Chapter Text
There is something in CC-2224’s head.
It tells him to kill the Jedi.
The Jedi’s physical shove knocks him against the wall and onto the bed that the two had just warmed with body heat and sex and touch.
His orders are to kill this Jedi.
Jedi High General Master Obi-Wan Kenobi.
Good soldiers follow orders.
His Jedi.
Good soldiers follow orders.
This Jedi is a traitor.
The Jedi’s cloak has opened showing that he is still naked. CC-2224 is also naked. CC-2224 tracks the body in front of him with his eyes. It is thin from poor eating habits, but strong from labour intensive work. It felt hot against Cody’s body when they laid together. Hot and sweaty and desperately needed. The Jedi has the advantage. The Jedi has a blaster and the Force. CC-2224 is out of armour without resources or men.
No, that isn’t true.
He had left the lightsaber on the nightstand. He didn’t let it fall in the tangled chaos of shedding gear and clothes and weapons.
The Jedi never looks at the lightsaber. Avoids seeing it hanging on Cody’s belt whenever he can.
Cody couldn’t let it fall to the floor. Couldn’t allow himself to lose it.
That weapon could take life.
Easily.
CC-2224 grabs it. It is heavy in his hands. Heavier than it has ever felt before. He knows what to do to make it work, he has seen it done enough times. Blue light erupts between him and his enemy.
He doesn’t know how to wield a lightsaber in an effective way. It feels like holding a repelling magnet. It’s hard to maintain his grip. It is near-impossible to control. If he uses this weapon he will most likely lose his limbs or his life.
Good soldiers follow orders.
But it doesn’t matter as long as he kills the traitor.
The Jedi realises what he intends with his charge. The lightsaber would go through the Jedi. Cody would most likely be forced to run through the blade with the speed and force he was exerting.
They will both die here.
Good soldiers follow orders.
If it means his mission is finally completed his death didn’t matter.
His death has never mattered.
He is made to die. He is made to kill Jedi, or die for Jedi. Neither choice matters.
Neither choice is his.
It was never true that a Clone had his life or his death.
A clone had never had a life at all.
All a clone will ever have is death.
His wrist is caught by the hand that had run through his hair and CC-2224 lurches back as an invisible force presses against him.
The Jedi grits his teeth with effort.
“DIE JEDI!” CC-2224 screams.
CC-2224 feels the press of a blaster against his naked stomach.
Here it is at last.
He has failed to kill so now he will die.
And the cycle will end.
☀️☀️
Cody woke up.
He had a tunic roughly pulled over him, but no pants.
He was tied up.
Seventeen laughed uproariously in his head.
Di’kut!
The Jedi, the ghost, the lonely hermit, Ben, Obi-Wan Kenobi was pacing back and forth. The lightsaber was in one hand, the blaster was in the other. The suns light came in through the opening of the cave.
The night was long over.
Cody’s mind tried to reckon who it was in front of him. The stitched together pieces that didn’t fit together. Was he the Jedi? the Hermit? the Survivor? The Dead Man?
He was all those things, Cody realised. He was the Jedi and the ghost and the hermit and Ben, and Obi-Wan and he was arguing with all those aspects of himself whether or not he was about to kill Cody.
Cody wished he could kill him, but he also wished Kenobi would kill him too.
He closed his eyes.
Good soldiers—
Cody wasn’t a soldier anymore.
—follow orders.
But he was beholden to his one failed mission.
His orders were to kill the Jedi. The man in front of him still couldn’t be called a Jedi, but he could be called:
“Kenobi.”
The pacing stopped. Kenobi turned to him.
Cody wanted to kill him.
But Cody was tied up. He couldn’t follow his orders if he was tied up.
“Cody,” Kenobi said quietly.
Cody hadn’t noticed how empty Kenobi's eyes had been before. Now they were possessed by grief and fear and a cloying fatigue. Realisation. Madness. Anger.
The vessel of Ben was being possessed by the ghost of the Jedi that came before.
“There’s something inside of you,” Kenobi said.
And Cody wanted to laugh. He was about to say the same thing.
“Yes,” Cody replied instead. He fidgeted against his bindings. They were strong bindings, good knot work, he thought approvingly. It would be hard for him to slip out without Kenobi noticing, and it would take him quite a while to work through the knots until then.
“Were you always…aware of it?”
“Yes,” Cody answered. “The long necks never kept it a secret that there were behaviour modifiers in our heads. So that we would be obedient to the Republic and the Supreme Commander. Order 66 is one of the 151 general orders that all clones are forced to remember from decantation.
“The Contingency Orders?” Kenobi frowned. “Those were about command structure.”
“Order 66: In the event Jedi officers acting against the interests of the Republic, and after receiving special orders verified as coming directly from the Supreme Commander, GAR commanders will remove those officers by lethal force, and command of the GAR will revert to the Supreme Commander until a new command structure is established.”
“The younglings weren’t officers,” Kenobi said. He met Cody’s eyes challengingly.
“Jedi initiates were often sent on low risk relief operations,” Cody countered. “All Jedi were considered officers. Our training made sure that we knew all Jedi held rank in the GAR. That even a Jedi initiate held rank.”
Kenobi closed his eyes.
He took a breath and continued his interrogation. “There were clones that disobeyed orders. Slick. If he could do it—”
“We weren't... we weren't being controled all the time. We had our minds!"
"I... yes, I'm sorry."
"The contingency orders are different. I don’t know why. I can’t get them out of my head. I can’t get sixty-six out of my head. It’s always there, even though I’m a traitor now too, that doesn’t seem to matter.”
“You were a trap,” Obi-Wan said softly. “No one outside the Order knew, but we investigated the army’s creation. It was not Sifo Dyas that ordered your creation, it was Count Dooku.”
Cody felt a strange sort of vertigo.
It was obvious they had been a weapon to use against the Jedi. It was obvious. Yet knowing he was always created for darkness. had always been for death settled hard on his shoulders.
“It was late into the war and time and time again that particular investigation had to be put to the side. When it was revealed it was too late. We were in the middle of a war with no alternatives against the Seperatist’s droid army. And by then we so firmly trusted you. We were more worried about public opinion and faith in the army than we were about the Sith plot that was uncovered. We didn’t even inform Palpatine.” Kenobi chuckled mirthlessly. “It was always too late, wasn’t it? From the moment I found you all. A convenient army to fight the other army we had no defence against. It was use you or let the Republic fall. We convinced ourselves you were Dooku’s first draft. That he had intended to use you before Nute Gunray offered his droids. We thought we had saved you.” Kenobi shook his head bitterly. “Saved you from what? You were doomed to a war without meaning. Forced to serve the Republic. Seen as less than sentient by the government sending you to your deaths. Everything I touch is stained by Sith hands. I should have died on Naboo. Perhaps then the Republic would have never have known of you and Anakin would be—”
Kenobi’s grief and misery were so strong that Cody could feel it eating at his own heart like a carnivorous fish in a pond of gore.
But he had suffered Ben Kenobi’s misery and Obi-Wan Kenobi’s regrets for long enough. “The long necks would have knocked on the Jedi’s door as soon as the Separatists declared war,” Cody said. “Do you think you held the fate of the entire Galaxy in your hand?”
Kenobi stared at him. He looked down at the lightsaber in his hand.
“I know I did.”
Skywalker again, Cody guessed.
His bloodlust rose and fell.
He wondered who killed Skywalker. He was glad it wasn’t Rex. Cody wished he had done it himself.
He wasn’t sure if that was jealousy or the order.
“Skywalker didn’t begin and end with you.”
“Excuse me?”
“You aren’t halves of a circle no matter how the two of you were convinced of that.”
“Anakin was—”
“Anakin Skywalker is dead! Stop wallowing in your grief and accept that!”
“AND I KILLED HIM!” Kenobi shouted at him.
The baking heat of Tatooine disappeared and the room became very cold, even as Obi-Wan Kenobi screamed the truth to him.
“He bent a knee to the Sith Emperor and slaughtered the Jedi of the Temple. Killed the old and the young. I did my duty as his former Master and I struck him down on Mustafar! He’s dead because I killed him!”
Oh.
They stared at each other. Fully bare at last. CC-2224 was Cody the traitor, and the man in front of him was a ghost and had always been a ghost.
“So that’s how you died,” Cody said.
Kenobi’s face was red and the heat seeped back into the little cave, stiflingly hot now. Sweat poured down Cody’s neck. Soaked into the fabric of the shirt that probably wasn’t his.
The thing in his head went silent for the first time since finding Obi-Wan Kenobi’s lightsaber in the sand.
It didn’t matter by what name this ghost went by. He was dead and had been from the beginning.
Cody leaned against the wall he had been propped up on.
“I don’t want to be beholden to the Emperor anymore,” Cody said. “I don’t want to kill any Jedi I might stumble on.”
Yes I do. I want to kill them all.
“That’s why you found me.”
“No.”
Kenobi crossed his arms and looked away from him.
“You know why.”
“I’m not the person you were looking for.”
“I’m not the person who needed to go looking,” Cody replied. “He’s dead too. He died when he shot at you on the cliffs of Utapau. I’ve been a dead thing following orders and trying to ignore the wrongness in all the time since.”
“You escaped,” Kenobi said softly. Ben’s gruffness couldn’t cover the man’s natural empathy as much as he tried.
“I’ve been looking for a reason to live,” Cody said. “You already have one. I want you to share it with me.”
“The thing in your head.”
“You are not a Jedi.”
“No,” Kenobi whispered. “I am not. I can’t be.”
“And Luke Skywalker is still a toddler with many years before you can train him—if Owen will even let you. If you’ll even let yourself.”
“You…”
“I don’t see any problems.”
“You just tried to kill me last night after having sex with me.”
“I was confused. I’m not anymore. I won’t be again.”
“I can’t trust you.”
“It’s your choice,” Cody said. “This is the only place I can be. Either keep me or set me free. Nothing has changed”
All a clone has is his life or his death.
Sometimes he doesn’t get to choose, no matter how good he is. No matter how strong or able. Sometimes it’s in someone else's hands.
There is no safer hands than the hands of Obi-Wan Kenobi.
Epilogue
Cody had been gone a month.
It had been a long shot. Full of danger and mistakes and peril.
But the chip was out.
And he was trying to find words.
His time with Ben Kenobi wasn’t terrible. It was a great comfort in fact.
But it wasn’t living, and now that Cody was free, truly free, he realised he couldn’t be a ghost anymore. He couldn’t haunt Luke Skywalker's life and wait for him to grow up to save them all if that was truly the boy's destiny.
Cody was a man of action.
He needed to leave.
And Ben Kenobi… he had to stay. Cody knew that. No matter how much he could beg and plead, Luke was the last tether Obi-Wan Kenobi had to life, and Ben without that little bit of Obi-Wan wouldn’t be worth knowing.
Cody would visit, he decided as he walked towards the old cave that was something like home. He would check in.
But maybe Ben wouldn’t want that. Would see it as too dangerous a risk for Cody to return. It probably was.
He had the argument in his head a few times by the time he finally entered.
He wondered briefly if Ben might try to kill him, but brushed it away. They had grown beyond that childish dilemma Cody had used to stay by Ben's side.
He looked around expecting to see the same sembalance of life they had made here.
It was empty.
Cody blinked.
He left?
“There you are.”
Cody turned.
And there was Obi-Wan.
Like he had always been there.
He was different. Older. He had suffered through grief and the death of his people. He had killed his beloved student that had been a part of his soul who had once been his greatest hope. He had watched over the son of that student for years, sheltering the small flame that it might grow bright in the surrounding darkness. He had changed.
But he was Obi-Wan Kenobi.
So very much alive.
“I didn’t want to leave a holo,” Kenobi said as if nothing had changed. As if both of them weren’t suddenly two flesh and blood people in a galaxy full of darkness, standing in the same room.
Together and alive.
“Where are we going?” Cody asked. He noticed his own possessions were packed up neatly in a bag that was waiting to be thrown over a shoulder. His old armour was laid out, ready to be put on.
“The Jundland Wastes. I’ve negotiated with the local tribe a very fair deal for the privilege of setting up a home there.”
“You negotiated?” Cody raised his eyebrow suspiciously. Obi-Wan Kenobi had been known as The Negotiator. And he was a good negotiator. He was skilled at convincing others of his point of view and brokering fair deals.
But he was always a rat bastard and there was always a twist.
“I just have to clear out the kryat dragon that’s been giving them trouble,” Kenobi said casually.
He angled his hip and Cody saw the lightsaber on his belt.
The lightsaber that he and a ghost buried in the desert back where it belonged. Back to the grave it shared with Anakin Skywalker.
“Did you think perhaps it had been a joke and they didn’t expect one man to be able to take on a kryat by himself?” Cody asked, deadpan in his amusement.
“Commander,” Obi-Wan said, offended. “They shouldn’t have put it on the table if they thought it was an impossible feat. Besides it won’t just be one man… that is if you’re game?”
Cody examined Obi-Wan. He was dressed in fresh white robes. A pair of orange goggles pushed back his greying hair. He had trimmed his beard and he had a genuine smile on his face.
“I’d follow you anywhere, General.”
Kenobi grinned. “Good. By myself I fear I’d have to kill it, but with your help I think we can get it back out to open desert where there’s sarlacs for it to feed on.”
“You want to spare it?” Cody asked. Of course he did. He shook his head fondly. “If you say so, but the first sign of being swallowed I’m not holding back.”
“I won’t let you get eaten, Cody,” Obi-Wan rolled his eyes.
Cody stepped closer. “The only mouth I’d like near me is yours, thanks.” He leaned in and was ready to pull away if he was rebuffed, but soft lips met his, the tidy beard scratched pleasantly against his skin.
For all the touching and desperate sex they did in the darkness of this smelly little cave this was their first kiss.
Obi-Wan pulled back and groaned, “I can believe that line worked on me.”
“You’re a sucker for a terrible joke, no matter how dignified you act. Face it,” Cody quipped back. “So what’s in the Jundland Wastes other than dragons to herd?”
“Well, it’s nearer to Mos Espa. I thought it might be convenient if… if what I think has happened happened. You’re free now, aren’t you?”
Cody took the Jedi’s hands in his. The joy for him reflected in those familiar blue eyes was wonderful to take in.
“Yeah.” Cody nodded, feeling Obi-Wan’s hands. There were new callouses from holding a saber. “Dangerous to form a cell here for the Rebellion, but I figured I could freelance for them. Having a port nearby will make it easier to come and go.”
“You can also help me make some inquiries with the Free,” Obi-Wan said.
Cody hummed and let go of the Jedi’s hands. He moved to start taking off the crummy armour he had been using. Quick clever hands helped him with the latches. “You want to help the Free?”
“In a sense. I want to see if they’ll help us,” Obi-Wan said, removing the rest of the old armour. “I owe the life of myself and a dear one to the people of the Path... Luke's twin sister Leia."
Cody shouldn't be surprised. Of course there was a backup plan. This was Obi-Wan Kenobi after all. He wasn't hurt for not knowing. Only happy he was trusted with such a precious fact now. He wished he could meet her, and knew he probably never would. He could see that it was her. Anakin Skywalker's son kept Obi-Wan Kenobi's memory alive. And Skywalker's daughter had brought him back.
Maybe the two could save the Galaxy after all. They had saved Cody's.
"You want to link the two organisations together," Cody said, prompting Obi-Wan to continue. They had all the time in the world for serious conversation now.
"If there could be more inroads between the two it might bolster both networks.”
“I’ve never heard of the Path,” Cody said. The two of them started on Cody’s old armour. Cody examined the grey of his chestplate. “We’ll need to buy paint.”
“That can be arranged. The Path is for Force sensitives… to find their way out of the dark reach of the Empire.”
“It sounds like you have a very interesting story to tell me,” Cody said. “I wasn’t gone that long you know.”
Obi-Wan moved to pick up Cody’s vambrace, clicking it in place around his wrist.
“I’ll tell you all about it, dearheart. And I want to hear all about what you’ve been up to as well.” He reached up and gently ran his fingers over the new scar that pulled out in a curve from his old one. Where the chip had once been.
Obi-Wan pressed in and Cody greedily accepted their second kiss. It was longer and harder than their first one. He looked forward to the flavour of every future kiss that he would taste on Obi-Wan's lips.
They pulled away and smiled at each other stupidly, then Obi-Wan froze. He looked a little embarrassed. “And I’ll have to introduce you to Qui-Gon —” the name was said in a warning tone. “—and convince you I haven’t become delusional in my old age.”
Cody raised an eyebrow. “As in your Jedi Master? What is he, a ghost?” Cody joked.
Obi-Wan tilted his head. “Well… I suppose that would be the best descriptor. Projection of the Force is a bit long and doesn’t exactly have the gravitas—”
“Wait. There’s actually a ghost?”
“An annoying ghost!” Obi-Wan said, glaring somewhere past Cody’s shoulder.
Cody turned toward the empty space.
If Obi-Wan was delusional, he could live with that. Obi-Wan had finally let go of the past. He could finally move foward in his life. Seeing the light in his eyes, the ease of his grief, the smile on his face, he could accept craziness from his beloved General.
But with the amount of Force shit he had to deal with during the war, and the fact that this was Obi-Wan Kenobi, the only man alive that could make competent Commander Cody a mess, Cody believed this was no delusion.
There was a ghost, a real ghost, haunting Obi-Wan Kenobi. The Master he cried out for in his nightmares.
Cody put his hands on his hips glaring around where he thought the ghost’s face might be. “And where the kriff have you been?” he demanded.
Obi-Wan sighed. “He says he likes you.”
Ghosts aside, they had things to do. Cody picked up his sack of possessions, he left the pieces of old armour where they lay, maybe someone else would find them, or, more likely, the Jawa that liked to steal Obi-Wan’s vaporator’s parts would take them.
Cody held out his hand. Obi-Wan took it. They walked out of the cave and into the light.
Together, alive, moving forward.
Hand in hand.