#codywanreversebang

Blurry faces appeared in his vision. More pain lanced through his side - someone was touching him, trying to staunch the flow of blood where the blackened skin had broken open.

Cody tried to push them away. He’d rather die quickly, without the added pain of treatment, but his arms were caught and pulled aside.

Jumbled voices filled his ears, trying to calm him, but nothing could soothe him the way his brothers could. Their voices always meant help was coming, help was here, even if help was impossible, at least he would die in someone’s arms.

He thrashed violently when they moved him, nearly escaping their grasp, before they pinned him firmly to a stretcher.

More jumbled words, more soothing voices filtered through the pain. Something about healing, something about debt. No, he did not like the sound of that at all.

“Stop--” his voice slurred, then failed him entirely as he hacked at the blood suddenly filling his throat. The sickly sweet scent of bacta flooded his nostrils before it poured into his sinuses.

In the Core or in a medical bay, he would have inhaled deeply, allowing the mist to reach his lungs and staunch the bleeding until surgery could be completed.

But out here, bacta was worth more than the few thousand credits in his bank account. Certainly more than these people had paid him for this job.

How much would they demand in return?

How many years of service would they deem an acceptable exchange for saving his life?

This would never end, would it? He barely escaped the clutches of the Empire before they snatched back what little freedom they had offered the clones as thanks for fighting the war. And even then, he had to fight tooth and nail just to keep what bare semblance of choice he had.

“Breath,” the healer repeated again, this time just as someone else pressed on his wound. He screamed again, wheezed in another breath, and felt the bacta soothe the burning tissues even as he tried to cough it back up.

It was already too late, but he couldn’t give up.

He couldn’t--

The sunlight vanished and he found himself indoors, somehow. They were still hours away from the village, he had been certain of that. It’s why he had laid his trap here, where no one was supposed to get hurt.

They were gentle as they placed him back on the floor, but it did little to stop the blinding pain.

And then the chanting began.

Cody would have sighed if he had breath to spare. He knew this village was a little off - most groups isolated for long enough tended to diverge from the galactic norm at least slightly - but he hadn’t thought a cult was flourishing here. And it certainly was, judging by the sudden appearance of glittering white and gold robes swirling throughout the room.

Well, at least whenever their supposed god failed to save his life, Cody would die free. There wasn’t much more he could ask for at this point.

Metal clanked and then hands were on him. They lay upon his side and moved outwards, the pain numbing with each pass of their hands over the torn skin.

Cody wondered idly what painkiller they were using. There were more than a few on the market that acted so quickly, but they were extraordinarily expensive. Perhaps some crop had those properties. He had seen stranger things in the galaxy.

Still, it didn’t matter. No painkiller would save his life, just ease his passing. That had been an unheard of luxury to the clones; it had never made sense to waste resources on the dying. But lying here, on the receiving end, he thought it would have been justified to spare even a half dose to his brothers clutching their spilled guts in their hands.

Cody squinted upwards and caught a glimpse of brilliant blue eyes before his vision blurred again, too accosted by agony to focus on anything.

Some memory tickled at the back of his mind. Something important. Something--

He screamed through another wave of pain, even as the painkillers fought to soothe it. It wasn’t enough.

“Breath,” the man said. Now, there was a soothing - familiar? - voice. Yes, it had the same Coruscanti lilt of the Empire’s senators and bootlickers that had spent a lifetime trying to keep Cody enslaved, but this voice reminded him of the rare specialists that had visited medical frigates to conduct more complex surgeries than the clones were trained for.

It was one of those specialists that had stitched his brain back together after his skull had been cracked open. She hadn’t said much, but she had allowed Rex in during his recovery to ease his back awake from the anesthesia.

He hadn’t realized such an act was normal to so much of the galaxy, that this was only a hint of the kindness natborns showed each other on a day to day basis that was so often denied to the clones.

There were a lot of things he hadn’t realized back then.

Cody closed his eyes and allowed his body to relax as the pain continued to fade. Really, there was no harm in falling asleep. In all likelihood, he wouldn’t wake up again, but that was okay.

Maybe he’d finally get to see Rex again.

--

Pain was there when he woke up, but it was the light glaring into his eyes that drew him to wakefulness. Cody groaned and covered his eyes, too tired to consider moving out of the sunbeam. His whole body ached, but some of the supposed god’s painkiller must still be in his bloodstream because he didn’t feel the need to scream through the agony.

He was almost comfortable. The floor beneath him was plushily carpeted and a pillow was tucked under his head. Someone had wiped the blood off his face and hands and removed his armor to make room for the bandages wrapped around his torso.

He felt much better than he should, considering.

A blaster bolt to the chest was a death sentence, more often than not. In triage scenarios, it was too time intensive a surgery to be performed when so many others were in just as much danger. Even outside the chaos of a mass casualty event, it was a risky procedure on the best of days since surgeons were permanently in short supply.

Really, the only option was a Jedi healer.

But they were all long dead. Cody had made sure of that - had even once reveled in destroying the Empire’s enemies and facing a cunning opponent. He would have laughed at the irony of it all if the ghosts did not weigh so heavily on him.

The light in his eyes abruptly dimmed with the rustle of a curtain. Footsteps approached, accompanied by the soft clink of - a chain?

Carefully, Cody squinted into the dim light to find the supposed god haloed by what light still filtered in through the curtains.

“Hello again, Commander,” the god said and what little warmth Cody had felt in his bones turned to ice.

Obi-Wan Kenobi. Jedi master. The last knight of Alderaan, the savior of Christophsis, the guiding light of the Hyperion Cluster. The reaper, as his brothers called him. The man had a thousand names to accompany his own, dozens of titles to commemorate his victories against the Empire before Cody had finally outmaneuvered him.

The Empire had heralded the day as a great victory.

But too many brothers had lain dead at his feet.

Because Cody had to win, damn the consequences.

“You’re--” Cody choked on the rest of his sentence. Of course, Kenobi was alive. Of course, he was here, of all places, pretending to be a god, when Cody had no blaster at his side, no army at his back. Cody doubted he could even land a punch if Kenobi were to so helpfully place himself within range.

Kenobi would take his revenge.

And Cody wouldn’t be able to lift a finger to stop him.

He was free - from the Empire, from the smugglers that had gotten him off Coruscant in exchange for five years of his life, from the bounty hunters the Empire had sent after their most famous deserter. No more army, no more regulations, no more collars wrapped tight around his neck.

Cody deserved to die for what he did. His heart knew that even as he ran from it, too terrified still to dare recall that day.

He just wanted a little more time.

Just--

Kenobi smiled at him, but it wasn’t the blazing, flirtatious smile Cody had gotten to know over the battlefield. There was something too knowing in those eyes, too aware of everything Cody had done, every corpse he had left in his wake. And yet there was no hate in his gaze.

Cody looked away.

“I didn’t know the Empire allowed for armor paint,” Kenobi said.

The gold stripes painted on his armor were certainly not regulation. Neither was the hair curling over the tops of his ears or the dusting of stubble across his cheeks that he hadn’t bothered to shave. The blaster he usually carried wasn’t standard issue nor were the few hesitant strokes of polish on his nails and the single piercing he had gotten during a drunken evening on the streets of Nar Shadda.

Each small deviation had felt unforgivable. For days, he couldn’t help but look over his shoulder, certain he would be caught and reprimanded - or worse. Not even deserting had cranked his paranoia so high.

But no one had said anything. His brothers hadn’t been waiting behind every corner to arrest him. Local security hadn’t even given him a second glance for so obviously flaunting the rules that the clones had never lived a day without.

“They don’t,” Cody said.

The silence stretched on.

“I don’t serve the Empire anymore.”

The words felt like an apology.

They weren’t.

“I see,” Kenobi said. The Jedi certainly did not - could not - see what Cody meant. But Cody wasn’t in the mood to clarify. Not to him.

Again, the Jedi’s gaze fell on him, searching for something, though Cody could not guess what. Too often he had borne the brunt of Kenobi’s piercing gaze and the too-knowing look in his eye that usually meant he was a dozen steps ahead of Cody and would be walking away from their confrontation without even igniting his saber.

It was strange now to realize how little stood between them. No armies, no politics, no strategies. It was just the two of them.

And all the bodies they left in their wake.

The Jedi remained still, far from Cody’s side and his twitchy trigger finger. His blaster was probably out in the field where he fell or maybe Kenobi had finally had the good sense to disarm his opponents before trying to sweet talk them.

He had tried to shoot the Jedi in the face on more than one occasion. It never landed, but it had always been satisfying to startle Kenobi out of whatever tangent he had travelled down and allow Cody to make a break for it before the Jedi’s word could sink too deeply in his mind.

“I need to change your bandages,” Kenobi said. He had the good sense not to approach, but Cody wasn’t sure how long that would last. If he was intent on saving Cody’s life, he would do it, one way or another. Because alone, Cody was no match for a Jedi. Especially a Jedi like Kenobi.

“Would you rather change them yourself?” Kenobi asked, a single eyebrow twitching almost into his characteristic smirk before it disappeared.

Cody scowled, but there was no way to change the bandages himself. He was almost willing to try anyway if he wasn’t guaranteed to rip back open what the bacta and Kenobi’s Force had begun to heal.

“Go ahead,” Cody said, trying not to feel as if he were surrendering. The battle was already over. He lost. Now, he could only hope for the mercy Cody had not once shown to Kenobi’s people.

Kenobi’s hands were quick and sure. He removed the soiled bandages and bacta patches before replacing them with fresh gauze and a new layer of bacta. Cody idly wondered at the cost of it all, before realizing it was probably beyond his ability to repay at this point. Besides, his life was in Kenobi’s hands now. His financial woes were the least of his concerns.

“You should be healed enough to leave in a few days,” Kenobi said as he finished. “The organs still need time to heal and you’re still at risk for infection, but you’re out of the woods. You’ve got your remarkable healing abilities to thank for that.”

Kenobi had already started talking about something else before the words finally caught up to Cody.

“You’d let me leave?” Cody asked. It felt like a trap to ask, but Cody had always thought it best to spring the trap rather than let it close when he least expected.

Kenobi shrugged. “I have no quarrel with you Commander, unless you feel inclined to dig up old grudges.”

The sentiment was so obviously a lie it was almost laughable. Kenobi was clearly trying to lull him into some false sense of security. Cody would not fall for it.

“And the town?” Cody asked.

“I don’t believe they have taken issue with you.”

Cody scowled, then looked away. Of course, the Jedi wouldn’t even have a proper answer. He had lived too long assured that his needs would be met, that medicial supplies would not be withheld as bartering chips or punishment. He wouldn’t even know what Cody was asking.

“Commander,” Kenobi said. There was a touch of steel in his voice, the hint of the general Cody remembered bleeding through. “I’m afraid I am not particularly involved in local politics. I cannot answer your question without the relevant information.

“I can’t--” Cody steeled himself. “I can’t afford the bacta treatments.”

The bacta treatments should have been his right after the war ended. He was supposed to have his citizenship, backpay, and medical care to cover the plethora of injuries he had sustained over the war. Even as a soldier, bacta was readily available. It was cheaper than fulltime surgeons. And once the Empire established a monopoly, they had as much as they needed while the civilian market struggled.

But even as he lamented the loss, he realized too late what he had revealed.

“You deserted,” Kenobi said.

“No!” Cody snapped, but the truth rang too loud to be ignored. His cheeks burned with shame, still just as fresh as it was ten years ago.

“There are people out there that can help you build a life away from the Empire, Commander. Help you get your feet on the ground, maybe--”

“I don’t want your help, Jedi. I just want to be left alone.”

“It’s a little late for that,” Kenobi said.

“I know.”

The silence between them stretched on. It was not the silence Cody had grown to know in the moments before battle nor the silence of the barracks when most had already gone to bed. It was not the sort of silence that begged to be broken, nor the kind that must not be. It was simply the space between breaths, stretched out a moment too long.

“Do you know why the Jedi fought in the war?” Kenobi asked, apparently oblivious to Cody’s own desire to never discuss the war or the Empire, but he supposed it was a fairly neutral question. Better than Kenobi asking after him.

They both knew the answer the propaganda fed them - greed, power, madness. Even the Alliance had gradually begun to turn their back on the Jedi; for all great feats the Jedi accomplished, the lives they saved, their abilities only served to alienate them from the general public.

Cody didn’t provide an answer, though he had a guess or two. One couldn’t learn to predict their enemies’ moves without knowing their motivations.

“We can feel the galaxy’s suffering. Not just the feelings of the people near us, but the actual weight of every sentient life that has ever lived or will ever live. Their feelings leave an imprint on the Force that echoes through time,” Obi-Wan said. “Every day, we wake up to a billion voices begging for help. By night, there are just as many, no matter how many lives we save. But we can’t stop trying.”

It was certainly not the official answer - that they were honor bound to restore the peace, to restore freedom and justice to a galaxy rapidly destabilizing under the ever expanding grip of the Empire - but it rang true in the way Kenobi’s words rarely did.

And yet it made no sense.

“Isn’t that an exercise in futility?” Cody asked.

“Perhaps,” Kenobi said. He paused to look down at his shaking hands. Cody wondered vaguely when that had developed. “For what it’s worth, I am sorry for what happened, Commander. You and your brothers deserved more than to fight a war that was not your own. And if you don’t mind me asking, I would very much like to know why you fought at all. Because you are certainly not mindless, obedient droids, no matter what your Senate claims.”

Cody could easily give him the official answer - citizenship, honor, duty, training. The list went on for miles, all of it dedicated to lofty ideals that the Empire claimed to uphold. But they all knew that was crap from the beginning.

Honor hadn’t kept him on Coruscant when the Empire declared war again mere days after they had finally defeated the Alliance. Duty hadn’t freed him of what he had done, of the ghosts that haunted his steps.

But love did.

At least, it used to. Before the death reports trickled in, before the numbers tallied up faster than Cody could track. Before his brothers stopped looking him in the eye, stopped trusting him to watch their back.

Before he had sacrificed hundreds of his brothers to win a war none of them cared about.

Before he had killed Rex.

It had been the right choice, tactically speaking. A few hundred brothers fed into the meat grinder, so that the rest of them could finally have the freedom to live, to breathe, to take whatever life they wanted and make it their own.

It had been love that drove his hand.

And love was why his brothers hated him - because they would have rather kept fighting than see their brothers slaughtered.

Because at war, they were together. United. Purposeful.

Without it…

“We were made for it,” Cody said.

It felt like a lie.

It had to be.

Kenobi collected the soiled bandages and disappeared from Cody’s eyeline. His instincts made a half-hearted attempt at panicking, but Cody was too tired to consider the danger. Kenobi was right; he would never have the quiet life he desired, never be at peace while his brothers were still enslaved by the Empire.

And yet none of them would ever desert - they were too loyal to each other to even consider it. And the promise of citizenship, of being acknowledged as a sentient, free people had been motivation enough to prevent their more scheming minds from finding them some way out.

But it was a lie. Just like every damn thing Cody had ever believed. Over and over he found himself living with the consequences of the lies the Empire told - that they were bringing peace to the galaxy, that they were doing something good, that the clones would be rewarded for their work, that they would all be free someday.

Only a few years alone had revealed the truth to him.

And with the truth, came the horror of what he had done - the blood he and his brothers had left in their wake. But much stronger than guilt, was frustration.

It had all been pointless. All the brothers that died for a better life, all the lives he had sacrificed: they were never going to be given their freedom.

He heard the clank of a chain again as Kenobi returned. He looked almost as bad as Cody was feeling: his face was gaunt, his skin almost gray, his eyes red. More than that, he looked exhausted.

“What are you doing here?” Cody asked. Kenobi was in hiding, certainly. All the Jedi (what remained of them) were. Cody had been quite efficient at wiping out their network of support. But Jedi didn’t go into hiding as gods - rumors traveled too quickly of such things. Even out here, far from most hyperspace lanes, on a planet that disdained outsiders, rumors should have spread eventually. And yet he was; alive and untouched by the hunters that had burned their way through the galaxy for years now.

Kenobi had always been the exception to the rule - too clever, too manipulative, too proud. It was what made him a great general, how he inspired devotion in his troops, how he could convince them to trust even his most ridiculous plans.

It’s why he had been the Empire’s greatest enemy, why Cody had been tasked with slaughtering his battalion, his allies, down to the last member. He had succeeded when no one else had, but never managed to track down the Jedi’s starfighter after they shot it out of the sky.

“The whole galaxy thinks you’re dead,” Cody said.

“I almost was,” Kenobi said. “I was caught in the hyperspace slipstream of a cruiser before I was spat out here, no comms, no support, not even a general idea of where I might be. I walked for days to find civilization, and when I did, it was under attack. I revealed myself as a Jedi to defend the town, but I was shot twice in the process and brought here to heal.”

The Jedi came to Cody’s side with a tray of biscuits and a glass of infused water that shimmered almost blue in the dim light.

“You should eat,” Kenobi said.

“It’s been ten years,” Cody said.

Kenobi didn’t answer. There was something terribly close to guilt in his eyes, but more than that, Cody finally glimpsed his freezing anger.

Good. It was about time they stopped this pointless, slow dance around each other.

“Kenobi--”

“What do you think happened, Commander?” Kenobi asked. “No matter how many times we offered you and your brothers a way out of slavery, you spit in our face. You destroyed our Temple, you developed the protocols for the killing squads, you ensured we had nowhere to run. And then when we were practically beaten, you gave the order to hunt and execute us. As if we were nothing but animals.”

“So you set yourself up as a god to these people? Using and manipulating them in the same way that the Empire does to us? Because if that’s the kind of people the Jedi really were, then I’m glad we never followed you. Because you deserved what we did to you.”

Kenobi looked away, his fringe falling over his eyes. And then pulled his robes aside to reveal a heavy chain around his ankle.

“I didn’t choose this,” he said. “No Jedi would.”

Kenobi ran his fingers through his hair and sighed at Cody’s skeptical expression.

“While I was healing, they trapped me here. They thought they could use my abilities to keep their crops growing, their children healthy, so they tried bribing me – giving me gifts and food, anything they could imagine. And when I couldn’t help them, they turned to punishments and coercion.”

Kenobi’s fingers ghosted over a nearly invisible scar cutting across his cheek.

“They had never heard of the Jedi. All they had were stories of fickle gods that wandered the stars that could destroy planets on a whim or bring great riches to those that won their favor. They thought they were doing the right thing. Eventually, I taught myself to heal. That was the one gift I could actually give them.”

“You healed them?” Cody growled. The very idea set him on edge. He certainly wouldn’t lift a finger to help the shitty natborns that denied him and his brothers their citizenship. “Why?”

“I couldn’t leave them to suffer.”

“But they hurt you, they—”

Cody stopped. Because Kenobi had been telling him why since he opened his mouth. Because it was only a chain – ten years was more than enough time to wiggle his way free one way or another, Cody had seen him escape for more secure prisons.

“It’s because you’re a Jedi, isn’t it?”

Kenobi nodded. “It is not such a bad life,” he said. “I can still help people without bringing the Empire down on my head. I can meditate freely, still practice my beliefs. I can sleep without worrying what tomorrow will bring or what harm I will have to cause. I can simply serve these people as best I can – and here, that means healing.”

“Then you already know why so many of my brothers cannot leave.”

Kenobi smiled sadly. “You love each other and each other only.”

“Yes.”

The truth was simple. It did not make the loss of their love any less agonizing.

“They hate me,” Cody said when it felt like the silence had stretched on for long enough. “That’s why I left. After what I did—” He shook his head. “We only ever had each other. And I—”

Cody couldn’t continue, but he didn’t need to. He had seen the shock on Kenobi’s face when he realized that Cody was going to walk his brothers into a trap just to distract the other Jedi generals and their army long enough to bring in the bombers and the surrounded them.

The annihilation had been complete.

Not a single survivor walked away.

Not even Rex.

The Alliance had tried to retreat under Kenobi’s quick direction, but Cody hadn’t let them go, hadn’t allowed for surrender, for decency.

He won the war.

And lost everything else.

“Then go back for them,” Kenobi said, as if it were that simple.

It wasn’t. There was no way to pull everyone off Coruscant and the outposts at once. Too many things could go wrong, too many brothers would be left behind to face the wrath of the Empire. Cody had spent years agonizing over the problem, turning it over and over, accounting for thousands of variables and possibilities without luck.

“It’s impossible.”

“Then let me help.”

Epilogue

The chain broke with the snap of Obi-Wan’s fingers. He had not bothered with fanfare or comment, simply done what he had spent ten long years avoiding. But Cody saw the way his shoulders uncurled, how the permanent tension seemed to bleed out of his body. This was a relief too long in the making.

Cody’s armor slipped back on easily now that his wound was healed. Kenobi had certainly become a master healer in the intervening years. With the help of bacta, there was not even a scar to remember it by nor any lingering tightness in his lungs. He was fairly sure the Jedi had managed to soften some of the scar tissue in his lungs and gut that had been his constant companion since the day he woke up with his skull stapled back together.

Obi-Wan packed them both a bag, woven together by the rich sheets the town’s residents had gifted him. In it went what necessities Obi-Wan could scrounge up, though there wasn’t much besides the simple robes he wore, a few hygiene items, and some medical supplies. He left the gifts and offerings behind, not budging even when Cody revealed his sorry financial situation. He was certain the Force would provide. It was a faith Cody allowed himself to hesitantly share.

He stretched his stiff muscles as they readjusted to the comforting weight of his armor. It felt much the same as always, but the persistent itch between his shoulders blades was gone.

“My ship’s only a few kliks south of here,” Cody said as Obi-Wan tidied up the cottage. There wasn’t much to do – the place was kept almost spotless – but he folded away the nest of blankets and set the pillow back on the bed. The meditation corner he set up for himself was quickly dismantled. In minutes, it was as if no one lived here.

“Clean slate,” Obi-Wan said as he pulled the curtains open, letting the light flood into the room. He hesitated briefly before the last, before flinging it open like the others, letting in a mess of colors and lights like Cody had never seen.

Cody tucked his helmet under his arm as he stepped forward, a hand outstretched to touch what was certainly the results of hundreds of hours of work. Hundreds of glass pieces had been cut and soldered together to depict Obi-Wan in the moments after a battle, the sun at his back, his lightsaber extinguished, his eyes closed as he centered himself, a perfectly serene expression on his face. The artist had added a pair of colorful wings to Obi-Wan’s back that glimmered as the sun passed through the glass before it pooled on the floor in a mesh of hues.

“They loved you,” Cody said.

“Yes,” Obi-Wan said. His own hand reached out to trace the soldered lines, a labor of love by an artist who must have spent decades practicing their trade before they brought their work here. “Too much, perhaps.”

“They’ll be alright.”

“I know.”

Obi-Wan turned away from the window, the fire finally returning to his eyes. “Well, there’s no time to waste, my dear. Shall we?”

Cody put on his helmet and hefted his bag.