Archive of Our Own

Cody wasn't supposed to have seen the transmission. 

He only meant to drop off a report. It was late — deep into the night cycle — but neither of them ever really slept anymore. 

He didn’t pause at the door. They’d moved past stiff formalities long ago, devolving into a camaraderie that felt more like friendship — easy, natural, built on trust. He keyed in Obi-Wan’s personal code and stepped inside. 

Obi-Wan’s quarters were silent. The overhead lights were off, but a cold blue light pulsed from the datascreen still active on his desk, casting grim shadows across the walls. A cup of tea sat on the desk, steam still curling from its rim. Its scent — sharp, earthy, with a trace of something floral — brushed past Cody’s senses as he drew closer. Obi-Wan’s favorite. Cody had once teased him about it, half-smiling over some offhand joke about Jedi and their attachments.

Cody frowned, stepping closer. The holo flickered across the screen, video looping over and over in ghostly, silent repetition. Screaming civilians. Burning homes. Smoke curling up from shattered buildings. The aftermath of a massacre, too brutal to be anything but deliberate.

Then the voice came — low, coiled with malice.

“Kenobi…”

It wasn’t loud. It didn’t need to be.

Cody didn’t need Jedi instincts to understand what he’d just seen. Or to realize what Obi-Wan would do next. 

The datapad slipped from his hands and hit the floor with a sharp crack. He didn’t even flinch. He was already moving — spinning, sprinting through the door, into the corridor. His boots pounded against the durasteel floors as he pushed his pace faster and faster. 

Cody knew Obi-Wan like the sound of his own heartbeat — knew how he thought: how he buried pain beneath duty, how he mistook self-sacrifice for penance, how he carried guilt like a shadow…

The transmission was a lure, a snare, a noose already tightening —

And Obi-Wan was walking right into it. Alone. 

The cool, recycled air of the ship seeped into his lungs like frost. He burst into the hangar, chest heaving. There — already halfway up the ramp of a small, unmarked transport — stood Obi-Wan.

“You’re not going without backup!”

His voice echoed like a blaster shot in the stillness of the quiet hanger bay. He hadn’t meant to shout, but something inside him cracked at the thought of losing Obi-Wan again. 

Illusion or not, once had been enough. 

Obi-Wan froze. Not all at once — just a small, telling hitch in his step. His shoulders tensed, head tilted as if Cody’s voice had pierced straight through him. Obi-Wan turned, face half-lit by the glow of the boarding lights. 

“This is something I must do alone,” he said quietly, as if saying it louder might shatter him.

Cody’s stomach clenched. The hollowness in his voice — the resignation — made the air around them feel colder. Obi-Wan sounded like someone already bracing for a fall.

“That's a tactical risk — and it’s against protocol,” Cody said, forcing his voice to stay steady, to mask panic with procedure. “You know that.”

“This isn’t about tactics. It’s about responsibility.”

“Then let’s talk about mine.” Cody moved a step closer. “You’re still a ranking officer. It’s my duty to protect you.”

“This has nothing to do with the war,” Obi-Wan said evenly. “This is something I must do as a Jedi, not a general.“

Cody’s heart pounded. He fought to keep his composure, but it was hard — harder than it should have been to keep the edge out of his voice. He stood at the base of the ramp, heart pounding in his chest.

“Jedi or not, if you’re captured or killed, it affects everything. Morale, command structure —“ he cut off, voice tight with urgency. “Losing you would destroy us. Don’t pretend it wouldn’t.”

Obi-Wan looked away, a muscle tightening in his jaw. “Yes,” he murmured. “I am well aware of my place in the Republic's war machine.”

Cody flinched at that. He’d meant it as a plea, not a reprimand. And he knew that tone — that bitterness — wasn’t aimed at him, not really. But it stung all the same — a quiet reminder of how Cody would always be tied to a part of Obi-Wan’s life that brought him pain. 

“As I am aware of mine,” Cody said quietly. 

Something cracked in Obi-Wan’s stance. His shoulders folded inward, a breath shuddering out of him like glass breaking. “This was never meant to be anyone else’s burden. This task is mine to carry —“ 

“No,” Cody said, stepping closer — up the ramp. “It’s not. It’s a trap. For you. Which is exactly why I’m coming.”

“Cody,” he said, agonized. “You’re not even supposed to know about this —”

“You can court-martial me when we get back,” Cody said, a wry twist to his lips. “Assuming you were planning on coming back.”

Obi-Wan’s eyes — pale, war-weary eyes — met Cody’s with quiet devastation. The practiced calm that he wore like armor slipped away, revealing the man beneath. Not a general. Not a Jedi Master. Just Obi-Wan — tired, worn thin, burdened with the weight of too many sacrifices. Brave, to the point of self-destruction. 

“Obi-Wan,” Cody said, softer now. “Don’t do this alone.”

“I have to,” Obi-Wan whispered. “It’s him.”

The name didn’t need to be spoken. They both felt it in the air. The ghost that wouldn’t stay buried.

“He’s after me, Cody,” Obi-Wan said, voice low “Everything he does — every life he takes — is because I failed to finish it.”

“Then let me help you finish it.” 

“You don’t understand. He’s — He’s not like the others we’ve fought. He’s not a warlord or a Separatist pawn. He won’t run. He won’t surrender. He’s...he’s not going to stop until…” he broke off. “I can’t ask you to follow me into this.”

“You don’t need to.” 

A pained furrow formed between Obi-Wan’s brows as he took a slow, reluctant breath — caught between resistance and surrender. 

“Please, Obi-Wan,” Cody whispered. “Let me help you.”

Then, slowly, Obi-Wan gave the smallest nod, barely more than a tilt of his head. His voice was quiet. “Together, then.”

Even before they stepped off the ship, Cody felt it. 

Not just the sharp-edged alertness that came with hostile territory — something heavier. The air felt wrong, thick with a tension that settled in his chest like a weight: the kind of silence that lived in the moments just before a trigger squeeze.

Obi-Wan hesitated at the edge of the landing ramp, long enough for Cody to fill the space at his side. Their eyes scanned the shattered horizon — the jagged silhouettes of ruined buildings. Ash drifted in the wind, fine as bone dust, dancing in the thinning light. 

“It's worse than the footage,” Cody whispered. 

Obi-Wan nodded — just once. And then, barely audible: “Stay close.”

Cody swallowed hard. Gave a grim nod. “Always.”

The town was little more than a husk — still smoldering in places, doors hanging off hinges, charred buildings cracked open like broken skulls. Smoke curled towards the burnt-orange sky in twisted tendrils, and the air hung thick with the bitter stench of blood and ash. The still, glassy-eyed corpses of Raydonian villagers lay scattered in the streets — displayed in patterns and positions meant to be seen. 

Cody had seen a lot of warzones, but this... this wasn’t war. This was carnage, with no purpose except pain.

They moved through the debris slowly, methodically. Each step crunched over crumbled stone and shattered glass. Cody kept scanning the rooftops, the alleyways, watching Obi-Wan’s back — like always. But his gut kept twisting. Not just because of what they were walking through, but because he could see the way Obi-Wan carried this weight. 

Obi-Wan knelt beside a collapsed doorway, where the remains of a family had fallen. A small form lay closest to the street, arms still wrapped protectively around the charred shell of a doll. Cody saw the tremor in his hands, the flicker of something in his eyes. Guilt. Or grief. Maybe both.

“He did this because of me,” Obi-Wan said, voice hollow. “He killed them...just to draw me out.”

Cody stepped up behind him, placing a hand on his shoulder. “This is his cruelty,” he said quietly. “Not yours.”

Obi-Wan didn’t speak. His hand lifted — unsteady — and settled over Cody’s. He kept his gaze on the bodies, eyes distant, jaw clenched like he was holding back a scream that had nowhere to go.

When he finally rose to his feet, the weight of the devastation surrounding them curled his shoulders inward, like he was trying to shield himself from a blow that had already landed.

They started forward again, slower now, senses sharpened by the silence pressing in around them. A look passed between them — brief, sharp, and wordless. Stay alert.

Cody stepped past the splintered wreckage of a market stall. Crates lay overturned, their contents smeared into a sticky pulp across the flagstones. A hand-painted sign, blackened and cracked down the center, still hung off the stall’s frame. The colors had once been bright. Friendly.

This had been a place of rhythm and routine, of shared names and familiar voices. People had bartered and laughed and watched their children play beneath these archways. Now, all was quiet — not even haunted, just…still.

A scream cut through the air. High. Desperate.

“East,” Obi-Wan said sharply, already breaking into a run.

Cody rushed behind him, blaster up, boots hammering across cracked stone. They rounded a scorched archway and burst into a small square. For the first time since landing, they saw movement — people. Survivors. A small cluster, mostly children, huddled against a broken wall, eyes wide with fear.

Something shifted in the corner of his eye, a flash of movement behind the rubble to his left. Cody turned, blaster raising. “Contact —”

Too late.

Red blasterfire erupted from the rooftops, from shadows, from behind crumbled stone and shattered windows. An ambush.

Cody reacted instinctively, returning fire as his eyes scanned for angles. Beside him, Obi-Wan’s lightsaber flared to life. Blaster bolts hissed and sparked off his blade as he moved — fast, controlled, deadly.

The droids staggered forward in uneven ranks, a ragtag collection of salvaged metal and scorched plating. They weren’t clankers — not anymore. They’d been…twisted. 

Their skeletal frames had been welded back together with little care for uniformity — panels warped, bolts exposed, plating layered like crude patchwork. Arms and legs had been grafted from mismatched units, with cables trailing like veins and sparks spitting from overworked joints. Many wielded modified tools — electroblades, saws, jagged claws — meant more for tearing and torture than for warfare. Their optics glowed a dim, angry red as they twitched forward, their movements jerky and irregular — making them feel more like reanimated corpses than droids. 

Cody fired. Took two down. But a barrage of blaster bolts hailed toward him —

A blue blade carved a tight arc inches from his chest, batting the shots aside. Obi-Wan stood beside him, saber angled defensively, his brow furrowed in sharp concern.

“Still with me, Cody?” 

Cody gave a quick nod, already adjusting his aim. “Still with you.”

As one, they pushed forward — Obi-Wan slicing through steel as Cody laid down covering fire, carving a path. Each step was a fight, every meter a war, but they were making ground. Slowly. 

Then came another round of screams — distant, but piercing. 

Cody spun. His HUD flared to life, infrared cutting through the smoke. More civilians — cornered, desperate. A second group, clinging to one another as a squad of droids marched towards them. 

They wouldn’t last long. 

Cody‘s stomach twisted. For all that the droids moved like a shambling mass, they’d maneuvered with surgical precision, slicing the battlefield into pieces that made it impossible for him and Obi-Wan to do anything except split up. 

“Go,” Obi-Wan called, lightsaber a blur of light as he cleaved through another droid. “I’ll hold these — get to them!”

Cody fired off several shots, dropping droids in quick succession. In the heartbeat of stillness that followed, he caught Obi-Wan’s arm. 

Obi-Wan turned to him, breathing hard in the haze of smoke and fire, saber still humming at his side.  

“Promise me you’ll be careful,” Cody demanded, low and rough with urgency.  

Something flickered in Obi-Wan’s eyes as his hand, almost without thought, came up to rest on Cody’s vambrace.

“I will,” he promised, his voice steady, though there was an almost imperceptible softness in his tone. “You have my word.“

Cody nodded, a knot in his throat, feeling the weight of Obi-Wan’s promise settle between them. He let his hand fall away, but Obi-Wan’s fingers lingered, suspended between them as Cody spun away. 

As he darted across the scorched square, there was a beat — a strange, aching silence — before the familiar whir of a lightsaber cut through the air again.

Cody tore out of the square and veered into a narrow side street. He kept his blaster tight against his shoulder, eyes flicking between the ruins around him and the feed in his HUD. 

Behind him, the noise of battle dulled to a distant rumble as he turned another corner —

And the air split — a sharp, concussive bang followed by a wave of pressure behind him, sending ash and dust spiraling around him. The blast hurled him off his feet, helmet cracking hard against stone as he landed. 

His ears rang, high and shrill. With a groan, he surged to his feet, ducking for cover behind a collapsed wall. Chunks of duracrete flew through the air, debris pelting the ground like missiles. 

A building at the corner buckled with a deep, metallic whine — walls crumbling, support beams snapping like brittle twigs — as the entire upper floor collapsed in a cascade of rubble.

The street vanished beneath a wall of flame and debris.

Chest heaving, Cody watched as fire climbed over the broken remains of the building. Heat shimmered in the air, distorting everything beyond it. He couldn’t tell if the explosion had been a planted charge or if the fire had triggered something volatile inside — but it didn’t matter.

His path back to Obi-Wan was gone.

For one breathless moment, panic bloomed — not tactical, not strategic — just raw and visceral, an ache at the thought of Obi-Wan out of reach. The fear kept him pinned, heart thudding in his chest, for far longer than duty alone could justify — longer than concern for a commanding officer should allow. 

But Obi-Wan had been more than his general for a long time now.

Shaking, he forced himself to his feet — shoved the fear aside — and kept moving. 

The screams grew louder with every step, raw and frantic, undercut by the metallic clank of advancing droids. Cody skidded to a stop at the edge of a crumbling boulevard.

The civilians were trapped — pressed against a collapsed archway, flames licking up behind them. Fire to one side, droids to the other. No cover. No escape.

Six droids — fanning out, weapons raised — herded another group closer to the fire.

Cody dropped to one knee behind the jagged remains of a shattered pillar and took aim. His first shot punched clean through a droid’s back. The second clipped another in the head, sending it stumbling sideways with sparks bursting from its optics. The others turned —

— and Cody dove behind the charred husk of a speeder as blasterfire split through the air. Bolts slammed into its frame, metal screaming, sparks showering down around him. 

He took a steadying breath and popped up over the chassis, firing in a tight burst. Fast. Precise. 

His shots sent one droid staggering into another, and the whirring buzzsaw attached to its arm sliced through the other’s metal spine. A third droid pivoted toward the civilians, blaster rising —

Cody’s shot split its torso in half before it could fire.

The last droid popped around the side of the speeder, an electro staff crackling as it jabbed toward him. He threw himself backward as the droid advanced, firing shots at center mass. The shots tore through the droid’s chest plate and sent it crashing to the ground in a heap of sparks and metal.

Silence fell — abrupt, jarring.

Cody lowered his blaster, breath ragged inside his helmet. The civilians stared at him — soot-smeared and tear-streaked. A few collapsed where they stood, their knees giving out beneath them. Broken sobs pierced the air, sharp against the distant crackle of flames.

“Come on,” Cody said, his voice hoarse through the vocoder. “We have to move. It’s not safe here.”

The words seemed to drift over them, unheard. They blinked at him with hollow eyes, not really seeing — like their minds had left their bodies behind. Cody had seen that brittle, blank look before — too many times to count: on the faces of his youngest brothers, fresh off Kamino, after their first taste of war. 

He’d pulled so many stunned soldiers back from the edge. He could handle a few shell-shocked natborns. 

Cody stepped forward, slipping into the voice he used on the battlefield — loud, clear, and impossible to ignore. “It’s not safe,” he repeated. “I’m going to get you out, but we have to move — now.”

Slowly, the group began to stir, rising one by one. Some leaned on each other, shaky and uncertain. Others glanced around as if suddenly remembering they had bodies to move. 

Cody moved among them, calm and deliberate, guiding the process. He helped the injured stand, paired the weakest with the strongest, and nudged the dazed back into motion. Once they were all on their feet and something like awareness had returned to their eyes, he guided them out a narrow side alley and away from the broken boulevard where they'd been cornered. 

The streets felt eerily quiet after the noise of the firefight. No battle droid chatter, no blaster bolts. Just the occasional collapse of a burning structure and the soft scuff of feet over rubble. Despite their injuries, the group moved quickly under Cody’s guidance, weaving through destruction and ash, slipping away from the villiage’s burning heart.

But with every step toward safety, something tugged at Cody’s chest. Obi-Wan was still out there — alone — and Cody felt the weight of his worry urging him back to his Jedi’s side, even as duty carried him farther away. 

As the damage around them began to thin, Cody pulled his long-range communicator from his belt and pressed it into the hands of one of the more lucid civilians — a young woman with a nasty burn across her cheek.

“Here,” he said, urgency threading through every word. “Keep going until you're past the village outskirts. Stay together. Don’t stop.”

She nodded numbly, fingers closing around the device.

“There’s too much interference here,” he continued “but once you’re clear, call for help. Tell them what's happened — they’ll come.”

Cody glanced back toward the village center. Flames licked at the rooftops. The red haze in the air reminded him too much of Geonosis. And somewhere in that hellscape, Obi-Wan might be fighting for his life.

“I have to go back,” he said quietly. “But you'll be safe now. Just keep moving. Protect each other.”

For a moment, Cody saw something like hope on the woman’s face. Fragile. Earnest.

Then a deep, chilling laugh echoed through the air. 

The civilians froze, their faces draining of what little color remained. His stomach twisted, dread flooding him as he spun around, pulse pounding like war drums in his ears.

Smoke curled through the ruined street, flame-cast shadows dancing like phantoms across crumbling walls. Then — movement: a shadow stalking through the fire.

A twin-throated hiss cut through the air as two burning blades flared to life. Crimson light spilled through the smoke like fresh blood.

The civilians screamed. Cody’s blaster snapped up. 

“Go!” 

They didn’t hesitate this time. Fear finally cracked through the shock, and the group broke into motion — stumbling, scrambling, clinging to each other as they fled.

Cody held his ground as the specter emerged from the gloom, prowling forward on two long, mechanical legs — each step punctuated with a faint, metallic hiss. A pair of Sith-yellow eyes locked onto Cody and a voice clawed through the air — grating, slow, and laced with a sick, amused hunger.

“Now this,” the shadow rasped, “is unexpected.”

Cody had heard the story before: how Obi-Wan had become the first knight to face a Sith in generations. He knew about the horned warrior wielding a dual-bladed saber and the duel waged beneath Naboo’s royal palace. How Obi-Wan’s Master had fallen there — struck down in the heart of the power core — and how the Sith had died on Obi-Wan’s blade, split in two and sent tumbling into the abyss.

Only…somehow, the Sith hadn’t stayed dead. 

His yellow eyes burned into Cody — calculating — a predator deciding where to sink its teeth. 

“I thought Kenobi would come alone,” Maul mused, voice curling through the air like smoke.

He prowled around Cody in a slow circle, each step deliberate and marked by the sharp clink of metal claws on broken stone. The sound echoed like the steady tick of a countdown. 

“But instead, he’s brought me you.”

Cody held his blaster steady, tracking Maul with calm precision. “Stay where you are.”

Maul chuckled. “Do you truly think that little weapon is going to stop me, clone?”

Cody’s jaw tightened beneath his helmet. “Keep moving,” he said. “We’ll find out.”

Maul paused, head tilted slightly. The flickering shadows danced across his face, sharpening the angles. 

“Ah, so there’s fire in you,” His eyes gleamed with dark delight as he raised his saber. “Good. That should make this far more entertaining.”

Cody didn’t hesitate. Blue bolts screamed from his blaster. Maul deflected the first bolt with a casual flick of his saber, and the second missed as he twisted sideways with fluid grace —

Cody fired again. 

Maul lunged. Cody tried to pivot, but Maul’s blade whipped down in a brutal, precise arc. 

Cody’s blaster split in half, the upper section clattering to the ground, still sizzling at the edges. He stumbled back, instinctively drawing his sidearm, but Maul was already pressing in. 

The blade slashed across his visor —

Static.

The visual feed flared white, then black, reducing his vision to a storm of haze.

Blind, Cody moved on instinct. He dropped into a roll, low and fast, ripping the ruined helmet from his head mid-motion. He hurled its smoking shell aside, pressed his back to a crumbling wall, and snapped his DC up — recentering his aim.

Crimson light painted Maul’s face in a hellish glow. 

“There you are.” His voice curled mockingly through the dust. “I despise killing helmets. Faces are far more…expressive…”

Cody glared back, breathing hard. 

“Take your Jedi, for example,” Maul went on. “The look on his face when I drove my blade through his Master — all that rage, devastation, and helplessness twisting together…”

He exhaled, almost wistfully. “And that scream…A Jedi, reduced to a boy…”

A slow, wicked grin curled across his face. “It makes one wonder: what sound will he make when it’s you I’m tearing apart?”

A chill ran down Cody’s spine. 

They’d known this was a trap, bait to draw Obi-Wan in. They’d thought Maul wanted blood. But Maul wasn’t here to kill, Cody realized. Not yet. 

He planned to destroy Obi-Wan first — piece by piece.

And Cody — Cody was the knife he meant to twist. Leverage. 

“He’s not going to walk into your trap.”

A cold grin stretched across Maul’s face. “Oh, he will. We both know that. And when he arrives — when he sees what I’ve done to you…what I will do…then I will have my revenge.”

Cody wasn’t afraid to die. What tore at him was imagining what it would do to Obi-Wan — forced to watch it happen, helpless again. But even as his heart ached at the thought, something else stirred — a twisted flicker of relief that it was him Maul had cornered. 

Not Skywalker, reckless and beloved, a brother in everything but blood.

Not Commander Tano, fierce and bright, the hope that still sparked behind Obi-Wan’s tired eyes.

Not Duchess Satine, beautiful and cold, who had once held Obi-Wan’s heart.

Just him. Just Cody, whose death might sting, but wouldn't break Obi-Wan. Wouldn’t hollow him out the way Maul was hoping for.

Obi-Wan would mourn. But he would survive. 

Maul had miscalculated. 

“You’re wrong.” 

“Oh?” Maul’s grin curled wider. “Then why do you tremble, clone?”

“I’m not trembling,” he said coldly. “I’m aiming.”

A volley of bolts pierced through the air. Maul twisted, saber flashing in a blur of red light as he batted them aside with brutal precision — but it was the opening Cody had hoped for. 

He threw himself sideways and ducked beneath the jagged, smoking remains of a collapsed awning. He leapt over a pile of shattered crates, nearly lost his footing as his boots skidded on ash, and then hurled himself into the mouth of a narrow alleyway. 

“Run, then!” Maul roared behind him. His voice echoed against the walls of the alley, reverberating. “You’ll only delay what’s coming!”

Cody burst from the far end of the alley, slid around the corner, and dropped into cover between the blackened shell of a building and a collapsed pillar. He crouched low, chest heaving, sweat mixing with the grime on his skin.

His DC blinked red — almost empty.
His comms — fried with his helmet.
No reinforcements. No rescue. No time.

Just him. And Maul.

The world narrowed to the rhythmic pound of his pulse, the acrid smoke in his lungs — and the sick, sickening truth twisting in his gut: 

Every second he stayed alive made it more likely Obi-Wan would walk straight into Maul’s snare — the trap Cody had stumbled into without realizing he was the bait.

His grip tightened on the DC, but his hand still trembled. He swallowed hard. He wanted to see Obi-Wan again. Just once. Hear his voice. Make him laugh. Say goodbye, if he could. 

But not like this. 

Not as the blade Maul meant to drive into Obi-Wan’s heart.

He risked a glance around his cover — and immediately pulled back, throwing himself to the side. The saber screamed past him, gouging a molten line into the wall where his head had just been. It arced back to Maul’s hand with a hiss. 

Maul stalked forward as Cody scrambled away. He fired a blind shot over his shoulder — heard it spark harmlessly off the red saber. He ducked into the ruins of a half-collapsed building, clambering over rubble.

“I’ve stolen one life from him already — a Jedi’s life,” Maul’s voice echoed through the broken walls. “You’ll be easier. And when I shatter you, it will break him.”

Cody squinted into the darkness, his eyes straining to adjust. The air was thick with dust, but he pushed forward, weaving through the shattered structure as quietly his thundering pulse would allow. 

He rounded a cracked corner —

— and a red blade cleaved through the air, spitting sparks into Cody’s face as it caught on a fallen support beam. He scrambled back. Wild slashes cut through the air around him as he ducked and twisted, barely avoiding each strike. 

He snapped his DC up, firing a quick burst of shots into the gloom. The bolts struck a splintered structural brace overhead. Cody seized the opening as stone and durasteel came crashing down in a rush of debris, darting through a narrow fissure into the street.  

“Do you think running buys him time?” Maul’s voice echoed in the air behind him. “It only brings him closer.”

Cody darted behind a shattered transport cart — half-buried in the rubble, its repulsorlift housing sparking feebly. He dropped low, using the broken frame as partial cover. His hand trembled on the grip of his sidearm. The charge light blinked — once — then went dark. Empty.

He scanned the broken terrain around him, mind racing to assess structural weak points, potential escape vectors, fallback positions, anything to gain ground — or time.

Maul emerged from the building’s husk without haste, like a hunter who knew his prey had nowhere left to run.

Cody moved on instinct. He flung his useless weapon away, dropping low in the same breath, vanishing beneath Maul’s line of sight. The pistol clattered to the ground — loud, sharp, echoing. 

Maul pounced on the blaster’s noise, saber swinging in a vicious arc — only to hit empty air.

“You’ve already lost,” Maul called. “We both know it. You’re outmatched!”

The words struck deeper than Cody wanted to admit.

He’d known he was going to die as soon as Maul stepped out of the smoke. Every moment since had been borrowed time, counted down by the monster stalking closer, waiting for the moment his death would hurt Obi-Wan most. 

But maybe — maybe Cody could ruin Maul’s game before it began. Force his hand. Turn his anger against him. If he played it right, Maul would strike too fast, too soon. If he was lucky, Cody could make sure Obi-Wan didn’t have to see it when Maul destroyed him. 

A tremor ran through him as he exhaled, breath shuddering in the thick, dust-choked air. He forced himself upright, rising from cover. He squared his shoulders and met Maul’s blazing gaze with steady defiance. 

“If I’m outmatched,” he challenged, voice raw, “what’s taking you so long to prove it?”

Maul growled wordlessly as he turned to face Cody, his eyes narrowing. 

“A clone versus a Sith,” Cody continued relentlessly, even as his heart raced in his throat. “I shouldn’t even be a challenge for you. But I’m still standing.”

”You want to hurt him?” He laughed. “You can't even hurt me!”

Maul’s eyes darkened. 

And then — pain.

One moment, Cody was on his feet. The next, he was airborne — weightless for the briefest instant before his body slammed into a wall with bone-jarring force. The sound of plastoid armor cracking against stone rang out across the fire-scarred street, followed by a sharp gasp that tore from his lungs — equal parts pain and shock.

Cody dropped like battlefield scrap, bruised and aching. 

He coughed — a harsh sound that tore up from deep in his chest. Air rasped out of his lungs, shallow and ragged. The coppery taste of blood coated his tongue. The world tilted and spun above him, sky and smoke blurring together in dizzying waves — until a shadow cut across his vision. 

“Better, clone?” came the vicious whisper. 

“Had…worse,” Cody wheezed, baring his blood-slicked teeth in a defiant grin. “What’s…wrong? Losing your…touch?”

Maul’s eyes narrowed, venom rising in his voice. “You’ll choke on those words.”

“Big talk,” Cody rasped. “For someone who still…hasn’t finished the job.”

Maul reached down and seized him by the neck, hoisting Cody’s body upward with a single, effortless pull. 

“It would be so satisfying to smother that fire in your eyes,” he snarled, his fingers tightening around Cody’s throat, “Leave you nothing but an empty, breathless shell for Kenobi to find…” 

“Then…do it…already,” Cody choked. 

“Oh, I will,” he promised. Stillness stretched between them as Cody’s breath became shallower, his vision darkening —

“But I want him to feel it.”

Maul’s lips curled into a cruel smile as he loosened his grip just enough to let Cody choke in a desperate breath.

“I want him to watch as I break you — breath by breath, bone by bone — until the only thing left of you is the sound of his scream.”

“You…talk too much,” Cody gritted out, pulling his vibroblade from its hidden sheath on his calf and driving it upward.

Clawed fingers clamped around his wrist, yanking the blade off course — too late. The edge sliced a shallow line across his side, drawing blood. Maul’s lip curled, snarl warping into something primal: savage and sharp-edged.

“You dare?“ He spat the words, eyes flaring.    

“You — “ With a violent twist, Maul wrenched his arm until the blade clattered to the ground. Cody cried out. 

“— vat-spawned little flesh droid — “ He flung Cody down hard enough to rattle bone. 

“ — you’d strike at me?” he laughed, wild, unhinged. “I’ll rip your spine out for the impudence.”

Got him, Cody thought faintly, vision swimming. 

A sudden pressure crushed his lungs as Maul drove the weight of one heavy, metal leg against his chestplate. The armor groaned, then cracked under the force. 

Pain bloomed across his chest, blood beading where the sharp tips of Maul’s talons dug into his skin —

“Cody!” 

The sound of his name — torn from Obi-Wan’s throat, raw with anguish — cut through him in a way that no wound ever could.

No. 

An agonized gasp ripped out of him and Maul chuckled, dark and dangerous. 

“Too late to save him now," he whispered viciously, dragging his talons away from Cody’s chest, leaving lines of fire behind. 

Maul seized Cody, yanking him upward with brutal force. His body jerked with the motion, boots scraping against the stone as Maul hauled him a few paces forward —

And shoved Cody to his knees like a broken offering.

Maul’s fingers tangled in Cody’s hair, forcing his head up to show him off like a twisted trophy. Pain knifed into his scalp, but Cody clenched his jaw, biting back the sound. 

“Kenobi,” Maul’s voice caressed the word. “We meet again at last.”

Obi-Wan looked otherworldly in the ember-lit twilight: his slender frame silhouetted against firelight, wreathed in smoke and flame, every line of him poised and deliberate. His saber hummed, casting pale blue light across the familiar angles of his face — cool and composed, even as his eyes blazed with quiet intensity. He looked like the very essence of a Jedi: unwavering, serene, utterly in control.

But Cody knew better. He caught the way Obi-Wan’s eyes shifted to him, a heartbeat’s glance — quick, careful — and how his jaw clenched, fingers curling tighter around his saber.

“Maul,” Obi-Wan greeted. “I can’t say I expected to see you again.”

“No,” Maul snarled, eyes burning. “I imagine you thought you’d killed me.”

Obi-Wan inclined his head, a simple acknowledgment. Calm. Controlled. It only enraged Maul more.

“You may have forgotten me, Kenobi, but I never forgot you.”

His grip on Cody’s hair tightened until his eyes watered. Obi-Wan flinched — barely, but Cody saw it. 

Maul saw it too.

“And here we are again,” he said, softer now. “Another life I can steal from you.”

“Let him go,” Obi-Wan said steadily. “This has nothing to do with him.” 

“Oh, it has everything to do with him,” Maul yanked Cody’s head back, baring his throat. “I see how you look at him. Even now — when you think I’m not watching. Like he’s the last star keeping your whole galaxy from going dark.”

Obi-Wan’s eyes glittered in the firelight — unreadable. 

“Fear has a scent, Kenobi,” Maul said, voice low and vicious. “And the closer I get to him, the more you reek of it.”

Maul shoved Cody to the ground. His leg drove forward with a savage hiss — sharp, angular steel smashing into his side with brutal force. He pressed his lips together, but the air rushed out of him, ragged and sharp, as several of his ribs snapped. 

“Cody —” His name burst from Obi-Wan’s lips, unintentional, raw with worry. 

Cody coughed once, tasting blood. “‘S’alright,” he wheezed. “Nothing…I can’t…handle…”

Maul laughed — a low, pleased sound that curdled in Cody’s gut. An invisible force clamped around him like a vice, dragging him up to his knees again. His ribs groaned like his cracked armor. The air around him felt solid — every limb locked in place, straining under the weight of something unseen. 

“Dear little Cody,” Maul crooned. “So brave, so loyal. So very, very breakable.”

A sickening crack echoed through the air as one of Cody’s vambraces splintered. Pain flared, bright and blinding, as pressure clamped tighter around his wrist. His body screamed to recoil, but invisible hands crushed every attempt —

Another bloodcurdling snap cut through the air as his wrist twisted unnaturally, and he couldn’t help the cry that slipped past his lips. 

“Stop!” 

Obi-Wan’s voice cut through the air — sharp, strained, and edged with something dangerously close to desperation. Cody’s breath came in ragged gasps as pain throbbed up his arm. 

“Let him go,” Obi-Wan said, low and tight. “You came here for me. So let us settle this — you and I.”

“Oh, we will,” Maul purred. 

Cold fingers slid beneath Cody’s chin, tilting his face upward. An invisible weight held his body rigid beneath Maul’s touch — tense even as every muscle strained to break free. He met the Sith-yellow gaze, eyes sharp with defiance.

Maul’s lips curled faintly. His thumb pressed against a cut beneath Cody’s eye. Blood welled beneath the pressure — thick and warm. Maul watched it bead and trail with idle interest. 

“But first…” he said softly, voice cruel and deliberate. His fingers dragged down Cody’s face, smearing the blood in a slow, deliberate line. “I’ll break him.”

“I’d…die first,” Cody rasped, voice tight.

Maul’s expression didn’t shift — but his eyes gleamed. “Yes,” he said softly. “I’m counting on that.”

A crimson blade flared to life, humming low and lethal. Cody didn’t flinch. But Obi-Wan’s breath betrayed him: a sharp intake of air cracking through the silence.

“I’ll drag the agony out,” Maul promised, voice like ice, “so you can watch while he writhes.”

He let the saber drift lazily. Closer, then back. Closer again — until plasma licked the edge of Cody’s pauldron. The plastoid sizzled, smoking. Obi-Wan’s gaze followed the blade, and Cody caught the flicker in his eyes: pain, sharp and helpless.

“Obi-Wan,” Cody’s voice was low, urgent. “Listen to me. This isn’t your fault. Whatever happens…it’s alright.”

Maul chuckled, deep and delighted.

“Such a devoted little soldier, your dear, brave Cody. So ready to die for you. He barely even flinches. But you, Kenobi…You’re quaking.”

Cody bared his teeth, forcing breath into his lungs even as pain throbbed through his ribs. He felt the words gathering on his tongue — sharp and reckless. He wanted to spit them at Maul, provoke him, anything to make him strike.

End it now. End Cody now. Better that than let this vicious game continue. Better to die than let Maul keep twisting Obi-Wan’s compassion against him —

The snap-hiss of a lightsaber extinguishing echoed through the air. 

“I yield.”

The words barely registered at first — soft, frayed at the edges — but they carved straight through Cody all the same. 

Maul stilled. Cody did too. 

His eyes darted to Obi-Wan, squinting past the red glow of the blade hovering around his neck. Obi-Wan was always thinking, always plotting — he never gave up. Not really. He pretended sometimes, to buy time. This had to be a trick, a ploy, some calculated feint —

Cody’s heart dropped as he saw the look on Obi-Wan’s face — raw. Honest.

“Let him go,” Obi-Wan said. “I’m the one you’re here for. Take me instead.”

“No —” Cody struggled against the invisible hold. “No, Obi-Wan — don’t you dare —” 

With a flick of Maul’s hand, the Force coiled around Cody’s throat like a tightening wire. His breath seized — choked off.

The noise that left Maul’s mouth was a laugh only in shape — the sound harsh, raw, and utterly humorless.

“You think I want your life, Kenobi?” he sneered, fingers flexing on his saber hilt. “As if killing you could even begin to match what you did to me.”

He stepped closer, gaze gleaming with a terrible calm. “Do you know how long I rotted — broken, forgotten?”

His voice dropped, disturbingly soft. “For years I crawled through filth as a mindless, scuttling thing. No thought. No purpose. Just one word left in me.”

His lip curled. “Kenobi.”

He breathed hard, chest heaving once before his voice returned, low and shaking. 

“So understand this,” he hissed, eyes bright with fury, “There is no wound deep enough. No scream loud enough. No death slow enough…to balance what you stole from me.”

“But him…” Maul’s crushing, invisible hold forced Cody’s spine straight, tilting his chin upward, baring his throat as it held him motionless —

“I’ll make him bleed slow — ” Maul breathed as a curl of heat from his saber caressed Cody’s neck “ — just to hear what it does to you.”

Pain — sudden and molten — carved across Cody’s throat. A raw scream tore from his lungs, jagged and involuntary. But it fractured mid-way, strangled by the searing agony ripping through his vocal cords. 

As Cody’s scream died inside of him, Obi-Wan's voice cracked through the air, desperate and raw: “No!” 

The pressure vanished. The heat withdrew.

Cody crumpled like a cut wire, slamming to the ground hard enough to jar the breath from his lungs. His mangled wrist ignited in white-hot pain as it took the brunt of the fall — 

“Cody —“ Obi-Wan’s voice cracked, full of terror and urgency. He sounded nothing like a Jedi now. Just a man, breaking.

The smell hit him — scorched flesh, acrid and clinging. It filled his mouth. Coated his tongue. Made him gag. 

Cody coughed hard — a gurgling, wet sound that scraped his throat raw. Instinct sent his hands to his neck. His fingers trembled at the searing line across the hollow of his throat —

Too shallow to kill. 

Too close to ignore. 

His breath caught in a ragged choke that wracked his whole body, stealing what little air he had left. 

He tried to steady himself — tried to find the discipline that had been drilled into him — but his lungs drug in sharp, shallow gasps that made his head swim and the echo of Obi-Wan’s panicked cry sent his thoughts spiraling farther out of control —

He tried to speak — to give Obi-Wan something, anything — but only air hissed past his lips. His chest squeezed tighter. His voice…

Then, finally, a weak whisper, far from the commanding voice he used to rally troops: broken, faint. 

“Still…with you…Obi-Wan…”

Each word scraped through his throat, raw and unsteady, fading in and out as if his body couldn’t decide whether to let him speak at all. Pain lanced through him with every syllable. The blade hadn’t taken his breath…but it had stolen half his voice — and every faltering word Cody managed would whisper Maul’s cruelty into Obi-Wan’s ears.

Obi-Wan let out a broken, fragile noise, color draining from his face as his gaze went glassy and distant, as if pieces of him were slipping away. There was a stillness in his eyes that scared Cody more than the pain in his own throat — something hollow, desperate — 

And then, impossibly, he crumpled, collapsing like everything inside him had shattered. His knees hit the ground hard. His lightsaber slipped from trembling fingers, clattering against the stone with a sharp, empty sound that tore through the space between them.

“Please,” he whispered, voice low and trembling. “I’m begging you. Please, let him go.”

Everything stopped. 

Cody stared, pulse pounding against his aching ribs. His instincts screamed as his tactician's brain tried to map the logic, to find the strategy, the reason — 

Maul tilted his head, almost lazily. “Begging me?” he echoed.

“Please,” Obi-Wan repeated, the word heavy, cracking under its own weight. “Let him go. I’ll…I’ll do whatever you want. Just…please. Please don’t hurt him anymore.”

“O-Obi-Wan…” Cody’s voice came out breathless, barely more than air twisted into shape. “What are…you…doing?”

Obi-Wan’s eyes found his: wide, raw with pain and something else — something that shattered Cody more completely than fear ever could. 

“I’m so — ” Obi-Wan’s voice caught. He swallowed hard, helpless. “I’m so sorry, Cody.”

A strange, aching warmth spread through Cody’s chest. 

He’d told himself it was one-sided. Quiet. Harmless. Unspoken and unreturned — a devotion he’d carry to his grave. He’d told himself that Obi-Wan’s loyalty to him was just that: A bond of duty. A Jedi’s compassion.

But Obi-Wan was on his knees. 

A red blade edged closer to his heart, humming with threat, and Cody felt the unyielding pressure of Maul’s invisible grip, a silent reminder that every breath, every heartbeat, was at his mercy.

Cody trembled as the truth struck him, undeniable — and far, far too late. 

It wasn’t Maul who had miscalculated.

It was him.

“Oh, I see,” Maul breathed, lips curling into a grin of cruel delight. “He didn’t know.”

“Let him go,” Obi-Wan begged, voice shaking. “Please.”

Maul stopped. His eyes slid between them, considering. Something flickered across his face as he looked at Obi-Wan — still kneeling, still shaking — amusement, glee. It made Cody’s skin crawl. 

“Say it first,” he said, quiet and sharp. “Tell him — tell me — what he is to you.”

Obi-Wan flinched, his whole body trembling. His mouth opened, then pressed tightly shut, his jaw clenching so tight it looked like it might crack. His eyes darted away, helpless. 

“H-He’s — “ Obi-Wan began, but broke off, his eyes pressing closed as his shoulders curled inward. 

He breathed out, shaky. Slowly, his eyes — raw, wide, and impossibly fragile — found Cody’s again. The answer fell from his lips, barely a whisper, cracked and raw:

“…everything.”

Cody blinked rapidly, fighting the sudden heat behind his eyes. 

He’d spent his whole life as just another number in a sea of faces — expendable, forgettable — but Obi-Wan’s everything pressed softly against his chest, a quiet ache — like finally being seen. 

“Surely you can do better than that, Kenobi. Don’t you think dear, dear Cody deserves more than a whisper before the end?”

Obi-Wan’s eyes snapped to Maul, panic rising. “No, please — “ 

“Then say it!” Maul roared. “Tell him how you broke. How you fell. How you failed.”

“Loving him isn’t a failure!” 

The words hung in the air, heavy and irrevocable. The silence that followed thrummed with tension, strangely charged. 

Cody’s thoughts stuttered, unable to process what he’d just heard, what Obi-Wan had just said — not in a whisper, not in passing — openly. Defiantly.

Maul’s laugh was slow, disbelieving,  “So you admit it? You love him?”

A quiet, startled noise slipped from Cody’s lips. The sound pulled Obi-Wan’s gaze to him, and in an instant, the fire in his eyes softened — giving way to something achingly tender.

“Cody,” he said, gently. 

Cody felt as if the galaxy was collapsing. Tears pricked behind his eyes, hot and sharp, and he blinked them back. He shook his head. 

“N — No,” The sound tore out, more air than voice. He swallowed hard, wincing. “Not for…me…” he gasped out. 

If Obi-Wan Fell for him — because of him — Cody would never forgive himself.

“I’m not…worth…” he struggled to get the words out through the agony splitting through his throat. 

“You are,” Obi-Wan’s voice trembled. “Cody, you’re — you’re the reason my heart keeps beating. You’re the light that I fight for — the proof that there’s still good in this galaxy. ” 

He took a shuddering breath. “And my heart,” Obi-Wan said, gaze softening even more. “It's yours, Cody. It has been — for so long.” 

Cody’s breath hitched — a shallow, broken gasp. He clenched his jaw, tight, as if he could bite back the emotion swelling in his chest, lock it behind his teeth. But it slipped through anyway: a single tear carving down his cheek, hot and stinging. Shaking, he squeezed his eyes shut. 

Obi-Wan loved him.

And even as his heart sang, Cody knew — he would’ve traded every star in the sky to never have heard those words.

He would’ve gladly loved in silence — alone — if it meant Maul couldn’t use that love to tear Obi-Wan apart.

“Well done, Kenobi,” Maul crooned. “A confession worthy of your Archives — a cautionary tale. A Jedi, brought to his knees, forsaking all for the one he loves.” 

Maul tilted his head, voice turning contemplative. “But does dear Cody love you?”

Cody pressed his eyes shut. He’d been ready to die — had wanted to — if it meant ending Maul’s sadistic game. But death wasn’t mercy anymore. Maul had twisted him into a weapon — and stolen all his choices in the process.

His sacrifices could only hurt Obi-Wan now.

His mind spun, a brain built for strategy and tactics staring down a battlefield with no winning angles. Not anymore.

The question burned through him as Maul’s footsteps circled closer. What would hurt Obi-Wan less: to withhold the truth — or speak it?

Cody’s ears caught the faint, mechanical hiss of Maul’s prosthetic legs as he crouched beside him. The hum of his saber hovered near, close enough that just a twitch would bring more of that searing pain. 

“You must feel something…” Maul’s voice slid through the thick air, settling heavy on Cody’s skin. “You were willing to die for him.”

Cody’s eyes snapped open as Maul’s fingers swept through his blood-matted hair. The touch felt heavy — claiming — and it sparked a deep, biting revulsion that had his whole body instinctively recoiling.

Maul’s grip tightened, a silent command holding him in place. Cody froze. 

Maul’s lips curved into a slow, chilling smile. His grip eased into a slow deliberate press — like petting something obedient —

“Or perhaps that’s just programmed into you…” he murmured slyly as he stroked — a shadow of praise, dark and mocking, in his touch. 

A shudder wracked Cody’s frame.

Maul’s hand slid downward — tracing down Cody’s temple, along his jaw, skimming the burned skin of his ravaged neck, then dropping lower, over bruised ribs and broken armor. 

Somewhere in the back of Cody’s mind, the trained part — the part that was always calculating — began to catalog each point of contact, each direction of force, every angle. Minimum range for retaliation. Escape velocity.

Numbers. Angles. Data.

It was easier to be data than flesh.

“Does it have to be him — kneeling there,” Maul whispered. “Or would you give yourself to any faceless master?”

Cody turned his face away as Maul’s fingers slid under the tattered remnants of his blacks, peeling the fabric back to expose his chest — and the ragged, bloody scratches tracking across his already-bruising skin.  

“Stop, please —”

Obi-Wan’s voice.

Raw. Cracked. Desperate.

It sliced through the deep, immobilizing panic keeping Cody locked inside himself. 

He gasped — a ragged, involuntary sound — breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.

Maul laughed. He gripped Cody’s jaw, angling his face toward Obi-Wan.

“Does it burn you, Kenobi?” he crooned. “Watching me claim your little clone — in every way you deny yourself — knowing he means nothing to me, and everything to you…”

“T-Take me,” Obi-Wan choked. “Kill me. Leave him alone. Please.”

Maul rose without releasing him, wrenching Cody upright, limp and trembling, like a broken droid. He gasped as pain flared through splintered bone and frayed nerves, distant at first — then all at once. Like his skin had short-circuited, then sparked back online. 

“You want dear Cody to live?” Maul’s voice dropped, chillingly quiet. “Make him worth something to me. Give me a reason to let his heart keep beating.”

Maul flung Cody forward; he hit the ground with a brutal thud. A strangled cry tore from his throat, the impact rattling his broken ribs, armor scraping harshly against scorched stone as Maul’s foot hooked under his chest, rolling him onto his back.

“Beg him,” Maul commanded, jabbing the tip of his lightsaber just above Cody’s heart. “Beg your clone to say he loves you or I will cut the answer out of his chest.”

Cody bit down on the sob rising in his throat, jaw locking so hard his teeth ached. His body trembled, lungs hitching as sharp tears pricked at his eyes. 

He wasn’t supposed to be a choice. Not like this. Not something Obi-Wan had to break for. His love had never been a question waiting for an answer. 

But Maul had framed it like one, and now it thrummed in the air between them — reflecting red in Obi-Wan’s wide, watery gaze: 

Break the Code to save Cody… or let him die.

Love and loss. Or grief and duty. No path without sacrifice. No outcome without pain.

Silent tears traced down Cody’s cheeks, hot and helpless. He’d understood the weight of Obi-Wan’s duty for a long time. In the quiet hours between deployments, he’d studied the Jedi texts, commiting each principle to memory — because they were Obi-Wan’s, and Cody wanted to honor the path the man he loved walked.  

He’d never needed Obi-Wan to choose. Cody loved every part of him — even the parts he could never touch. 

But now the choice had etched itself into the trembling line of Obi-Wan’s shoulders. Cody watched as his breath shuddered out of him, eyes falling closed, lips parting —

“D–on’t,” Cody choked out. 

Obi-Wan’s gaze snapped to Cody’s, dark and desperate. Breaking. 

Falling. 

But Cody knew the words to bring him back. He forced them past the pain, past the tightness in his throat, each syllable from memory.

“To let go…” Cody rasped, voice raw, “is not… to abandon…” but to trust the Force, in its time, its will.

Obi-Wan’s eyes widened. A sharp, wet sound punched out of his lungs. He collapsed forward, one hand on scorched ground, the other pressed to his mouth. 

Maul tilted his head, the corners of his mouth curling upward as his eyes tracked every hitch in Obi-Wan’s shoulders — drinking in every smothered sob. 

“My patience wanes, Kenobi,” he drawled. “Beg him.”

For a long moment, only Obi-Wan's ragged breaths and the hum of plasma rose above the low crackle of flames. Slowly, Obi-Wan raised his head to meet Maul’s gaze. 

Tears streaked his face — the harsh, silent kind that left his eyes red-rimmed and his skin blotched. They tracked down his face unchecked, catching at the corners of his mouth and along the curve of his nose. When he spoke, it was barely a whisper — 

“I cannot.”

The refusal escaped him like a breath he didn’t want to release, raw and shaking.

Maul’s smile twisted into something feral.

“Then watch him die,” he hissed. “And know it was your love that killed him.”

The saber drove down — and Cody heard a sharp crack as the blade pierced through the plastoid beneath his ribs, angling toward his heart. The blade thrummed deep within him, a white-hot vibration that set his nerves alight — like being set aflame from within. 

The air rushed from his lungs with a guttural, involuntary sound — half-choke, half-sob. His chest heaved as he tried to breathe past the fire in his throat and the hollow, gasping emptiness in his lungs. 

He welcomed the dark for half a second — but then the saber pulled free, and the pain flared again, sharper now, deeper, somehow worse. 

A ragged, desperate whimper tore free as his muscles convulsed and the movement sent agony pulsing through him — blinding, consuming — 

A cry rang through the air — his name — ripped from Obi-Wan’s throat. A lightsaber flared to life with a hiss, blue blade colliding with red in a shower of sparks. 

The world tilted and spun, shapes smearing into one another, light too harsh, shadows impossibly deep. He blinked slowly, once, twice — but nothing came into focus. His eyelids dragged shut, too heavy.

As his world faded around the edges, the steady beat of his heart echoed loud and hollow in his ears…

Everything hurt. His chest throbbed with every shallow breath, his armor cracked wide where Maul had torn into him. Pain threaded through every limb — hot, deep, relentless. 

Warmth bled from him in waves.

It soaked into the shredded fabric beneath his armor, pulsed out with each beat of his heart, hot at first, then cooling fast as it pooled beneath him... 

His breath hitched. Wet. Shallow. Each inhale rattled in his lungs. He coughed, and a coppery taste spilled over his lips, dribbling down his chin. 

Then — weight beside him. A presence dropping to the ground with urgency and care all at once. Arms gathered him up, frantic and impossibly gentle, pulling him against a chest that shook with every breath. A heartbeat fluttered beneath his ear, too fast —

A hand found his face — broad and calloused, but trembling now. A thumb brushed over his cheek in an unsteady rhythm, grounding him.

“Cody? Cody, please —” The voice cracked on the word. 

Pressure bloomed against his side — urgent, shaking. Pain followed, sharp and white-hot. His whole body arched with it, a strangled gasp ripping from his throat. He tried to breathe through it, tried to stay conscious, to hold on as the voice stammered a litany of apologies. 

“I’m sorry, I’m — Cody, I’m so sorry — I have to s-stop the…the bleeding, I — Force, where is…where is the b-blasted kit —”

“Left…pouch,” Cody croaked. “‘nder the ration bar you keep…pretending isn’t yours.”

A startled, strangled sound. “Cody?”

“Obi…Wan…” It was barely more than breath — slurred, broken. 

“I’m here,” Obi-Wan said quickly, breath trembling. “It’s over.”

Cody’s hand moved on instinct, finding Obi-Wan’s wrist, clutching weakly. A pulse raced under his fingers. “Hurt?” he rasped.

“I know,” came the choked reply. “I know it hurts. But we’ll get you home — get you help —”

Cody shook his head, just barely. The world reeled with it, and pain screamed from his side. “You,” he tried again, voice faint. “Are you…?”

Obi-Wan's chest hitched beneath him. “I’m unharmed,” he whispered, voice raw. “L-Let’s just…just worry about you.”

Cody forced his eyes open. His vision blurred, but Obi-Wan’s face was there, unmistakable. His eyes — wet and wide. His hair — sweat-damp and disheveled. His hands — stained red with Cody’s blood, trembling where they held him. And still…

Still so achingly beautiful.

“Obi-Wan…” he murmured. 

He could barely breathe. Each inhale scraped like gravel in his chest. The pain in his core had turned dull and distant — dangerously distant — but Obi-Wan’s voice was close, warm, and shaking.

“Yes, love?”

Cody’s lips parted, breathless. 

Stars, he thought, light-headed. Say it again. Just once more. Or a thousand more times, until it’s the only name I know from your lips.

“Ni…” His breath snagged. “Ni kar’tayl…gar darasuum…”

The words came slowly, unevenly — the Mando’a fragile on his tongue, cracking in places. Words he’d longed to say — but never like this, through blood and broken breath. But they were all he had. All he could give. And he wanted Obi-Wan to know:

“I’ve…loved you…through it all…”

Obi-Wan’s hands trembled where they held him close. Tears fell — hot, soundless drops that struck Cody’s cheek like falling stars. Tiny, weightless things that somehow cut deeper than any wound.

“I love you too,” he gasped, his voice like shattered glass. Lips pressed against his brow, Obi-Wan’s breath warming his skin. 

And Cody —

Cody slipped.

His limbs fell slack, strings cut. His head dropped to the curve of Obi-Wan’s shoulder, cradled there like it belonged. The pain ebbed away. The edges of the world blurred, until there was nothing but warmth, and the echo of Obi-Wan’s heartbeat beneath his ear. 

Distantly, he heard Obi-Wan’s voice, raw and wild, calling something after him. 

He thought maybe he should answer, but the thread of himself was unraveling, tugged loose stitch by stitch. He couldn’t make his voice respond. Couldn’t make his body obey. He felt himself flickering out — fading. 

Then something shifted. 

Cody didn't know how to describe it. It unfolded before him like a breath held and finally exhaled. It wasn’t light, not exactly. It shimmered without shining, pulsed without sound. Colors bled through one another — deep, enduring blues that crackled like lightning, soft golds that tasted like sunlight on skin, bruised violets that ached in his chest. 

Thousands of thin, glimmering threads wove through it all, luminous and shifting, tying moments to people, lives to lineages. Some threads stretched taut with tension. Others snapped mid-air. Some tangled around each other in a delicate dance. 

But one — a brilliant, blazing blue — curled around his own fading gold thread.

Cody felt it more than saw it: a tether spun of light and breath and memory. It pulsed with every emotion they had never spoken, every battle fought side by side, every touch that lingered too long. It felt like a smile shared, like a steady presence at his back, like the echo of soft laughter in his ears —

Obi-Wan reached for him. Not pulling. Not demanding.  Just — offering. 

And Cody reached back. 

Their bond flared between them like the birth of a thousand stars. Cody felt him — not in body, but in essence. His grief, his hope, his love — weaving around Cody’s fading spark, threading light through every fraying edge. Strength poured into him, filling the hollow places where he’d started to fade. Like air returning to lungs that had forgotten how to draw breath.

He blinked, not into darkness, but into a field of stars. A constellation of everything they were. Each star a memory, pulsing with the truth of what was between them — trust, devotion, duty, love. 

And anchoring it all — Obi-Wan. A steady light in their galaxy’s expanse, bright enough to guide him home.

Cody’s thread, once frayed and fading, sparked back to life like daybreak over a horizon. 

It was the beeping that brought him back.

Soft electronic blips, precise and unrelenting. The air was cold and sterile, laced with the sharp tang of antiseptic and the faint, metallic flavor of recycled oxygen. Somewhere nearby, machines hummed in practiced unison.

Cody stirred slowly, every movement heavy. His breath hitched as a ripple of pain curled through his side. Not the sharp, blinding agony from before — now it throbbed under the surface, dulled at its edges: a quiet echo of something worse. 

He blinked, slow and heavy, lashes fluttering against the stark white glare. Too bright. His vision swam for a moment, then slowly sharpened the world into focus. White tiles overhead. A steady blue line marking his pulse on a monitor. The transparent IV tube snaking down towards his arm.  

His gaze drifted down, sluggish and disoriented. He caught the pale curve of bandages wrapped around his torso. A bacta patch clung to his side, slick and luminous, its surface pulsing faintly with pale blue light. His left arm lay in a sling, cradled against his chest. The splint beneath held his wrist rigid, fingers slightly curled, unmoving. He couldn’t feel much past the elbow — nerve block, probably — but the memory of the pain lingered. 

His other hand felt warm. 

Confusion lumbered across his medication-dulled senses. He turned his head, and his eyes landed on a familiar figure slumped over the edge of the cot, cradling Cody’s hand between his own. His forehead rested atop their joined hands, eyes pressed closed as his shoulders rose and fell with quiet breaths, lips moving silently. 

“Obi-Wan…?” The name barely made it past his lips. More exhale than sound.

But Obi-Wan jolted upright, blinking hard. “Cody,” he breathed. 

“…S’till here…” The words tumbled out thick and uneven, like his mouth hadn’t quite remembered how to shape them. 

Obi-Wan choked on a sound halfway between a laugh and a sob. He lifted Cody’s hand up to his lips, pressing a kiss to his fingers. 

Cody shifted — trying to sit up — but he trembled, muscles too weak to steady him. Pain flared like lightning through his ribs, and a wave of dizziness washed over him. He gasped, faltering.

Obi-Wan’s hands were there in an instant, carefully guiding him back against the pillows. 

“Easy, easy,” he soothed, voice gentle but barely steady. His hands trembled where they touched Cody. “Don’t try to move yet, love.”

Cody closed his eyes, exhaustion pulling at every fiber of his body. Each breath felt shallow and labored, his chest rising and falling unevenly as he fought to stay present.

A touch, soft at his temple, pulled him back. He opened his eyes to find Obi-Wan watching him, worry etched deep into every line of his face. “Are you in pain? I can get —”

“‘m fine,” Cody murmured, though his breath hitched, betraying him. “You okay?”

Obi-Wan looked…hollow, pallid under the medbay lights. His eyes were red-rimmed and shadowed, raw. His gaze clung to Cody like a man drowning, but there was something frayed in the way he blinked, too slowly, like the very act of keeping his eyes open was costing him.

He exhaled a short, trembling laugh. “You just came out of a bacta tank and the first thing you’re worried about is if I'm all right?”

“M’always worried about you,” Cody admitted softly.  

Obi-Wan inhaled shakily, eyes wet. He brushed his thumb gently over Cody’s knuckles. “I’m unharmed,” he said at last, voice achingly tender. 

Cody hummed, eyelids drooping. “‘n when’s the last time you slept?”

Obi-Wan glanced away. His fingers smoothed the thin strip of medical tape securing the IV line on the back of Cody’s hand.

“I haven't yet,” he admitted. “They sent me away during the bacta immersion, but I couldn't close my eyes without seeing…”

He broke off. Cody squeezed his hand.

“Please,” Obi-Wan whispered, like the words had been waiting at the back of his throat for days. “Please don’t ever do that again.”

Cody made a questioning sound, barely audible, and Obi-Wan raised his head to meet his gaze. 

“You…You kept trying to provoke him into — into…”

He stopped. The words caught in his throat, too heavy to finish. 

“Couldn’t let him keep hurting you,” Cody said, voice raw. “Not through me.”

Obi-Wan shut his eyes like the truth of it physically struck him. “Even so, my love…I would prefer you consider alternatives that don’t involve you being — “ his breath caught “ — brutally slaughtered.”

“M’life’s all I’ve got to give,” Cody whispered. “I’d give it for you. Every time.”

“No.” 

Obi-Wan’s eyes were fierce, tear-bright. His hands framed Cody’s face with a desperate tenderness. “Never again. Promise me, Cody. No more sacrificing yourself for me.”

“Only if you promise the same.”

Obi-Wan’s face twisted. “That’s different. He did this because of me. It was me he wanted to break —”

“Don't,” Cody cut in softly. “Don’t carry his choices on your back like they’re yours.”

“I felt you slipping,” he said hoarsely. “Your light was fading, and I — I almost couldn’t feel you by the end.”

“I felt you,” Cody murmured. “Even when everything else went dark. You were there. Brought me back.”

Obi-Wan’s breath hitched, and he turned his head, eyes shimmering. Cody reached up — slowly, unsteadily — fingers brushing against the curve of Obi-Wan’s cheek.

Obi-Wan caught his hand gently, eyes fluttering shut as he leaned into the touch. A single tear slipped down his face, warm and silent, soaking into Cody’s skin. Cody’s thumb moved — soft, instinctive — to brush it away. And the next. And the next.

Without a word, Cody guided Obi-Wan’s hand down and pressed it over his chest, where his heart still fluttered beneath bandages and battered ribs. Obi-Wan let out a soft sound as his fingers splayed across Cody’s chest, flattening his palm over the rhythm of his heartbeat. 

Cody let his hand slide down the back of Obi-Wan’s, a slow, gentle stroke. His chest rose and fell beneath the warmth of Obi-Wan’s touch, steady and deliberate. A wordless promise: I’m here. I’m still here.

They stayed like that — close, quiet. Obi-Wan’s hand rested lightly over Cody’s heart, his fingers drawing slow, absent circles. Cody melted beneath the touch, letting out a soft breath as his eyes drifted shut. 

He anchored himself in the heat of Obi-Wan’s touch, in the quiet cadence of his breathing beside him, and in the scent that was unmistakably his — sun-warmed linen, crushed green leaves, and the faintest taste of ozone, like a storm just passed. 

Safe now, the air seemed to whisper. 

“This wasn’t how I meant to tell you,” Obi-Wan said, voice barely above a breath.

Cody hummed, eyes still closed, a lopsided smile tugging at his lips. “Could’ve done without the whole ‘tortured for leverage’ part…” he mumbled. “If you’re takin’ notes.” 

Obi-Wan huffed a watery laugh. He reached up and smoothed back a lock of Cody’s hair, fingers lingering just a moment longer than necessary.

“I was going to tell you after the war.”

Cody’s eyes fluttered open, hazy and wide. “What?”

Obi-Wan looked down, eyes unfocused, like he was watching some other version of his life slip through his fingers.

“I had a plan,” he said, small and sad as his fingers absently fidgeted with the edge of Cody’s blanket. “I was going to take you to the Room of a Thousand Fountains…tell you I loved you. Ask if I could stay by your side a little longer. I…I wanted to do it right.”

Cody tried to steady his breath, fingers curling weakly around Obi-Wan’s sleeve. 

Obi-Wan had thought about it. About them. About a future. He’d made plans. Hoped.

“But…your place on the Council,” Cody whispered, voice small.

Obi-Wan stayed quiet for a long beat. Cody could feel the heat of his palm still resting against his chest, the echo of his heartbeat pressing steady beneath it. When Obi-Wan finally spoke, his words came quiet and deliberate, like something long-carried and newly vulnerable — a truth still tender in his mouth. 

“I was going to step down,” he admitted softly. And in his voice, Cody could hear the weight of it — how long the thought had lived in him, quietly unfolding, waiting for the right moment to be spoken aloud.

“There are Jedi who follow the Force where it leads, not just where old voices say it must go. Qui-Gon lived that way. I didn’t understand it then, but I do now. I thought I might walk that path…beside you, if you'd have me.”

“I…yes,” Cody said, voice breaking. “Of course, I’d — stars, of course I’d want that. But, Obi-Wan…” He shook his head faintly. “I don’t want you to give up who you are. Not for me. Not for anything.”

Obi-Wan’s hand cupped his face again, the pad of his thumb brushing softly across Cody’s jaw.

"Loving you is a part of me,” he said “as much a part as any of the vows I’ve made.”

Cody blinked against the feeling welling up behind his eyes.  

“I wanted — I still want — to do this the right way. You deserve that,” Obi-Wan continued. “I'll speak with the Council, and honor whatever judgment they pass.”

He took a breath and met Cody’s eyes with quiet, unwavering honesty.

“But loving you is not a failure, Cody. You're not my downfall. For you, I choose the light.”

Cody exhaled, shaky and wet, as the words settled in his chest. 

Obi-Wan shifted, leaning in to press his forehead gently to Cody’s temple. “So please,” he whispered into the air between them, fragile as glass. 

“Promise me you’ll fight to live for me — before you ever try to die for me.”

Cody’s breath caught. He swallowed hard, trying to find his voice through the thrum of his pulse in his throat. 

“Think I can manage that,” he whispered, the words catching on something raw and tender inside him.

Obi-Wan smiled as his fingers brushed lightly along the edge of Cody’s jaw, trailing warmth in their wake as they tilted his head up —

He felt the ghost of Obi-Wan’s breath against his lips, and then their mouths brushed softly together — light, tentative. 

He moved without thinking. His hand slid up to the back of Obi-Wan’s neck, tangling in his hair and tugging him in — closer, deeper — 

Not desperate, just sure.

Obi-Wan yielded with a sound low in his throat, something caught between a sigh and a sob. Then he kissed back — truly kissed him — and Cody forgot where he ended and where Obi-Wan began.

Their mouths moved together with aching precision, slow and molten. Obi-Wan tasted faintly of salt — of tears not long dried and the bitter ghost of tea leaves. Cody lost himself in the scrape of Obi-Wan’s beard, the soft drag of lips, the warmth of their breaths mingling together — he felt it everywhere, like lightning under his skin. 

When they finally broke apart, he was gasping softly, chest heaving beneath the bandages. He felt dizzy, head swimming with warmth and exhaustion. 

Above them, the monitor beeped faster, keeping time with Cody’s racing heart. Heat rose in his cheeks. 

“That’s…gonna get annoying,” he mumbled, lips brushing Obi-Wan’s.

“I think it’s charming,” Obi-Wan murmured, equally breathless.

He smiled, soft and sleepy, as Obi-Wan leaned down to steal another kiss, just as soft as their first. Cody pressed into it, eyes half-lidded with exhaustion. 

“You should rest, love,” Obi-Wan whispered as he pulled away.

Cody caught his hand, threading their fingers together.  “You need to rest too.”

Obi-Wan rubbed circles into Cody’s hand. “Later. After you.”

“Sleep with me,” Cody murmured, voice barely above a whisper. Then his eyes widened, and a flush crept over his cheeks as the weight of his words sank in. “I — I mean — not like that — just…here. With me. Together.”

He’d never felt so ineloquent, cursing his medication-addled brain. But Obi-Wan’s eyes were shining with gentle amusement. He leaned in, voice dropping to a soft murmur against Cody’s lips: “Together, then.”

Cody felt the Force before he felt Obi-Wan — a warm, featherlight touch that soothed the ache in his ribs just enough to breathe through it. 

The cot was too small. Cody could tell Obi-Wan realized it too, from the tiny pause before he moved. Still, he climbed in beside Cody — calm, focused, and devastatingly gentle. It wasn’t graceful, and Cody had to shift slightly to make room, but when Obi-Wan finally settled beside him, a line of warmth along his side, Cody melted into his embrace — like he’d always dreamed but never dared hope for. 

“Lov’ you,” he murmured drowsily. 

Obi-Wan’s breath hitched. “I love you,” he echoed, voice frayed. “Stars, Cody—I love you.”

Cody’s eyes fluttered closed, and the last thing he felt before sleep claimed him was a quiet awe at how perfectly Obi-Wan’s breathing had synced with his own.