in the Temple, and that meant he was safe.

(But why was there so much Darkness if he was safe in the Temple?)

The familiar, soothing tans and light blues of the Halls, the shelves of plants to invite the Living Force in, all had him relaxing a little. Obi-Wan still had no idea what was happening, what he’d managed to do to himself this time, but if he was in the Halls, then all would be well—

Except that he still couldn’t feel his body, he realized. He couldn’t feel. He looked around for someone, anyone else, Cody or Master Che—and find Cody, he did. He was sitting in one of the chairs by the bed, looking so tired and worn and so worried that Obi-Wan immediately wanted to apologize for the concern he’d caused him, wanted to tell him to go rest, wanted to soothe his upset, but—

But the next thing he processed was the fact that he was standing beside the chair Cody was in, and he was also in the bed, pale and unmoving, and Cody was holding his hand.

Oh, wonderful, he thought to himself, perhaps a little hysterically. I’m having an out of body experience.

It took a bit of time for Obi-Wan to calm himself down enough to think somewhat more rationally and take stock of the situation. Reaching out to the Force was immensely painful: each time, he was met with overwhelming Darkness wrapped tightly around him, pressing down on him as if trying to strangle his very being, to smother it into nothingness. He was obviously in the Halls of Healing, and Cody was with him, so his physical form was safe. That was… something, at least. But his presence, his spirit…

Obi-Wan had detached himself from his body, he realized that much. This wasn’t just an out of body experience—he had actually psychically detached his spirit, his presence, from his body. That would be dangerous, if he didn’t return to himself before too long. But he thought he had enough time to observe, to see what happened around him.

Vokara entered the room, smiling wearily at Cody, the rapid motion of her lekku the only sign that betrayed her agitation. “Cody,” she said, grabbing the datapad that held Obi-Wan’s chart from its holder at the foot of the bed.

“Master Che,” Cody returned. Interestingly enough, Cody didn’t let go of his hand, now that he was being observed—he’d done it before, usually when Obi-Wan was in that twilight state of sedation after a stint in a bacta tank, when he was semi-aware and not truly conscious, and every time, as soon as another person had entered the room, he had jerked back as though burned. But he didn’t, now, and that was enough to tell Obi-Wan how worried he really was.

“Vokara,” she said. “We’re seeing too much of each other lately to stand on that sort of formality.” Cody didn’t make a face, didn’t so much as blink, so Vokara must have felt something from him in the Force, because she just sighed. “We’ll work on it. How’s he been?”

“Mostly calm,” Cody answered. “There were a couple of times his heart rate spiked, but he leveled out quickly enough.”

“Hmm. Any physical response?” Vokara asked.

“No.”

Vokara nodded and leaned over him, taking out a light and opening one of his eyelids, shining the light into it—watching his pupil reaction, Obi-Wan realized. She was testing to see if he was in a coma.

…was he in a coma? Was that what this was? But that still didn’t explain the Darkness that seemed as if it was trying to kill him.

“Both pupils are reactive,” Vokara said. “That’s good.” She slipped the penlight back into her pocket and made a few more notes on his chart. Obi-Wan decided to try something, going around to the other side of the bed.

“Vokara,” he said, reaching out to try to touch her shoulder, but— His hand went right through her, and she didn’t react. She couldn’t see him, couldn’t sense him. That was… strange. Obi-Wan had obviously used the Force to separate his physical body and his consciousness, but she couldn’t sense him at all—

But, then, every time he consciously tried to reach out to the Force, he only felt that Darkness and an all-consuming agonizing pain.

It was shielding him, Obi-Wan realized. It was acting like a shield, kept between himself and the Force. He had just moved his presence, shields and all, out of his body. It had left it intact. That meant that someone, or something, had wrapped that Darkness around him, but who? And how? And why?

And how was he meant to stop it?

“Knight Skywalker and his battalion will be here tomorrow,” Vokara said without looking up from the datapad. Obi-Wan caught the way Cody stiffened, and Vokara, again, must have sensed some further reaction in the Force—that was strange. Cody usually had excellent mental shields unless he was purposefully trying to let Obi-Wan feel him. Perhaps, he thought, Cody was just too tired to maintain them constantly—he certainly looked exhausted enough for that. “Yes, I quite agree. Skywalker is… Well, he cares for Obi-Wan a great deal, but he is… intense. Don’t worry too much about him, though—if he disrupts the peace and quiet of my Halls, then I will bar him. He knows that by now.”

Oh, Force. The actual content of that exchange finally processed, and that was not good. If he couldn’t return to himself and break through that Darkness before Anakin arrived… Suffice to say that Vokara was right to be concerned about the intensity of Anakin’s reaction. Obi-Wan would have to figure this out by then.

“Was General Skywalker already told about… the General’s condition?” Cody asked.

“Yes,” Vokara said. “Masters Windu and Yoda commed personally to inform him after the first week.”

The first week? It had been more than a week? Sweet Force.

“The Senate is starting to talk about sending the 212th back out,” Cody said softly. “The Council fought to extend it, citing the benefits for the General’s healing, having familiar presences around, but they’re getting restless.”

“I know,” Vokara said, and then she paused, looking up. “We will do what we can.”

“I know you will,” Cody said, mustering a smile for her.

“Please, get some sleep,” Vokara said. Then, clearly trying for a light, joking sort of tone and falling far short, she added, “You’ll need to be well rested to deal with Anakin Skywalker.”

Cody scrubbed a hand over his face. “An appropriate amount of sleep has never helped me deal with General Skywalker before, and I’m sure it won’t help any more with an… upset Skywalker.” Cody froze, then, and turned to look at Obi-Wan—his body, anyway. Force, but this was so odd. “If you can hear us, then please pretend you didn’t hear that.”

Obi-Wan laughed, and perhaps that was a touch manic, but—well. It was very Cody of him.

“I’m not sure if he can hear us,” Vokara said, “but I think we’ve established by now that he knows when you’re here with him. It’s why I’ve let you stay.”

“And I appreciate that,” Cody returned, and Obi-Wan saw rather than felt that Cody squeezed his hand a little tighter again for a moment.

“Get some rest, Cody,” Vokara repeated. She returned the ‘pad to its proper place and then ducked out of the room, leaving Cody alone with Obi-Wan and his own body, now a separate entity.

Dear Force.

“I know you’re trying,” Cody said. “I know you, so I know you’re doing your best to come back to us. But I… Please, just try to make it soon.”

“Oh, Cody,” Obi-Wan murmured. He tried, mostly on reflex, to reach for the Force again—but yet again, he was only met with Dark-stabbing-searing- pain, and he hissed as he withdrew once more, the heart monitor speeding up its beeping again in response to the pain. It was interesting, he thought, how the pain his disembodied consciousness felt affected his physical form. Under other circumstances, that might have been an intriguing philosophical question.

Now, though… He only wondered what he was meant to do about all of this—and where that Darkness was coming from.

Obi-Wan gathered a little more data while Cody slept that night. He went back into and left his physical body several times, partly to ensure that he still could, to reassure himself that he hadn’t cast himself on the currents of the Force to leave his body alive but brain dead, and partly to see what happened when he did it. Each time he returned to his body, he started to lose himself in… Well, they were obviously his own memories, which was… disturbing on several levels. Though that did help him figure out what the Darkness was doing to him.

It was drawing out his most painful memories, casting him back into them. How, he still had no idea, and he still had no clues as to who or what had done so. But at least he knew a bit more, now.

Unpleasant and painful as the process of leaving and reentering his body actually was, having to push into that Darkness to do it, Obi-Wan resolved to return to his physical form at least once a day, marked by the times Cody slept. The risk of him truly and finally severing himself from his body was too high otherwise, and it wasn’t one he was willing to take. He could endure pain—he had plenty of practice at that, after all.

Cody stayed, a near-constant presence beside him. Other than trips to the ‘fresher, and when one of his brothers—Nix, a trooper who’d been treated in the Temple after injuries sustained in the field and adopted by Vokara onto her medical staff when he was pronounced too injured to return to his battalion—dragged him away to the refectory for firstmeal, Cody was always there. When Cody left, Obi-Wan didn’t follow him, uncertain whether or not it would be wise to wander that far from his own body in this state. Instead, he used that time to probe and push a little more at the Darkness. He got precisely nowhere in terms of figuring out how to break through it, but it was time well spent, in a way. Avenues attempted and discarded was important data.

They would find a way. There was no other option—and he knew the Jedi, including ever-determined Vokara, were trying right along with him.

But Cody wasn’t always alone; beyond the normal Padawan-Healers and Vokara coming by to check on him (and Obi-Wan thought he might have seen several of the 212th’s troopers there, but he had a disconcerting feeling that he was losing time when he returned to and left his body again), there had been a particular visitor promised. Obi-Wan was dreading the moment Anakin walked into the room—he had never liked to see his Padawan in distress, and this time, there would be no way for him to reach out in the Force to offer comfort and a reassurance.

Anakin eventually strode into the room, and even without being able to sense him in the Force, the look on his face, too deeply twisted up to be a scowl, instead something deeper than that, was enough to tell him how Anakin felt. Cody was seated beside him, as he had been, but he wasn’t holding his hand, this time, and that was likely for the best. The strangest things could set off Anakin in this sort of mood—

Obi-Wan, again, watched rather than felt it as his body was jostled slightly when the entire room seemed to shake. That was certainly not good.

“No,” Anakin said, and he only had eyes for Obi-Wan, not even bothering to spare Cody a glance. “No. I can’t— I can’t feel him, it’s like he’s just not there —”

“Skywalker,” Vokara said, appearing in the doorway behind him. “I understand this is distressing for you, but you have to breathe. Stop, take a breath, center yourself—”

“What I need is to reach him in the Force,” Anakin said. “I know Master Windu and Master Yoda said that they tried, and that you tried, but— I have a bond with him.” He tipped his chin up, a familiar, defiant determination colored by confidence, and Obi-Wan knew he was comparing his strength in the Force to theirs.

But where Anakin had strength, the others had finesse. Obi-Wan was suddenly rather worried about the results of Anakin’s attempt to reach him. But—well. It wasn’t as if he could do or say anything to stop it from happening.

“I’m sure this is going to go well,” Obi-Wan muttered, resorting to sarcasm as he often did.

“Anakin,” Vokara said, sharper than usual, a clear warning.

But Anakin wasn’t in a listening sort of mood, it seemed—he rarely was. Obi-Wan was, in a way, a little touched that Anakin obviously cared about him so deeply, no matter how the other Masters might mutter about attachment. More than that, though, he was a bit frightened by what Anakin might do. Even now, he didn’t truly understand the strength of his own powers—

Obi-Wan felt the Darkness around him shifting and swirling, and he realized Anakin was simply attempting to ram through it. Typical of him, if also likely not the best approach in this instance—

And then Anakin succeeded. The Darkness buckled, and Obi-Wan could sense-see-feel the gap where the Force and Anakin’s presence were shining through, and he reached out for it—

There was pain again, so much pain, and not all of it was physical: much of it was mental, psychic, emotional—

It hurt. It hurt so much. He’d finally seen her again, and now she was gone—

There were sand dunes in the distance, a flatter area here with tents and a few banthas and those hounds they kept—

She was gone because they took her from him —

It was wrong. They were wrong. They were monsters, they were animals, rabid animals, and they had to be put down —

The now-limp body he had loved so much when it was still inhabited by her was gently lowered to the ground, and he stood.

It was time to end this. Once and for all.

They needed to pay for what they’d done.

He hadn’t been noticed on the way in, so they were surprised when he stepped out of the tent. They hesitated.

They shouldn’t have.

He ignited his ‘saber, and launched himself at the first of these animals. He didn’t know if it was a warrior or not. He didn’t know if any of them were warriors or not.

It didn’t matter. They were all monsters, and the galaxy was better off without them in it.

By the time it was done, when he finally extinguished his ‘saber, there were none left.

Not all of the bodies looked large enough to be adults.

It didn’t matter. They would’ve just become more of those monstrous animals.

Now they could never hurt anyone else, the way they had hurt her —

“No, no, no,” a familiar voice that was not Anakin’s said. “No, please, don’t—”

“Obi-Wan— I… Master Che, I—”

“Skywalker! I don’t care what you have to say for yourself right now. Get. Out.”

“But I—”

“Now!”

Everything hurt, and he couldn’t tell where his body started and his consciousness ended, anymore. The Darkness wasn’t just pressing in on him when he touched it, now—it was everywhere, holding him down, and he couldn’t breathe, it was strangling him—

“Please,” that familiar voice said again. “We won’t let that happen again— I don’t know what he did, but he’s gone, now. You can come back, it’s safe, you’re safe— Please just come back —”

There was— His hand. He could feel it— Someone was holding it. The owner of that familiar voice, he thought. But it was all so… foggy. So faraway. Yet he had a feeling he should be reaching for it, for them. A feeling that he should be doing what they asked, trying to find his way back, but—

He was so tired, and everything hurt so much—

“Please,” the voice said again. “We need you too much, you can’t go yet. Please. Please, I need you. Just come back, please, Obi-Wan, come back —” His name. The sound of his name, so rarely heard in that familiar voice, was enough to push through the haze of agony and exhaustion.

Cody.

He sounded distraught. Cody should never sound like that—he was always composed, even when Obi-Wan tried to tell him it was alright to fall apart every once in a while. They would help each other put themselves back together. Obi-Wan had only had the privilege of helping him through such moments of upset a few times, and as terrible as it was to know that Cody had broken, even if only for a moment, he was honored by the trust Cody had in him, letting him see it.

Cody— Cody needed him. Cody needed him to come back. He wasn’t sure where he’d even gone, but Cody needed him to come back, and so he would— Try. He didn’t understand, but he would try.

No, he remembered, do or do not.

He forced himself to focus on Cody, still pleading with him, instead of the pain. It— worked. To an extent. There was Cody’s hand in his, grip almost too tight, and Cody’s other hand on his chest.

“Oh, Force,” Cody breathed. “Shab—” Cody never swore like that in public. He had to be truly rattled to do that in front of other people. Alone, just him and Obi-Wan, he swore like the worst pirate, sometimes, when he was in the mood for it, but the rest of the time, he was the perfect Marshal Commander.

Why had Cody been so upset?

Where had Obi-Wan gone?

“Vokara,” Cody called, and Obi-Wan distantly noted that, because Cody using her name was almost as monumental as Cody using Obi-Wan’s. “We got him back. We got him back.”

Well, yes. Cody had needed him to come back.

…but he still didn’t know where he’d gone.

That was alright, Obi-Wan decided, too exhausted to question it. He could ask Cody later. For now, he was just so tired, and he… let go. Only for a little while.

Obi-Wan drifted, then.

It was almost peaceful, with the pain so distant from him.

The next time Obi-Wan… became aware—he didn’t truly think that “waking up” was the correct phrase for it, in this case—his body was still laid out in the bed, so pale and so still aside from the rise and fall of his chest. Cody was hunched over the bed, one hand holding his again, and the other wrapped around that same wrist. Feeling his pulse, Obi-Wan realized after a moment. Force—he still didn’t truly remember or understand just what had happened when Anakin had come and done… whatever it was he had tried to do to the Darkness surrounding him, but whatever had happened… It must have worried Cody terribly.

They stayed like that, for a while, until a knock at the door sounded.

“Come in,” Cody called, his voice rough. He didn’t pick his head up, though Obi-Wan did turn to look at the new visitor: Captain Rex.

“Hey, Codes,” Rex murmured. He hesitated in the doorway for a moment before coming fully inside the room, pausing again before taking the chair on the other side of the bed, settling his helmet in his lap. “How… is he?”

Cody sighed, shaking his head, but he took the hand off of Obi-Wan’s wrist, lifting it to scrub it over his face. He finally looked up, and Obi-Wan… Well, Jedi did not hate, but he severely disliked the look on Cody’s face. His eyes were red and swollen as if he’d been crying, and he looked utterly exhausted, thoroughly wrung out.

“Did anyone tell you what… happened, before?” Cody asked haltingly. Rex shook his head mutely.

“I figured out that… General Skywalker… did something, with the Force, and it made things worse,” he said. “But nothing more than that.” Cody looked away—not at Obi-Wan, this time, but to the heart monitor beside the bed. Obi-Wan had an… odd, uncomfortable feeling about that.

“His heart stopped,” Cody said, barely loud enough to be heard. “He stopped breathing. He was— It was only for a few seconds, but—”

I was dead, Obi-Wan thought dully. He wasn’t… afraid of death, necessarily—there was no death, there was the Force, after all, and he certainly didn’t fear the Force—but he wasn’t ready to lay down and die, just like that.

“Fuck,” Rex breathed. “Oh, fuck, Cody— I’m…” He trailed off as if he didn’t know what to say, and he looked away from his brother, at Obi-Wan instead. “You got him back, though.”

“Yeah,” Cody agreed, still so subdued and his voice so rough. “We did.”

“He’s a fighter,” Rex said, a sad sort of smile on his face. “He’ll keep fighting until the Jedi… figure things out.” Cody just nodded, still staring at the monitor. Obi-Wan wished he could provide some sort of comfort, to put a hand on his shoulder, to say something to him, but— He couldn’t.

They were quiet for a little while, Cody eventually turning to Obi-Wan again, both brothers staring at him. It was still so odd, Obi-Wan thought rather inanely, to see himself in the third person like this. Thankfully, that line of thought was broken by Rex speaking up again.

“I’m sorry, Cody,” he said softly. “He’s… He’s one of the good ones. He doesn’t deserve this.”

Well, thank you, Rex, Obi-Wan thought. Even if he wasn’t sure what “this” was, anyway, what had happened to him, the sentiment was still appreciated.

“No,” Cody agreed just as softly. “He really doesn’t.”

“How are you… How are you doing?” Rex asked, tentative, hesitant in a way Obi-Wan had so rarely seen from him before. Captain Rex was a good match for Anakin, almost a force of nature unto himself, decisive and firm. “This has to be… hard.” Cody laughed, a bitter sort of sound that almost trailed off into a sob before he cut himself off, and Obi-Wan stared at him. He had never seen Cody this… upset, this rattled before.

“I’m so sorry, my dear,” Obi-Wan murmured. “I would put an end to this, if only I knew how. You don’t deserve this, either.”

It took several long seconds before Cody answered Rex, obviously collecting himself. Rex kept stubbornly staring at Obi-Wan, likely trying to put Cody more at ease. This had to be difficult for him to talk about, judging by his reactions. Finally, though, Cody said, “He died, Rex. Maybe only technically, and maybe only for a few seconds, but— He died, and we still don’t fucking know why. He could— It could happen again, and what if we don’t get him back, next time?”

“You’ll figure it out,” Rex said. “You and the Jedi. You’ve always been enough to get him through before—this will be no different.”

“It is different, Rex,” Cody said. “This is something I can’t see, something I can’t feel, something I can’t fight. I can’t— There’s nothing I can do.”

“There is, and you’re already doing it,” Rex said. “He’s a Jedi. They’re… aware of things in ways we aren’t, and I bet, even like this, he knows you’re here for him. That’s not nothing, Cody.”

“Rex is right, my dear,” Obi-Wan murmured, for all that he knew neither of them would hear him. “That’s certainly not nothing. I came back for you, you know. To you, even when I didn’t understand what had happened—and I did it simply because you asked me to. That’s not nothing.”

“It’s not enough,” Cody said. “I can’t— I can’t lose him, Rex. Not him— And not like this.”

“I know,” Rex said. “You have to have faith that you won’t. And you have to have faith in him —that he’ll keep fighting, keep finding a way back to you until they can fix this.”

“I’m trying,” Cody said. “It’s just that I— If he— If I… lose him now, when I never even told him—” Cody cut himself off as his voice grew thicker, obviously near tears. He shook his head, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment, and Obi-Wan ached for him. He never wanted Cody to feel like this, and he certainly didn’t want to cause him that sort of pain, however unintentionally.

“I know,” Rex repeated. “Just keep believing that you won’t. Keep believing in him. He’ll find a way back—he’s a stubborn bastard, just like you.” That made both Cody and Obi-Wan laugh.

“Yeah,” Cody said. “He is.”

“Don’t forget about yourself, either, brother,” Rex said. “You’re important, too, and I know this is… hard. I’ll go now, give you some time, but I’ll come by to get you for dinner, yeah? I heard the Healers banish you from the room for at least one meal a day.”

“Yeah,” Cody said again. “Thanks, Rex.”

“I’ve got you, Codes,” Rex murmured, and he stood. “I’ll see you later.” Cody nodded to him, though he couldn’t quite seem to meet Rex’s eyes. The Captain left, and it was just Cody, Obi-Wan, and Obi-Wan’s body again.

The instant Rex was out the door, Cody leaned over, resting his forehead on Obi-Wan’s chest. It felt like a strangely intimate thing to be witnessing, for all that he was technically part of it.

“I don’t know if the Force hears people who aren’t… sensitive,” Cody murmured, barely loudly enough for Obi-Wan to hear, “and I don’t know if it listens to prayers or promises, but… Please, just give him back to me. I won’t waste the chance, this time, I promise—I’ll be braver, if there’s a next time. I just— He can’t die without knowing that I—” He interrupted himself with a hiccup, and even though Obi-Wan couldn’t see his face, he could hear that Cody was crying when he choked out the rest. “—I love him. Please.”

Obi-Wan didn’t know if Cody still thought about or asked after the question of whether or not he could hear what was said around him, but that didn’t change the fact that he had, intended to or not. All of that made one thing very clear: Obi-Wan had to come back, had to end… whatever this was, had to break through the Darkness surrounding him. He had already been determined to do so, but… Well, what he’d overheard, what Cody had said… Obi-Wan found it particularly motivating.

And he had already been trying, yes, but— Jedi were taught that the Force would assist them in times of need, but it wouldn’t and couldn’t do everything for them.

He would have to try harder to help himself. He couldn’t wait on the Force to show him a path, especially not when he was unable to reach it, nor could he wait for his fellow Jedi to find one, because just as he couldn’t reach the Force, they couldn’t reach him.

If he was going to get out of this trap… Obi-Wan would have to free himself.

While Cody slept that night, Obi-Wan thought, long and hard, on the problem, on what was happening and what to do about it. He examined his own mind in a reflective meditation—the kind any being could perform, even those with no connection to the Force, because reaching for the Force right now was not helpful—and tried to determine the aim of that Darkness, the intent of whoever or whatever had put it there. It was nearly morning again when Obi-Wan thought he had figured something out. If he was right…

Well, if he was right, he had been doing what the Darkness was intended to force him to do: cast himself out of his own body. It wanted him to sever that connection and become One with the Force—though that Darkness surrounding him may have prevented that, and trapped his spirit, but… It was forcing him to choose between going mad, with the things it forced him to see and experience, the things he was forced to relive, when he remained within himself, or…

It wanted to kill him by forcing him to sever his connection with his physical body.

And if Obi-Wan wanted to fight it… He would have to do the opposite. But he had already realized what happened when he did return to his body: he was caught in the Darkest of his memories. How to get around that, and how to break through the Darkness and reach the Force again, was a more difficult problem to solve.

There were… a few ideas he could think of. If he operated under the assumption that whoever had done this was a Sith, or if it was an artefact or ritual of sorts, then it was created by the Sith—a reasonable assumption, given that he had encountered Sith before and knew what they felt like, and the Darkness surrounding him only felt different in the sense that he did not recognize the presence entangled within it—then he could think of a few possible ways to escape this trap. The first, use of the Dark Side in return to shatter through the blockade of Darkness, was entirely out of the question. He would rather die before he would Fall. The second possibility, killing whoever had done this to him under the assumption that it would break through this, was unrealistic, given that he couldn’t do it and still didn’t know who had done it besides.

But the third… The third was simply the Jedi way: acceptance. Not resignation, of course—he wasn’t giving up or giving in. Not to this Darkness, anyway. But acceptance of its effects… Well, the Dark memories that it pulled forth from the depths of his mind, immersing him within those moments… He had already lived through it all once, and he remembered it all clearly even without this Darkness bringing it all back to the fore. If he were to return to himself, allow the Darkness to bring forth those memories, and accept them… There was a good chance that the Darkness would lose its hold over him.

And, if not, then he could leave his body again to ponder another method.

He resolved to try it soon, though Obi-Wan wished that he could somehow tell Cody what he was doing, what he wanted to try. So far, Cody had been the only one who could successfully ground him, and this would be much easier if he stayed throughout the process, helping to remind Obi-Wan that the memories were not his reality. But he couldn’t—there was no way for him to reach Cody without the Force or control over his physical form.

But that was alright. Cody had stayed for so long, now. Obi-Wan could have faith that he would stay a little longer.

He watched Cody for a little while before he began. Cody seemed to have calmed some, with a night of sleep bolstering him. He still looked worn down, exhausted, but he was calmer, at least. Obi-Wan went to him, first, trying to put a hand over Cody’s where it still held his, though he knew Cody wouldn’t feel it.

“I’m trying,” Obi-Wan promised, for all the good it did. “I’m trying to come back. And I will keep trying until I find a way.”

His promise made, Obi-Wan braced himself, and then sought out the tether between his consciousness and his body again—

How had it gone so wrong? They had won. Everyone was at peace, the war was supposed to be over.

But it only took a few minutes to descend from that peace right back into war, bolts flying this way and that, utter chaos all around them, and then—

He saw the shot heading straight for Cerasi, and he knew there was nothing he could do to stop it, nothing he could do to save her, and he felt a well of horror springing up inside of him, a pit opening up in his stomach—

Not her. Not Cerasi, please, please, please —

“Please, Obi-Wan, you haven’t done this in days,” a familiar voice said, and there was a hand squeezing his. “I don’t know what’s happening, what you’re doing, but… Please, try to fight it.”

Cody. That was Cody, still there at his side.

It was the reminder he needed.

He remembered how he had felt when Cerasi died—that wasn’t something he would ever forget. But with the knowledge of Cody, his presence and his help, it became easier to remember that this was a memory. It was in the past. There was no changing it.

He could only accept it, and let go.

It still hurt, no matter what he tried to tell himself, when he watched the bolt hit. It hurt even more, somehow, to watch Cerasi’s body hit the ground.

But, he reminded himself, hers had been the last sacrifice of the Young. No more of them had died—the war had truly ended after that, and they forged a lasting peace. And Cerasi had her peace, within the Force. He cradled her body, breathed, and—

He accepted that she was gone.

She had been for years, now. He nearly twice as old as she had ever grown to be, now.

He took another breath, and—

He let it go. He let her go.

The Darkness immediately found another memory, this one literally dark as well. Despite the many years since he had last been here in-person, he immediately knew where and what this was.

Bandomeer. The mines.

The collar.

His neck had already grown chafed from that explosive collar by the time Master Jinn found him, leaving those raw marks that would eventually scar over on him, his back utterly on fire from the electrowhips and prods the guards used on them, his belly gnawing at him with its hunger signals.

He had already gone from determination to survive this and find a way out, and hope that the Jedi, Master Jinn, would come for him, to despair when he was finally found, and it turned to relief and joy.

He may still have been unwanted, but— They hadn’t forgotten about him.

And then… There was no way out. No other way, besides the explosive collar around his neck.

They would have to detonate it, but—

But they couldn’t get it off of him, not here and now.

He felt his heart plummet into his boots even as a surreal sort of calm and acceptance enveloped him.

To save everyone here on Bandomeer, he would have to die.

Well. He had always wanted to help people, and if this was the only way he could help… At least it would be a meaningful sacrifice.

At least he would die like a Jedi.

“Obi-Wan, please, please, whatever you’re doing, whatever is happening to you, I just need you to hold on—”

Cody. Cody was back again—no, that wasn’t right. Cody had never left.

It was Obi-Wan who had left—it was Obi-Wan who needed to come back.

He wasn’t in the mines. It felt as if he was, the weight of the collar around his neck and the weight of the choice he had just made sitting heavy on him—

But he could also feel Cody’s hand in his, even still. That was real.

The mine was just a memory.

The despair had been real, once. The desperate, painful hope of knowing that he could save hundreds of thousands of lives if only he gave up his own had been real, once.

But no longer. That was the past. It was over, long in the past—and it had ended well, too. Master Jinn— Qui-Gon, that had become Qui-Gon after so many years—had saved him, and together, they had saved Bandomeer.

That moment, the memory, still hurt. It always would, and it hurt that much more for everything that was tied up in it, his sense of worth —or lack thereof—and this feeling that he had always been meant to be a sacrifice in the name of others, as if that was all he was good for, but—

But it was over, now, and Obi-Wan forced the memory on to what came next, Qui-Gon finding a way out for both of them, and calling him Padawan for the first time, and—

Then the Darkness pulled forth another memory.

Obi-Wan was exhausted already. Oh, his determination, willpower, and sheer spite would keep him going, as they always did, but… Well, even he had limits—and he could feel himself drawing closer and closer to the end of his endurance. There would come a point when he just… wouldn’t be able to push any further.

But Cody was still there, his reminder that these things were not really happening, that they were all just memories.

His reminder of the fact that he had to come back.

His reminder of just what he was fighting for, in this Jedi fashion of acceptance rather than resistance.

The only way out was through—and Obi-Wan could push through for a least a little while longer.

Over and over, the cycle repeated: he was thrown back into a memory, as clear and as painful as it had been when he’d lived it the first time. Each and every time, no matter his best intention to remember when he entered the next one, he lost himself in it, feeling as if it was real again, forgetting where and when he truly was—forgetting that these were just memories and not events that he was struggling through for the very first time— But then there would be Cody, who would say something that somehow managed to reach him even now, or he would squeeze Obi-Wan’s hand in a silent, grounding reassurance, and it was enough to bring other memories to the fore. He remembered that these were not real events—at least not anymore. He remembered that he was playing along with them, seeing them through, yes, but he could not allow himself to become lost in them, could not allow himself to be fooled by the startling clarity and overwhelming pain into believing he was truly living these things.

And just when he had resolved one memory, dragged himself through it, spent endless, agonizing seconds pushing towards the end, the resolution of the memory, towards the acceptance he had eventually found— Another would rise, and the cycle repeated.

Again, and again, and again.

Force, Obi-Wan had never really stopped to think about just how many Dark, painful things he had lived through, not really. His life had been… difficult, yes, but he had always known that the path of a Jedi was not an easy one to walk, and there had been so much joy and happiness and peace to be found in it, too—not just the Darkness. Even if the Darkness was all he could now recall—besides Cody, of course.

Because—there was Cody. When he faltered, either too tired or too immersed in a memory to realize that it was just a memory, then there would be Cody again, saying something to him, squeezing his hand, brushing his hair out of his face.

There was always Cody.

He wasn’t alone, and so he kept going, Cody’s voice and Cody’s hand in his constant, faithful companions as he was taken back to—

Mandalore, and the family of New Mandalorian pacifists another faction, the terrorists, had killed while they forced him and Satine to watch, before they escaped—and not even the younglings were spared.

But their sacrifice had meant something, because they had not won, and now Mandalore was prospering in its greatest time of peace in living memory, and likely longer.

Geonosis, and so many Jedi falling alongside the bright yet anonymous and so outwardly blank soldiers who should never have been created for this purpose, and yet were, doomed from the moment they were brought into the galaxy.

But he had survived, again, to honor the memories of the fallen, Jedi and troopers alike. Their brothers remembered them, and Obi-Wan—and so many other Jedi besides—had learned their names, said their Remembrances with them, and they all honored those memories. Nothing would bring them back. Nothing would ever bring back the dead.

But there was no death; there was the Force. And the Force was in all things.

And he would honor them all in fighting for the causes they had believed in enough to give their lives for them. He accepted their sacrifices, he honored them as best he could, and he let go.

Naboo, and Master Qui-Gon run through by a Sith while he was, again, forced to watch, and then he nearly touched the Dark in his anger and his fear, wanting to avenge his Master.

And worse, somehow, than helplessly watching it happen was what came after that. Watching the life leave Qui-Gon’s eyes as they dimmed, watching first as they slowly grew unfocused, hazy, no longer able to truly look at him, and feeling Qui-Gon’s presence similarly dimming, slipping away, and—

“Promise me you will train the boy. He is the Chosen One—”

And it came back to him, then, the other memories he’d seen—the Dark memory that had not been his own. A distantly familiar desert, dunes and rocky outcroppings, far too hot and dusty for the tastes of any sane person who was not native there, and—

The body of a woman he did not know, yet whose face held familiar features here and there, in the shape of those eyes, in the slant of her nose, the curve of her jaw, and though he had never seen her before, Obi-Wan found that he knew who she was.

Who she had been, because now she was dead.

Oh, Force, there were so many dead, all of those people— The bodies littering the ground already as, all around them, even more were cut down, and none of them were a match for the monster rage and attachment had made of them, none of them a match for that familiar blue lightsaber.

Especially not the younglings— Oh, Force, he hadn’t even spared the younglings, and—

Obi-Wan knew, then, what had happened. Or, rather, he stopped attempting to deny the truth he had already known, the truth he had, on some level, accepted the instant he saw what had happened.

Anakin.

Oh, no, Force, Anakin, Anakin, what did you do? What have you done?

What did you choose to become?

What have you done?

It hurt —it hurt much, much worse, in fact, than any of the memories of Dark things that had happened to him.

Oh, Anakin —

He had failed him.

He had failed Shmi Skywalker.

“Promise me you will train the boy. He is the Chosen One—”

He had failed Qui-Gon—

Was this to be the legacy of Obi-Wan’s lineage, then? Dooku, Fallen to become a Sith, committing mass-murder. Qui-Gon, murdered by a Sith, and not even that had convinced Dooku not to become one himself. Obi-Wan, raising yet another mass-murderer. And then there was Anakin.

Anakin, who—

Force, he was so tired. How was he meant to resist this? How as he meant to accept this?

Obi-Wan wasn’t certain he could.

“—scaring me,” a voice was saying, and it didn’t take as long as it had in the beginning to place it.

Cody. So steadfast, always there, always able to lead him in the right direction, trying to lead him back. But how was Cody meant to help with this?

“Please, if you can hear me, just focus on me,” Cody was saying. The images wouldn’t go away even if he tried to close his eyes, because it was all in his head, but he could— He could redirect his attention, even as tired as he was, now. He could focus on Cody. “Yes, yes, whatever you’re doing, keep doing that—”

Obi-Wan was only following instructions, and focusing on Cody, though he supposed the other man had no way to know that. It wasn’t as if he could reach out to tell him, to give him any sign.

He had to make it through, first, to the other side of this.

But he would just… He needed a break. He was just so tired, so worn down, so heartbroken. Obi-Wan wasn’t certain, anymore, if it was the Darkness or his own despair at knowing, now, that was weighing him down, keeping him in a stranglehold, and he couldn’t truly feel most of his body, but he thought that he might not have been breathing correctly anymore—

Cody’s voice came again, and Obi-Wan desperately latched onto it.

“You remember the way you… Well, I wouldn’t say that you yelled at me, because you never do unless it’s to make sure I hear you in the field,” Cody was saying, speech faster than usual, as if he was either anxious or trying to get them out before he could no longer bring himself to say them. “But what you said after the battle on Caerdun—you remember that one, I’m sure. It was still fairly early days, back then, but that was… memorable. Not so much the battle itself—” And Obi-Wan rather had to disagree with that, because that had been quite memorable, and not in a good way.

Casualties had been blessedly light, overall, and of those, most of them had not been fatal injuries. But Cody…

Obi-Wan had been too far to help, but not so far that he didn’t see it happen, and he couldn’t help the way he saw it again, now—

A commando droid managing to knock Cody’s blaster from his hands, and Cody drew his vibroknife. But in that brief moment it took to pull it out, the commando droid had managed to knock his helmet off. Still, Cody was just as skilled with the knife as he was his blaster, of course, and the commando droid went down—

Only to be replaced by one of the Trandoshan slavers the Separatist forces had recruited on this planet. The Trandoshan hadn’t bothered with a blaster, nor had they bothered with finding a blade of their own.

Instead, they’d gone for Cody with those wickedly sharp claws alone.

They had been larger than Cody, and theirs was the longer reach. And, with the knife in hand and no time to stoop down to retrieve a blaster and no grasp of the Force to call one to him, Cody had been forced to make that split decision, risk-and-reward assessment of weighing attempting to retreat against getting in closer.

He’d lunged forward just as the Trandoshan reached out, and then—

They both fell, Cody’s knife embedded to the hilt in the Trandoshan’s neck, and blood already pouring from Cody’s head, his face. Force, there had been so much blood, and Cody hadn’t made any move to get up once he hit the ground, and all Obi-Wan could think was that he’d lost him, and that impression hadn’t been helped any when Obi-Wan finally crossed the field to reach his Commander, and Cody hadn’t responded, hadn’t so much as stirred—

He had looked like death, and his presence had been so… muddled, so dim, and it had reminded him of the way Qui-Gon had slipped away on Naboo—

“—but you remember the medbay, after?” Cody was saying, but that couldn’t be right, because Cody was deeply unconscious, a combination of blood loss and the concussion, but he kept hearing Cody’s voice, and he strained to listen— “When you came to see me after I woke up, and you told me I gave you quite the scare—”

He— He had, hadn’t he? Obi-Wan could almost remember that, even if he couldn’t picture it just now, too tired and too worried to focus enough to bring that memory to the fore. But Cody had lived, hadn’t he? He’d survived that. Looking at him now, kneeling over him as he lay motionless where he’d fallen, all the blood streaming down the side of his face and into his eyes, it certainly didn’t look as if he had survived.

Back then, for a heart-stopping moment, Obi-Wan had thought he’d lost him already—far, far too early. They hadn’t known each other for more than a few months, then, but he and Cody had fallen into place together so easily, and the steadfast sunbeam that was Cody in his mind was such a comfort, a reassurance, a welcome balm to the overwhelming… everything else of the war. To have lost him when he had only barely come to know him, when he had only just started to feel those rays of sun shining on him… It would have been—

But no—no. Obi-Wan… hadn’t lost him, had he? If he focused, he could almost picture other battles they had fought together—and he could picture the shape of the scar the Trandoshan had left him with. The proof that it had happened, and also the proof that Cody had survived it—

“—and then I made the mistake of apologizing for the inconvenience I caused you,” Cody continued, and though his voice was rough, there was a miniscule note of humor in it. “I think that was the first time I’d ever seen you so properly angry. It wasn’t at me, I realized that even then, it was at— everything, everyone, else. The people who made us feel like we shouldn’t be worried over, really, because this is what we’re made for, what we’re meant for. We’re made to be sacrificed, and that’s just the way of things. That’s always made you so angry. But I think— Being here in the Temple like this, and what the Healers said they think is happening to you, talking to more of the Jedi you’ve known most of your life… It’s all starting to make more sense, the utterly ridiculous banthashit you pull sometimes. Because even as much as you hate the lessons they taught to me and my brothers… Someone did that to you, too, didn’t they? Someone taught you that your worth is equivalent to how many people you can sacrifice yourself for, how many would live because you were the one to die.

“I’m still not sure you’ve unlearned that lesson,” Cody said, “and I don’t think we have the time to teach you how wrong that is, not right now. But I do know that you fight as hard as you do to survive because that way, you can always try to save just one more. You fight because people still need you. I’d… I wish you would fight to come back for yourself, but if I can’t have that, then… Do it for our troopers. Do it for the other Jedi who look up to you. Shab, I’m selfish enough to ask you to do it for me. We still need you— I still need you. So, please, if not for yourself, do it for all of us. Do it for me. Find a way to come back.”

He could… He could try. He was still so tired, positively aching in a bone-deep, soul-deep sort of way, but he could—

Obi-Wan had been trying to do something, he remembered that much. He had… He’d had some idea, at least, of how to come back. But what had it been again? Idly, as he wracked his sluggish, pounding mind for the answer, Obi-Wan reached out, caring nothing for the blood coating Cody’s face, and traced the shape of the scar.

Not a wound, not anymore—a distinctive scar, one that tugged ever-so-slightly when Cody really, truly smiled, a mark that had just become another part of Cody, like the sunburst on his armor. It was proof that he had lived through terrible things, proof that he was a survivor, proof that the battle on Caerdun was just another memory they carried with them—

A memory. A memory. That was it. That was the answer—that was what he’d been doing, what he’d been meant to do. Cody’s words had given that Darkness further ammunition, but this, too, was one he could overcome.

He had long since accepted that he could lose any of his men, up to and most certainly including Cody. But— He hadn’t. After that, he had meditated on the fear he’d felt at the prospect of actually losing Cody, and he had come to terms with it. Men were lost in battles, and one day, that could be Cody. But it hadn’t been. Obi-Wan had accepted that the fear was an indication of how precious Cody was to him, and— They had grown closer, after that. Obi-Wan treasured every moment with him, knowing that he might one day run out of time to have more. He had accepted that possibility, and chosen his Master’s old teachings, and kept his focus on the here and now.

In time, his heart no longer lurched in his chest when he saw the slowly-healing scar on Cody’s face. It was no longer a mark of the way he had nearly lost Cody—it was a reminder of all that he’d been through to be able to still be here. He had first sought to understand that fear, and then to accept it, and then—

He let it go, then—and he let it go again, now.

Force, he was so tired, so utterly exhausted. He had no idea how long it had been, now, how many memories he had reviewed, dissected, and accepted. But distantly, he could still hear Cody’s voice, and he could feel Cody’s hand in his, and he mustered himself to keep going.

The only way out was through, after all—and the memories didn’t stop there. With that memory of Cody’s injury, the Darkness seemed to have found more ammunition to use against him than ever—

Kadavo, and that same feeling of helplessness. The Second Battle of Geonosis, and the return of that feeling. The Battle of Lola Sayu, the Citadel, all the men who died alongside Even. The second Battle of Felucia, and Ahsoka’s capture. Umbara.

One memory after another was reviewed, dissected, and dealt with. It was grueling, exhausting work, but Obi-Wan was, as ever, encouraged by Cody’s unwavering presence, his faith, his support. As Cody had so often said, and as Obi-Wan kept repeating to himself, now, the only way out was through, and—

And, eventually, his efforts were rewarded. It was after making peace yet again with Lieutenant Waxer’s death on Umbara—and that still hurt, and he knew it always would, but he could not allow himself to fall into greater fear, anger, or hate because of it; that would be an insult to dear Waxer’s memory, and everything he had believed in and fought for—and he let it go, and then… He noticed something felt different.

The shroud of Darkness started to shift — Started to break apart.

And then, seeing a chance, the opportunity, this opening, all that he needed to find the will to do it… Even knowing what awaited him, he pushed against it—

The pain was still agonizing, but he felt clearer than he had during any of the other attempts. This time, he didn’t back away from it. As he had learned to in all things, he accepted the pain. It was unpleasant (a trite word for it, but he had always been one for understatement when it came to such things), as if there were jagged claws carving bloody swathes into his brain and his soul, but he could see something through the Darkness. He had a clear goal, and that was all Obi-Wan ever needed to be able to push himself onwards.

He pressed on—further, further, further still—

Until he was… somewhere else.

No, not somewhere else—he was someone else.

The Darkness saturated everything, his every waking breath and thought devoted to increasing his own power. The rage he always, always hid, and never truly kept at bay, the anger, forced to play these games with people who were so far beneath him, those who should have realized by now that he was to be revered, that he was to be feared, and his hatred for all of them— He hid them, always, always, he could not falter, not in this—but one day, they would see. One day, they would know. The time was nearly upon them, the moment to reveal himself—

The Sith Lord, Obi-Wan realized.

He pushed further still, roughly shoving aside even greater agony as the Dark Side surrounded him, trying to strangle him again, trying to consume him, and he saw—

A grand stateroom, as befit the highest office in the Republic, and it was all he could do to keep the benign smile on his face when the Jedi visited, gazes always slipping right over the statue where his lightsaber was hidden, and really, if they couldn’t sense a Bled kyber right under their noses… These fools, they were so ignorant, so undeserving of the Force’s power, and it was just another reason they were owed the fates awaiting them, already prearranged, already written, already decided—

A familiar planet, so beautiful and pleasing to the eye, alight with the Living Force—and yet tainted by a Darkness far older than the death of a Jedi Master at the hands of a Sith Lord and the near-Fall of a Jedi Padawan—

Obi-Wan saw—

You still have not died, or gone mad? Irritating, but that is typical of you. You have ever refused to die when you should have. But no matter. You wish to see?

Then allow me to show you.

I have not only foreseen this, wresting this glimpse of the future from the Force’s grasp—Sith do not wait for the Force to impart visions of its own will, and oh, Master Kenobi, the things I have taken from the Force, all of the beautiful agony I could show you… But this one is quite special to me. You see, I have designed it. I will make it so.

This is what will become of you, your people, and the clones under my control.

And there is nothing you can do to stop this.

And Obi-Wan saw—

They had nearly done it. Dooku had died at Anakin’s hand weeks ago, and now…

Grievous was dead at his own. With an unfortunately uncivilized weapon, to be sure, but no matter how he had done it, the fact remained that he had. While he mourned that the loss of life was necessary, he rejoiced in those they had saved by putting an end to General Grievous’s campaign of terror across the galaxy.

Cody’s brothers, and all the Jedi lost, were given justice, now.

And it was nearly over. The war was nearly over.

They had almost made it.

“Commander,” he said, and his eyes were smiling more effusively than his lips, but he was certain dear Cody read the joy in them anyway, “contact your troops. Tell them to move to the higher levels.”

“Yessir! Oh, and, sir… I think you’ll be needing this.”

Their hands barely brushed when Cody handed over his lightsaber—he’d lost it again, but whenever Cody was with him, he knew it was not truly lost, only being cared for by another—and Obi-Wan resolved, finally, to… hug him, at least, when this was truly, finally over.

He urged the varactyl onwards, delighting in its call, its own simple joy at the race, and then—

“Execute Order 66.”

The Force went still—only to explode outward a moment later with—

Horror was first as the bright Lights of the clones winked out, becoming static-feeling voids where there had once been thinking, feeling, sentient beings.

Pain, unimaginable, unbearable pain came next as the stars of the Jedi winked out one by one and yet all at once, and oh, gods, oh, Force, they were dying, the Jedi were dying, they were all dying what was happening, oh, Force, it hurt—

“No, no, not again, please —”

That voice again. Cody.

But Cody had tried to kill him because Cody wasn’t Cody anymore, and it hurt so much, it was so hard to think, and he was starting to drift away again—

“Obi-Wan, please, you have to listen to me,” Cody said, but all Obi-Wan could see was a loop of the moment Cody said yes My Lord it will be done blast him

over

and over

and over again —

“Please, please, come back,” Cody said. “You did it once, Obi-Wan, I know you can do it again—”

Come back? Come back from… where?

Where had he gone?

Force, it hurt so much, it was so hard to think, and everyone and everything was just gone so what was there to go back to —

“Please, please, please, Obi-Wan,” Cody begged, pleading with him, but he didn’t understand because Cody couldn’t be Cody anymore. “Please just listen to me—come back. Please, come back.”

But Cody had ordered them to shoot at him because Cody wasn’t Cody and Cody was gone now and all of the men were gone now and the Jedi were gone now and everything hurt so much —

“I need you,” Cody said, and—

He remembered this, he thought. They had done this once before, and this… It was clearer, now, than the vision of empty-Cody ordering him shot down—and so much Lighter and warmer besides. Yes, they… They had done this before. Then, he had… He had felt—

There was pressure… somewhere. His hand? Was Cody holding his hand again?

Was Cody Cody again?

No—his chest. The pressure was on his chest.

Force, his chest hurt. Oh, Force, everything hurt.

He sputtered and coughed, and then took a great, heaving breath, his eyes flying open, and—

There was Cody, standing over him, tears streaming down his face. He looked like a wreck, and Cody should never look like that—

But he wasn’t blank. He was… He was Cody.

Cody was still Cody.

“Obi-Wan,” his Cody breathed.

“C’dy,” he slurred back.

“You came back,” Cody said, and the amazement in his eyes, the smile on his face, was so discordant with the tears still flowing. Cody should be happy, always, not… this. “You came back to me.”

“Y’ asked me to,” Obi-Wan managed to return, though it was so hard. He was just so exhausted. But there was… something he had to do, something he had to say, something important — Oh, yes, that was it. “C’dy— I have t’be dead. Fake it. Has to think ‘m dead.”

Cody’s face crumpled again. “You were,” he said. “You died— again.”

“I came back,” Obi-Wan said, and he tried to lift his hand to touch Cody’s face, but he only managed to twitch his fingers where they were still held in Cody’s. His chest still hurt—why did his chest hurt? No matter—that wasn’t important right now. There was something else he was going to say, something more important than asking about that… Oh. Yes, right. “Love you, too.”

For some reason, that made Cody hiccup, the tears coming faster, now, and he started shaking. No, no, that was meant to be a good thing. But… There was still something else, something he was missing, and it was clearer, now, but still foggier than it should have been—

Oh. Oh. Yes—that.

“C’dy,” he said, and it was a monumental effort, but he managed to form the words even as his eyes started to flutter closed again. “Sith Lord—I know. I know. Get Vokara—you’re not safe… He can’t have you. I won’t let ‘im.”

“Obi-Wan, what— No, no, please, open your eyes, I just got you back—”

“C’dy,” he repeated, and he hated to deny Cody anything, but he simply couldn’t pry his eyelids open again—he was far too exhausted. “Y’need Vokara. Somethin’s wrong. Please.”

“Obi-Wan—”

And, again, he slept.

It was truly peaceful, this time.

The next time he woke, he felt so much clearer than he had in… Well, Obi-Wan had no idea how long it had been. It was a leisurely waking, slowly and gently rousing from slumber, blinking his eyes open even as he stretched out with the Force—

And it didn’t hurt. There was no pain to be found in it, just clarity. Still so much Darkness, so many stains left everywhere, but he could see so much more clearly and vividly, now. And he could feel his body, he could consciously feel it —though, Force, that did hurt, his chest absolutely aching, but even this was so much better.

As he had expected by now, there beside him was Cody’s presence—though, for once, not holding his hand. Obi-Wan managed to turn his head, still feeling drained, but infinitely more like himself again, and saw Cody asleep on the cot—with a bandage on the side of his head. Had Cody been injured, somehow?

Though Cody wasn’t Force-sensitive, he still seemed to sense, somehow, that Obi-Wan had woken. His eyes flew open, awake all at once, and he leapt up from the cot and stumbled the few steps over to Obi-Wan’s bed. There were tears in his eyes again, but he was smiling, and now, able to reach the Force again, Obi-Wan knew that it was just an abundance of joy he was feeling.

“Obi-Wan,” Cody breathed, and he didn’t think he would ever tire of hearing his name, not his title, not the honorific of sir, from Cody. “You came back.”

“You asked me to,” Obi-Wan said, getting the oddest feeling that they had had this exchange before, though he couldn’t quite recall it if they had. He reached up to trace the edge of the bandage on the side of Cody’s head. “You’re alright?”

“It’s a long story,” Cody said, “but I’m alright. I promise.”

“Good,” Obi-Wan said, smiling. “What happened?”

“Later,” Cody promised. “I think Vokara would ban me from these Halls for the rest of our lives if I debrief you before she clears you.”

“Too right I would.” They both looked over at the familiar voice coming from the doorway, Vokara standing there, in her surgical scrubs rather than her usual tunics and tabards, looking as exhausted as Cody did and just as exhausted as Obi-Wan still felt, though she was smiling, both physically and in the Force. “Though I will take pity on you, Obi-Wan. I know you, and you will not rest easy until you know the most important things have been seen to.” He gave her his best innocent smile, but she just snorted and shook her head, coming farther into the room. She hadn’t been fooled by that look as long as he’d known her. “To summarize the most important points: Cody relayed what you said after you died for a second time —” That had him blinking at her, because he remembered Cody telling Rex he had died once, but a second time? He didn’t remember that—though, to be fair, he didn’t truly remember the first time, either. “—and we did as you said. I issued a death certificate for you; there wasn’t a public announcement, and it’s already been rescinded, but it was sent to the Senate to make it just official enough to be convincing. They believed the rationale that we needed to ‘control the narrative carefully’ with the death of a well-known High General.

“Then, I took a look at Cody. I used every tool at our disposal, including the Force, and yes, I eventually found something,” she continued, drawing a little flimsiplast bag out of her pocket. Inside was a small… blob, or speck, or something. Obi-Wan had no idea what that was. “This is a biochip. We found them inside the brains of every single one of the troopers.”

“What?” Obi-Wan said, trying to sit up, but the others were both too quick, both of them putting a hand on either of his shoulders to stop him.

“You still need to rest, Obi-Wan,” Vokara said, and Cody nodded imperiously. He huffed and relaxed back against the bed again. “I reported my findings to the Council and the Shadows along with your report. They then set Shadows and several de-chipped slicers amongst the troopers to finding out what these were for. They were control chips, with horrifying orders on them. The Sith could have…” She paused, shuddering, and then managed a smile. Obi-Wan noted that though Vokara had drawn back, Cody hadn’t, still keeping his hand where it was, resting on his shoulder. “Well, suffice to say that it was a very good thing we realized they were there. We’ve quarantined all of the troopers who haven’t had theirs out, yet, and the battalions in the field are working on it ship-side.”

“Order 66,” Obi-Wan breathed. “That’s how he would have done it.” Vokara and Cody exchanged significant looks with each other before turning back to him.

“The Council will want to speak to you about… what, exactly, happened, and what you saw, but not now,” Vokara said. “Not for some time, if I have my way.”

“You always do,” Obi-Wan sighed, and she smiled.

“As I should,” she said, and then she paused, eyeing him carefully. “Obi-Wan… Once we decrypted the Orders on those chips… Well, it was fairly clear just who the Sith Lord was.”

Obi-Wan’s thoughts screeched to a halt, catching not only what she had said, but how she had said it. “Who the Sith Lord was? Are they…?”

“Dead?” Cody said. “Yes. Very much so.”

“How?” Obi-Wan breathed, utterly amazed by all they had managed to accomplish in so short a time— Or, well. Perhaps not that short a time. It was rather clear by now that his sense of time and space had been… quite distorted during that ordeal.

“I assume you know that it was Palpatine,” Vokara said, and Obi-Wan nodded. “The Council confronted him with both the chips and other evidence the Shadows found, once they knew where to look, during a Senate session. They had only troopers who had already had their chips removed stationed there, and they were jamming transmissions. He couldn’t get any of those orders out to the troopers who still have their chips within them.”

“Casualties?” Obi-Wan asked softly.

“A few,” Vokara admitted. “Mace will need two prosthetic hands, Agen… is with the Force, now, and Kit will likely never walk again. Several Senators were also killed in the chaos, and several troopers gave their lives trying to protect both the Jedi and the Senators. But, overall, casualties were lighter than we were expecting. Obi-Wan, whatever you did… You managed to get him to break cover early. That last… episode you had, he was in the middle of giving a speech on Naboo, and he faltered. He recovered fairly well, to the average person’s eye, but the Jedi who were there acting as guards could all feel a… wave of Darkness that rippled through the Force.”

“So they already suspected, and they were gathering evidence when I led you to the chips,” Obi-Wan said, and Vokara nodded. “Force. Force, we were so lucky. If we had tried to act, even with evidence in hand, without knowing about the chips…” Cody closed his eyes, obviously pained, and Obi-Wan reached up to take Cody’s hand off of his shoulder, instead lacing their fingers together. Now, at least, he could offer comfort. Cody rallied quickly, smiling at him. “Do I want to know how the battle actually went?”

“I’ll skip to the most important part of that, too,” Vokara said. “It’s unclear who actually killed him, because both Cody and Fox had been issued slugthrowers by the Battlemaster for that fight, and their slugs hit at just about the same time. Those two hours in total that battle took was the longest he’s been away from your side since you were admitted.”

Obi-Wan barked a laugh. “Very well done then, my dear,” he said, and, as always, Cody flushed at the endearment.

“I’ll leave you to rest, now that you know the most important facts—”

“Wait,” Obi-Wan said. “How long was I…?”

“Counting from the day you were found unconscious in your quarters on the Negotiator, to when you woke up the first time was five weeks. Since then, it’s been another three. You’ve woken up a few other times before now, though you were never this coherent, so we never told you, before, how things turned out.”

Obi-Wan gaped at her. “Eight weeks? I’ve been in this bed for eight weeks?”

“You were,” Vokara said, and then reached out to pat his leg. “And you’ll be staying there at least a little longer.”

He pouted, but didn’t actually argue. He truly was very tired—though there were still two important questions to be asked… “Why does my chest hurt?”

“Chest compressions will do that,” Vokara said, matter-of-fact, and Cody’s hand tightened around Obi-Wan’s.

“Ah,” he said softly. “That… would explain it. And where is Anakin? He came once, didn’t he? Is he alright?” Again, Vokara and Cody exchanged looks, and he didn’t like the quality of it, immediately suspicious.

“He’s here in the Temple,” Vokara said, voice deliberately even and presence carefully shielded. “Alive, yes, and just as whole as he has been since he lost the arm.”

“There’s something you’re not telling me,” Obi-Wan said.

“There is,” Vokara agreed. “But it’ll have to wait. As your Healer, I’ve decided that you’ve hit your limit for serious conversation for the day. Tomorrow, I’ll come by to explain the rest in more detail. For now, take it easy.” Obi-Wan opened his mouth to argue, and Vokara just shot him a cheeky sort of grin. “Cody will be allowed to stay, so long as you do not talk about anything I haven’t cleared you for.”

Obi-Wan knew that was the best offer he was going to get, and he decided to concede gracefully. Arguing with Vokara was never worth the effort, and he never won anyway. “Very well.”

“Good,” Vokara said, entirely too pleased with herself, though the smug quality fled from her smile quickly. “I’m very glad you’re still with us, Obi-Wan. Whatever you went through… You had to fight like hell to be here, I can tell that much.”

“Well, I wasn’t alone—I had help every step of the way,” Obi-Wan said, and he squeezed Cody’s hand, this time. “And that made all the difference.”

None of them commented on the way Cody’s breath hitched.

It honestly took longer than he’d truly expected for Cody to address the bantha in the room.

They talked mostly about the men, for a while—and the entirety of Ghost Company, and the majority of the rest of the 212th had been to visit him at some point after he’d woken, though before he regained his faculties, so he didn’t recall that—and how their brothers were handling what was turning out to be the end of the war. It was a lovely, hopeful thought, and the best balm Obi-Wan could imagine for… everything else that had happened.

It was only several hours later that Cody started to get that look on his face, the one that told Obi-Wan he was preparing himself to ask something uncomfortable for him. Obi-Wan had a feeling he knew what it would be, and just took Cody’s hand again and waited.

“While you were… under,” Cody said slowly, haltingly, not quite able to look him in the eye, and there was a flush starting to rise on his cheeks that Obi-Wan found rather… sweet, “you knew I was here.”

“Always,” Obi-Wan said, and Cody smiled, ducking his head a bit.

“And you… You heard what we said around you?” he asked, voice softer, then.

“Some of it,” Obi-Wan said, and then he paused, trying to determine how best to explain this to Cody. “To me, it seemed like a much shorter span of time than it truly was, so I don’t believe I was really aware for as much of it as I’d initially thought I was. But there were times when I… I had separated my consciousness from my physical body, and like that, I could see and hear you more clearly.”

“If you don’t mind me asking, what did you… actually hear?” Cody asked, still not quite looking at him. Obi-Wan smiled and squeezed his hand gently.

“I remember… when Anakin first came,” he said, and Cody’s hand tightened almost painfully around his, though he immediately eased up. “And some of… after that. You calling for me to come back, namely. I… remember the after of the second time you had to call for me, and I… Well, I did hear your conversation with Rex after Anakin’s visit, though I’m not sure how long it was between the two, and… I did hear what you said after that.” Cody was really and truly blushing, now, and he still wouldn’t look Obi-Wan in the eye. It was rather uncharacteristic for his normally composed Marshal Commander, but it was all the more endearing for that. “And just so you’re aware… The Force is in all things. It does hear you. It always does and always will.”

“And so did you, that time,” Cody sighed. “That… That isn’t how I wanted to tell you.”

“It meant so much to me regardless,” Obi-Wan said. “And I do believe I already told you, at some point, but a slurred confession during a mostly nonsensical ramble after weeks of what was essentially a coma, during which time I technically died twice, is… That is not how I would have wanted to tell you, either.”

Cody smiled, a bittersweet expression, and he finally looked up again, his eyes suspiciously shiny, though at least he wasn’t truly crying, this time. Obi-Wan had had more than enough of making Cody cry for a lifetime.

“I do, you know,” he said. “Love you.”

“And I love you,” Obi-Wan said. “And you’ve been saying it for weeks, now, my dear. Everything you’ve done for me, staying by my side through it all… I can’t think of a more meaningful expression of it than that.”

“I can,” Cody said. “You came back from the dead just because I asked you to come back. Twice.”

It was Obi-Wan’s turn to flush, though he didn’t look away. “Cody,” he said, utterly serious, “if I could, if it were within my power, I would never deny you anything you asked of me.” Cody’s eyes widened a bit, and Obi-Wan squeezed his hand again. “Without you there… I don’t think I would have made it through that.”

“You would’ve found a way,” Cody said, and Obi-Wan shook his head.

“No, my dear,” he said. “You don’t understand. It was— Whatever Sidious had done to me, it drew out my Darkest memories and forced me to relive them, over and over again, until and unless I detached myself from my body. He was trying to drive me mad or force me to sever my connection with my physical body—to die, really and truly, because with that Darkness as a buffer between myself and the Force… I wouldn’t have rejoined it. I honestly don’t think I would have realized they were just memories if you hadn’t been there to ground me. I think I would have just… Lived it all, again and again. You were my anchor— you were the only one who could truly get through to me, even then.”

Cody’s expression went through a series of complicated emotions, also reflected in his presence—and he wasn’t shielding from him purposefully, now, knowing how honored he was when Cody was willing to share this part of himself like this with Obi-Wan, not just because he was too tired and feeling too much to keep it all locked down. There was a touched sort of joy, and relief, and also fear and anger.

“I’m just happy it worked,” Cody said. “I don’t… I can’t imagine losing you—at least not like that. But… I do think we killed that shabuir too fast.”

“Killing him was just, of course, but that… That would have become revenge, and that is not the Jedi way, my dear,” Obi-Wan said, and Cody quirked an eyebrow at him.

“And I am not a Jedi,” he shot back. “But what’s done is done, and at least he’s dead and gone.”

“And now,” Obi-Wan said, “we have a future to look forward to. I… Well, when Vokara is willing to allow that sort of discussion—” He was mostly teasing, but he was still far too tired to manage this sort of conversation just yet. “—I would very much like to talk with you about… what you might want that future to look like.”

“As long as it has you in it,” Cody said, “we can figure out the details later.”

Obi-Wan smiled. “Then we’re already on the same page, Cody dearest.”

One year later.

“You’re certain you want to come with us, my dear?”

A year ago, Ahsoka would’ve bristled at the question, seeing it as an insinuation that she should be second-guessing her own decisions—she never had liked being questioned once she’d truly made up her mind about something—but now, Cody watched her take a long, slow breath, the irritation and indignation she would’ve felt back then nowhere in sight.

She’d changed quite a bit in this last year—they all had. Settling into peacetime had made them all into different people than they’d had to be during the war, but these, Cody thought, had been good changes.

“I can’t stay here, Master,” Ahsoka said, voice soft but steady. “And you’re my family —being with all of you means more to me than being in a certain place.”

“I understand,” Obi-Wan said. “But it will likely be quite some time before we return to Coruscant again.”

“I know.”

“You… still haven’t seen him yet,” Obi-Wan pressed, his own voice softening, and Cody could still tell that he ached just thinking about him —and he knew that some part of Obi-Wan always would. The things Skywalker had done, the person he had chosen to become… It hurt. Even though Obi-Wan still loved him—probably especially because Obi-Wan still loved him—it would always hurt.

“I’m not ready,” Ahsoka said. “And even if it takes a while before we come back to Coruscant… Well, it isn’t like he’s going anywhere.” Obi-Wan winced, and Ahsoka seemed to realize that she’d struck a nerve, and reached out to put a hand on his arm. “Are you sure you don’t want to go see him yourself?”

“The messages we’ve exchanged are enough for me, now,” Obi-Wan said. “I explained it in my last recording, that we’re leaving and why. He has yet to respond, but I left my commcode with his healer team. That is the best I can manage, for the moment.” Ahsoka nodded, but a nervous sort of look crossed her face and she looked down at the ground.

“Master, are you… I want to have them with us, but are you sure that taking the twins so far away is the… best thing for everyone?” Ahsoka asked.

“No,” Obi-Wan said. “I cannot be truly sure of anything, my dear, especially not in this. But Anakin is not considered qualified to make any decisions regarding their care—” Skywalker still wasn’t even allowed to see his children in-person, Cody knew, so that was putting it mildly. “—and Padme supported the idea. Both Anakin and Padme are very well-known, particularly in the Core, and she wanted to give them a chance to have a true childhood, away from all of this.” And it wasn’t like the former-Senator could raise them, either—certainly not from her own cell.

Apparently, conspiracy when it came to mass-murder even after the fact carried a hefty sentence—one Amidala was still serving out, and would be for years yet.

Skywalker had nearly killed Obi-Wan—he had killed him, however briefly—with his, well, brute force Force-use, for lack of a better term, but that had spiraled into something much, much bigger. When the Council had questioned him on what had happened, catching him in lie after lie… He’d finally broken, and admitted to the genocide he’d single-handedly committed—it hadn’t taken long, from there, before it came out that Amidala had known about it since just after it had happened, and she’d never said a word about it—she’d even helped him cover it up. Skywalker had been given to the custody of the Jedi, who had him in a strict program with their Mind Healers, and Amidala had been sentenced to five years in prison with another thirty under strict house arrest after that (though, in Cody’s opinion, having heard about her family’s lavish estates, that part wasn’t going to be such a hardship—but it was something, at least).

Much as it hurt the people who loved them to see it happen, the two of them facing repercussions for those choices was just —and it had given Cody just a little bit of faith back in the Republic’s government, truth be told, a sign that they could support the right decisions every once in a while.

But then, after the reveal and abrupt removal of the Sith they’d had as their former head of state, the Republic’s politicians had been on their very best behavior. That likely had something to do with it.

“And besides,” Obi-Wan said, starting to smile again, that particular look he always got when talking about their new home, “I can’t think of many places better to raise these two younglings. They’ll have three full Clans of various ages to bond with, and Lothal itself is a far quieter place than Coruscant. It should be less overwhelming to them, strong as they are.”

“Yeah,” Ahsoka agreed. “I suppose I’ll go stow my bags, then, and help with the loading.”

“Thank you, Padawan,” Obi-Wan said, and Ahsoka’s smile, unsurprisingly, turned a little bittersweet. She’d been in limbo for quite a while after… everything, after the end of it all; she’d had to find a sort of equilibrium on her own after the revelations about her Master, and Obi-Wan had needed time to heal and regain his strength. But it hadn’t surprised anyone when, in the end, Obi-Wan had offered to complete her training, if she was willing to go to the newly-resurrected Lothal Temple with him. It hadn’t been a surprise, either, when she’d accepted—especially since Plo Koon, Rex, and Unduli and her former-Padawan, Barriss Offee, were also making the move.

Ahsoka split off, heading for the gaggle of shuttles they’d lined up to ferry all of the Jedi, clones, and supplies they were taking to Lothal with them up to the Venators that would convey them—and then become part of their home as well. None of the Jedi had wanted to possess warships anymore, and it would be easy enough to give them new life by breaking them up and forming part of their new home from them. And, in the meantime, as Cody and several of his brothers had ruthlessly pointed out, the Venators would be a good way to deter pirates and slavers from gunning for them. Just because the Republic and the Confederacy were now at peace didn’t mean that there wasn’t still violence and conflict to be found in this galaxy of theirs.

But it really was much more peaceful.

Obi-Wan watched Ahsoka go for a moment before turning to Cody, that particular smile still on his face. “No second thoughts on your part either, my dear?” he asked, and Cody shook his head. He knew it was just in Obi-Wan’s nature to check, and then double-check, when it came to big decisions like this, but it was a little exasperating, by now.

“I told you, Obi-Wan: as long as whatever future I have includes you in it, everything else is just details,” he said. Obi-Wan’s expression softened, and he leaned in for a kiss.

Then, of course, they were interrupted, because brothers were the worst. Cody loved them all, really he did, but they really knew how to kill a moment.

“You know, as happy as I am for the two of you—really, I am—if I have to watch the two of you canoodling all over the ship on the way there, I might have second thoughts about this,” Fox drawled. Cody pulled away from Obi-Wan, pausing briefly to roll his eyes before turning to the approaching group of his brothers. Fox was surrounded, as always, by Thorn, Thire, and Stone—and it hadn’t surprised Cody a bit that the Corries had unanimously decided that they wanted to get off Coruscant and never set foot there again. Knowing what they did now… Cody shuddered to think what had happened to them, left to the tender mercies of the Sith Lord in command. He still didn’t know everything, and he probably never would, but… Well, what was done was done, and they were all healing, and moving foward.

“Canoodling, Fox?” Cody said. “Really?” Fox just shrugged and Cody snorted.

“Fox, there will be younglings on these ships,” Obi-Wan said. “All ‘canoodling’ more involved than a kiss will be kept firmly behind closed doors. We will be the very picture of propriety.”

“Why don’t I believe him?” Stone stage-whispered, and the Corries snickered.

“You wound me, truly; obviously, it is Bly and Aayla you should truly be worried about canoodling,” Obi-Wan said, and that earned a near even mixture of groans and snickering. “But off you go, my dears: your shuttles await you.”

They nodded, and as they passed them, Fox paused to knock his pauldron against Cody’s, nodding to him and waiting for Cody to nod back before moving on. Before killing Palpatine together… Well, things had gotten strained between him and Fox, who thought that they just hadn’t cared what was happening to him and his men on Coruscant—not that they hadn’t known. The fact that, once they found out, they immediately started planning how to take him down… That had gone a long way to giving Fox his trust back in his brothers. They still had work to do, but they would get there. Cody was sure of it.

“Who else are we waiting on?” Obi-Wan asked, and Cody glanced at his ‘pad.

“Rex, Bly and Aayla, Mace—” And hadn’t that been an adjustment, calling their former-Generals by their first names, but almost all of them had insisted as soon as the war was truly over. Some of them were willing to accept Knight and Master So-and-So, but not all of them. “—and… They were not on the list this morning.”

“Who?” Obi-Wan hummed, and Cody turned his ‘pad to show him the new additions. Obi-Wan laughed, the full-bodied kind that made him throw his head back, his eyes crinkling at the corners, and—well. Fine. Alright, maybe that made him a little less grumpy at his logistics being disrupted by surprise passengers.

“I can’t say I’m surprised,” Obi-Wan said. “I privately thought Quinlan would show up on Lothal, at some point, given that Aayla is going with Bly, so it isn’t too much of a shock to have him coming with the first wave. And when it was only going to be Aayla and Bly, Tholme likely thought it best to remain here to corral Quinlan. Of the two, he would be the bigger threat left unattended.”

Cody quirked an eyebrow at him. “I don’t know about that, Obi-Wan. Insanity and chaos seem to run in that lineage.”

“As they do in so many others,” Obi-Wan said with an easy shrug. “But Bly is quite sensible, and he can corral Aayla effectively enough. Quinlan, however…” He paused, shrugging again, and Cody nodded, conceding that point. “So it only makes sense that he would follow the others, with them remaining together.”

They fell silent, Cody keeping half an eye on the preparations still underway around them, the brothers and Jedi saying their goodbyes—if only for now; Cody had a feeling that many of those staying behind would be visiting Lothal sooner than later—and he still kept half an eye on Obi-Wan. He always did, just as Obi-Wan did for him. Looking out for each other, having each other’s backs, was no less deeply ingrained just because the war had ended, after all. But the attention he was still directing at Obi-Wan meant that Cody noticed that he was just… staring at the Temple, towering above them from the plaza they were using as their staging area, and that he’d gone a little pale.

“Are you sure you’re not having second thoughts?” Cody asked quietly, though he rather doubted it. This whole thing had been Obi-Wan’s idea in the first place—there was no way he was going to back out now. But maybe it had just suddenly become real, the knowledge that he was leaving behind the only home he’d ever known.

“No,” Obi-Wan said. “No, I’m not. I’m just… Committing it all to memory, one last time. So I can remember it looking like this, and not…” Cody grimaced faintly and reached for Obi-Wan’s hand with his unoccupied one, already knowing what he was talking about.

Whatever it was the Sith had done to him… Obi-Wan had recovered, eventually, but there had been consequences. For months after he’d woken up, he kept having horrible visions that he said encapsulated “what might have been”—visions of himself, alone and heartbroken, hiding on Tatooine; visions of Cody and his brothers’ minds stolen from them, wandering around for years after the Order as mindless meatdroids; visions of the 212th firing a cannon at him on Cody’s order; visions of…

Visions of the Temple on fire, their troopers, Cody’s brothers, marching up the steps, and sparing no one inside—not even the younglings.

The visions had stopped, eventually, but it hadn’t surprised Cody that he’d come up with the idea to leave Coruscant this way with too many logical and emotional reasons behind it. With how close Order 66 had come to happening in reality, the Jedi had learned an important lesson about scattering their resources out better, not keeping all of their assets and personnel in one location, no matter how well-defended and safe they thought it to be; too many Jedi were now realizing just how much the Sith had affected Coruscant itself, the Dark apparently so slow to fade here even after the man himself was dead, and they found that they felt better, “Lighter,” off-world; and Obi-Wan himself…

The distance from the Temple and Coruscant would probably help, Cody thought, especially since he would still have fellow Jedi and plenty of clones around, and the community they would help build was already being worked on by the various Service Corps—it would be its own proper Temple in no time. The chance to be in a Temple, to build a Temple, full of familiar, well-loved people, where he wouldn’t also have to suffer through flashbacks of his family’s destruction as it had so nearly happened… That was one important reason he’d chosen to leave.

And his lineage was another. Just a few halls down from Skywalker in those shielded cells in the belly of the Temple was Dooku, who had—shockingly enough—actually surrendered after his Sith Master was killed. Dooku had insisted on certain reforms being enacted in the Order and the Senate before he had let himself be taken in, but he’d still done it—and, even more shockingly, his suggested reforms were even good ideas. Sure, Cody had heard that he’d started out as an idealist who’d just wanted to create change and then fell down the slippery path of the Dark Side and a descent into a lust for power, but it was still… weird.

But with both Dooku and Skywalker being held down there, Yoda determined to stay put both to continue leading the Jedi and to support what did remain of his lineage… Obi-Wan had wanted space that much more. In a Temple with both Count Dooku and a Fallen Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan would never have been able to escape them, he would have constantly been reminded of his connections to them—and, therefore, what had happened. And Obi-Wan had finally learned, Cody thought, that acceptance did not mean the same thing as resignation. He could accept what had happened without resigning himself to being defined by the actions of other people—but to do it, he had to leave them behind.

“You’re thinking heavy thoughts of your own,” Obi-Wan murmured, and Cody smiled.

“It’s a day for those, I suppose,” he said. “This is good, just… heavy.” Obi-Wan smiled again, a little bittersweet, this time, but he just nodded his agreement. Cody’s ‘pad chimed with an incoming text message and he nodded to himself. “That’s Rex. He said that he thinks our logistical skills will be better suited to helping aboard the Venators, and he and Mace can finish the preparations down here. They’ll meet us up there.”

Obi-Wan hummed. “As usual, Rex makes a good point,” he said. “Shall we then, Cody dearest?”

“Let’s.” He let Obi-Wan tug on their hands to lead him along towards one of the shuttles, smiling ever more brightly, now that it was becoming real.

This was their future they were walking towards—a good, long future, too, now that a fix for the advanced aging in the clones had been developed and offered up to any of them who wanted it—and Cody already had everything he’d wanted: his brothers were free and happy, and he had the rest of his life to spend with Obi-Wan. They’d had to fight like hell to get to this point, to make it to see this peacetime happiness, but Obi-Wan, just like Cody, had always been a fighter.

Feeling a little… sentimental—alright, he was overwhelmed, but not in a bad way, and maybe a little choked up—Cody squeezed Obi-Wan’s hand, drawing his attention back to him. Obi-Wan turned to him with a questioning look on his face, though he was still smiling. Cody dropped his hand in favor of reaching up to his cheek, enjoying, as he always did, the way Obi-Wan tilted his head into it.

“Even then, I could tell how hard it was for you to do it,” Cody said, and Obi-Wan blinked at him, “but I’m so grateful you came back to me.”

Obi-Wan’s smile turned softer. “You asked me to,” he returned, as he always did, even still. “And, more than that, you showed me the way back. Without you…”

“You would’ve found a way,” Cody said, as he always did, even now, and Obi-Wan laughed softly.

“Let us agree to disagree on that point, then,” Obi-Wan said. “I think we can both agree that we’re incredibly happy and infinitely grateful to be able to have this—regardless of how we got here.”

Cody huffed and nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “We can.” He leaned in, Obi-Wan meeting him halfway for another kiss, though they kept it on the shorter side, given how many of Cody’s brothers, Obi-Wan’s fellow Jedi, and—yes— younglings there were around them. Drawing back, Cody grinned at him again and nudged Obi-Wan’s shoulder gently. “Now, shall we go figure out the last of those details?”

Obi-Wan, as he’d hoped, laughed again (and Cody didn’t think he would ever tire of the sound of it), amused by his reference to the very first conversation they’d had about what their future might look like. And Cody had to admit that there was still a lot to settle, and building a Temple from scratch wasn’t exactly going to be easy, but it was worth doing.

“I love you,” Obi-Wan said, turning back to resume their progress towards the shuttle again.

“I love you, too,” Cody returned.

Yes, they really had been through hell to get here—but the fight, he thought, had been worth it.