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“CC-2224,” the Fourth Sister says. She always says his name strangely, like it’s not the right one. “Are you paying attention?”
“Yes, sir,” CC-2224 snaps back. He’s not. He’s been doing that a lot, lately. He knows that it’s bad, that it’s what gets clones decommissioned, that the only reason he has survived this long is his efficiency. Somehow, he can’t bring himself to care.
The Fourth Sister looks at him for a long while. “Commander,” she says. “Have you ever used a lightsaber?”
CC-2224 holds himself straight and rigid. “Yes, sir.”
“I see.” She holds out hers. “Would you like to again?”
And he shouldn’t, because clones don’t carry lightsabers, but he reaches out and grips it true and familiar, and –
Commander, says the man with the red hair who haunts his dreams. That’s my lightsaber, I believe.
You believe? Cody mocks. At this point, sir, it seems to be mine, what with how often it ends up in my hands.
The man laughs. Give it here, Commander.
Yes, sir, Cody says, and salutes to the man – General Kenobi, because that’s his name, isn’t it. A traitor, a Jedi, why can’t I stop remembering your face –
“Commander,” the Fourth Sister says.
"Sir, yes, sir,” CC-2224 replies, and his whole body flinches when he realizes she has two gloved fingers to his forehead. There’s pity in her eyes, isn’t there. He holds himself still – I will not flinch and I will not fall and then in the end I will stand truer than all – and he does not move.
"I am requesting you for my next mission,” the Fourth Sister tells him. “I think we would work well together, you and I. First, we must talk.”
“Yes, sir.”
They walk. They are not in hyperspace, right now, one of the vast star destroyers floating through Imperial space. CC-2224 thinks he remembers a time when the stars were enormous, uncontainable things to him. Now he knows them simply to be made up of fire and plasma, hydrogen and helium. He thinks he remembers a time when the idea of them was shining, and bright, and –
You’re not small, and you’re not insignificant, Kenobi says. You’re very bright, Commander. All of you are.
While we’re on that topic, then, Cody replies, would you take your own health seriously, too?
The General sighs. I try my best to protect you all. I am a very good fighter – Cody snorts; he’s arrogant, as always – and I must do what I can to save as many of you as possible.
With all due respect, sir, we don’t need a god, or a guardian angel. We just need someone who will lead us well. And you being alive is integral to that.
Kenobi purses his lips. He’s displeased by this, of course, but he will listen to what Cody says, because that is the only way that their working relationship has ever succeeded. Cody punctuates his point by putting the General’s elbow back in, firm traction above the elbow via constriction band, and he pulls and on the man’s pale wrist and holds right in the crook of his elbow. He can feel the jerk and then the audible pop as the joint relocates.
Kenobi grits his teeth. Gentle there, Commander.
You won’t break, Cody says, and next deals with the bone sticking out of Kenobi’s other wrist, not quite breaking the skin but obviously deformed like a bug under the skin, and limp in a bad sort of way. When he goes to splint and then put bacta on, Kenobi hisses.
You won’t break, and neither will we, Cody says, with his own kind of strength. He knows he has it, and Kenobi knows it, too. But we don’t need to be unbreakable, or bright. We just need to be alive. And in this war, for us to be alive, you need to stay alive, too.
And Kenobi opens his mouth to agree, and –
“You know how the Force works, then?”
CC-2224 is responding before he can help himself. “Yes, sir.”
“Please, speak freely.”
This sounds like a trap. “Yes, sir.”
“Tell me what you know of the Force.” The Fourth Sister’s voice is amused, like she knows what he’s thinking, and –
Tell me what you know of the Force, General Kenobi says.
Cody exchanges looks with the rest of Ghost. Not much, sir, Waxer tells him.
Kenobi raises an eyebrow at Cody. You know some.
It’s a bacteria, Cody admits.
Or a parasite, Crys offers.
Well, you are right, Kenobi says. In a way, and I am only telling you all this because I trust you.
The men all straighten, and Cody smiles, because he told Kenobi – he told him – that he needed to let the men know he trusted them back, and here, now, he is.
Kenobi continues. The Force is – it’s in everyone, just a little bit. We don’t say ‘may the Force be with you’ for no reason. We say it because it’s true – because everyone could channel it, maybe if they tried. But that’s besides the point. The point is that it’s something we’re taught to cultivate and to channel, to work with much the same as we work with the raw kyber in our lightsabers. We host the Force. His voice is rhythmic, like he’s teaching, or maybe singing. But the Force – bacteria isn’t quite the right word. Bacteria implies sentience, implies living, and that’s not what the Force is. We don’t even know what it is, not really. We just know that we cannot allow attachment, cannot allow arrogance, not in this – because the moment you start thinking of it not as a partnership but as something you can beat, you lose. The Force always, always, wins.
Here, Kenobi’s eyes are on Cody, and he tries to contain a shiver, thinking of the jetti’s bones realigning themselves, of his pus-filled blisters that heal suddenly, of even Cody’s own men (the ones that their General knows are dying a slow and painful death) that fall asleep and never wake up. Because Kenobi speaks of mercy, terrible and forgiving, and –
“Yes,” the Fourth Sister muses, though he hasn’t said much out loud. “And the Dark Side?”
CC-2224 is choking on something, wants to pull the feeling up and out of his throat like choking up hair matted with bile, needs to tell her an infected wound, it’s eating you alive, it’s eating me alive – “Cannibalization.”
“Quite so,” she replies. “Beautiful.”
He’s not sure what she’s referring to. “Yes, sir.”
“You would know, wouldn’t you,” the Fourth Sister says. “Things are always so much more lovely when they devour us whole.”
When CC-2224 coughs, he coughs up blood. He can’t look the Fourth Sister in the eye. There aren’t so many clones left in the Empire; it’s been ten long years of hell. They are decommissioned, or they disappear. CC-2224 will be just one more.
“Yes,” the Fourth Sister says decisively. “I think it’s time for us to go.”
They board her small ship. They jump to hyperspace. When she turns and strikes him upon the temple, he is not even surprised.
“I’m glad I found you,” she tells him quietly, and for a moment, lightsaber drawn and cloak swirling, she could be someone else –
I am glad I found you, Commander, Obi-Wan says. His lightsaber hangs from a clip at Cody’s waist, and he’s got one of Cody’s arms slung over his shoulder. Being a prisoner of war for three days takes a lot out of a man, it seems, even a man who is genetically modified. Somebody slapped some bacta on his ribs but he’s pretty sure he knows what flail chest feels like. Cody probably shouldn’t even be talking, but when has that ever stopped him.
Did you get everyone else out? Cody asks.
Of course.
Cody’s got a slug wound in his thigh that he basically packed with dirt, one painful thumb after another to clog the blood, and he might have lost a bit more blood than even a clone could. He’s going to get time in a tank for this excursion. You shouldn’t carry me. Bad for morale.
Obi-Wan shakes his head. Impossible man.
Cody wants to say, you, you’re the one who’s impossible, with your sword made of starfire and your unshakeable trust in me. He doesn’t, though.
Cody, Obi-Wan says, very quietly. Let me take care of you, please. I’d thought you were gone.
Not gone, Cody slurs out. Merely marching away.
I wish you wouldn’t.
It’s not a choice, Cody says, pain starting to make him woozy. Now that there’s no adrenaline – or other pain – to keep it at bay, he’s starting to feel it all. Not when it could save them.
A pause, then Obi-Wan replies, I think that is what I admire most about you, Cody. Stricken, maybe. You would fight even death.
For my men, Cody takes a sharp breath, hurting all the way down, and for you. Of course I would. They understand each other well, the two of them; that is why they work together so well. When I die, you know, it’ll probably be because I’ve got this, he gestures in the vague direction of the lightsaber that was at least eighteen percent of the reason for this entire karking disaster, and you won’t.
Obi-Wan says, far more serious, When I die – and he says when because they all know, they all know this war will kill them – it will be by your side. I’d have it no other way.
Cody closes his eyes. That’d be nice, sir. The pain is making him honest. Nice that someone wouldn’t leave me, even to the end.
My dear Cody. Obi-Wan’s eyes swirl, and he brushes a hand across Cody’s neck, calming. When I die, I will become a part of the Force, and the Force has always been with you. He doesn’t say, I will always be with you. He doesn’t need to.
And of course Cody knows. Cody killed him, didn’t he. Cody killed him, and he’s dead, and he might be part of the Force but in the end he’s just a man who was nothing but a bag of bones, and his lightsaber was just that – just a lightsaber, just metal. And in the end, that’s all there is, that’s all there will ever be –
Cody lifts his face, bloody and beaten. There’s a ringing in his head, and blood dripping down the side of his head, and he thinks about laying back down here and dying. He thinks he’s ready to go.
“Not yet, Commander,” the familiar voice of the Fourth Sister says. “Not yet, my friend.”
Cody shoves himself to his feet, unsure of when they dropped out of hyperspace, landed on this desolate moon. He supposes he’ll go down fighting, then, like he always would. But the scene that greets him is unfamiliar: red lightsaber and blue lightsaber, next to each other rather than against. And the Fourth Sister, face unmasked to reveal green skin and diamond markings, a grown woman, and across from her –
“Barriss,” Obi-Wan Kenobi says. “Thank you.”
“Of course, Master Kenobi,” the Fourth Sister – no, Barriss Offee – replies. There’s something in her eyes that Cody blearily recognizes as exhaustion born of too many years spent fighting. “I was happy to. If you could pass my message along to Ahsoka?” She smiles, just a little, and then adds, “I think the Commander is awake.”
When Obi-Wan turns, he is solid and tangible. He reaches out a hand hesitantly. He says, “Cody?”
Cody can hardly believe it, the ghost in front of him (or maybe he’s the ghost). Maybe that’s the horror of it, really, what this has driven home – he’s been a ghost haunting his own mind for the past ten years. He’s not even sure his own hands are real.
Cody opens his mouth and says, “Obi-Wan.”
“I’m sorry, Cody.”
Cody swallows past the burn of tears, and closes his eyes. “I’m sorry, too.”
Obi-Wan seems to notice, and he hesitates, letting Cody nod before putting warm hands on his shoulders. They’ve put each other back together before, piece by piece, that twice-damned lightsaber and all these shattered bones. Cody barely knows the man in front of him – barely knows himself – but maybe the stars aren’t so far away as they seem. Maybe even so, they can be beautiful.
“It’s over now, Cody,” Obi-Wan says. “It’s over. You’re safe.”