Yeah, sorry, this is a Star Wars blog now. Night_Fury on AO3, author of the Shoulder the Sky series. Aggressively Pro-Jedi. Fantastic icon is drawn by @wolfspider-appreciation.
Folks, if you've enjoyed shoulder the sky, I hope you'll take a moment to give this a read.
I live on Oahu, in Hawaii, and between March 9 to March 23, two Kona low storm systems slammed into the islands. Oahu's North Shore got hit particularly hard. Residents had to be rescued by bulldozer; the town of Haleiwa was completely cut off by floodwaters. It's a testament to the strength of the community and the first responders on the ground that no one died. I got lucky, only a few possessions of mine got damaged, but I have friends up there who have lost everything.
I was up in Waialua this weekend assisting with clean-up and supply distribution, and while a lot of places are donating materials, the need is just so great- we ran out of diapers larger than a size 3 within the first hour. If you have a few bucks to spare, please consider donating to one of the following organizations who are doing good work on Oahu and the other islands to help communities recover.
Aloha United Way supports disaster response and recovery efforts for individuals and families, as well as nonprofit organizations serving on the front lines.
The Hawaii Agricultural Foundation has launched a relief effort with the Hawaii Farm Bureau Federation to support farmers impacted by the Kona low storms and provide resources for recovery and rebuilding.
The Hawaii Food Bank is holding emergency food distributions for flood-impacted residents across Oahu.
The Hawaii Workers Center prioritizes support for those considered part of Hawaii's working poor, including recent immigrants, low-wage workers, and survivors of labor trafficking.
The Hawaiian Council is matching every donation, dollar for dollar, up to $100,000, doubling the resources available for relief and recovery efforts.
You can find more information about the storms and more places to donate at Hawaii News Now and Honolulu Civil Beat. Mahalo nui!
(Also, as a thank you, if you donate and send me a screenshot of the receipt, I'll write you a lil Star Wars something of your choosing! Minimum 100 words per dollar, but probably longer if I feel inspired- y'all know my word count problems by now.)
reading a historical romance novel and reflecting on the way these stories often present woke nobility for the contemporary reader. a big thing is servants. you can’t not have servants in those times but many modern readers think “but I would never have servants. it would be so weird to have servants” and in order to make the protagonists of the story more relatable they are actually friends with the servants. but flip your perspective and think of it from the side of the servants. wouldn’t it be so awful if your boss was always trying to be friends with you. a really common thing you’ll see is the woke baronet having tea in the kitchen with the servants bc he’s not like other baronets. but what if your boss wanted to hang out and talk during your lunch break every day. not so charming when you think about it that way
#okay but now what is the optimal way to be a good boss in this situation i genuinely wanna know#its easy to guess what makes a bad boss or a mid boss. but what is a good boss#specifically in such a highly structured hierarchal situation (via @rainbowroach)
HELLO you are asking questions that literature and poetry THROUGHOUT the middle ages has asked, and it is from this questioning that we derive things like the Codes of Chivalry (which is not "how to treat a noble lady really nice" but is actually "how to be an ethical person when you're rich and you own a horse" and includes such things as "don't run people over with your horse")
In fact I daresay you already know instinctively just from cultural osmosis what a good boss -- a good liege lord -- is and does based on the tropes that have survived to the current day and the kinds of things that get Hugely Praised in things like legends of King Arthur.
A good boss (liege lord) is:
Merciful. He is not having his peasants killed for things like poaching rabbits during a famine. In fact, he is working to mitigate famine. During times of individual hardship, he might negotiate with a peasant for a payment plan on their annual rent.
Patient. He is not impulsive, he does not lose his temper.
Prudent. He makes choices that are thoughtful, considered, conservative (in the sense of not needlessly risky--he's not investing his entire fortune in having everyone plant an unproven crop). He is making sure local infrastructure like roads and public buildings are maintained and kept in good nick.
Gentle. He doesn't haul off and slap a servant or a tenant for breaking a dish or making a mistake. He doesn't abuse animals, his wife or children, or his employees. He doesn't rape the servants.
Generous (both in money and in spirit). He is not extorting the peasants for an amount of rent that is beyond their means, he is not raising taxes every year to cover his own lavish lifestyle. He is paying his servants a living wage (or, if wages are low, he's giving them room/board/clothing to make up the difference). If someone in a tenant's family dies, the lord is sending a gift of condolence, or helping to pay for the funeral, or possibly even ATTENDING the funeral and speaking a few kind words about the deceased, ESPECIALLY if they were a really upstanding and important member of the community. If one of his tenants is gravely sick, the lord is sending a basket of food or paying for a doctor. He is giving charitably (generally this will be, like, a bequest to the church so that they can run a hospital or an orphanage or a school for the local village children).
Pious. This classically means "goes to church, submits with humility to God" but to me this quality is subtextually standing in for "maintaining an ongoing sense of Perspective that HE'S not god, that there are higher powers he is Accountable to, that he too can be Judged, etc, so that he doesn't end up going on a weird fucked up power trip"
Humble. One of the most admiring things you hear about a lord doing in literature and epic poetry is, "He ate off of wooden plates while his followers ate off of gold and silver." Humility isn't about being meek, it's just about not thinking so much of yourself that you turn your nose up and sneer at what "lesser" people do. In other words: Don't be a fucking diva. If your carriage gets stuck in the mud, climb out and help everybody else push, you're not gonna die from getting mud on your shoes.
Condescending. This word has changed wildly in meaning/tone over the last couple centuries -- it's now a rude thing to do (because we've done away with legal social hierarchies, so someone acting like they're lowering themselves to your level IS insulting), but in older times, a high-ranking person "condescending" to a servant was worthy of praise and admiration: it means they were setting aside rank and privilege to speak to them with the easygoing, friendly respect and compassion they'd give a peer. This is things like... Treats those beneath him with courtesy and respect (ie: listens soberly and attentively when one of his servants or tenants comes to complain about a problem). Having a sense of humor and kindness about it when the lord and a servant both come around a corner at the same time and run into each other and the servant gets knocked to the ground and starts babbling apologies--the condescending (positive) lord helps them to their feet with his own hands and cracks a joke to show them that it's ok (as opposed to just walking off without a word or insulting/scolding them). This is also things like trusting a farmer, woodcutter, or artisan to speak with expertise about their own livelihood and taking their advice into consideration if they tell the lord that one of his ideas won't work.
Good boundaries. The ethical liege lord knows that it's normal for the staff to probably be softly bitching about him in private (even with a really good boss, we all grumble from time to time). He's not eavesdropping on them, he's not going into the staff areas where they should reasonably expect to have a degree of privacy, etc.
Righteous and protective of "the weak". The "weak" here doesn't necessarily mean physically weak, this is often used in the sense of someone politically or socially weak, aka The Marginalized -- the poor, the disabled, women, children, the elderly, etc. If a lord sees someone like this being mistreated or abused, he's supposed to step in and put a stop to that.
Committed to reciprocity. In a highly hierarchical system like feudalism, every person (from the lowest peasant all the way up to the crown prince) legally OWES their liege lord certain things (taxes, labor, service, loyalty, etc). A good liege remembers and takes very seriously the idea that this should be a balanced and reciprocal relationship -- in other words, he owes something BACK. Feudalism is modeled very strongly on the family system: If children owe their parents obedience and service, then parents owe their children care and protection. This still applies when the "child" is a farmer and the "parent" is a local baron. Or when the "child" is a duke and the "parent" is the king.
Basically, we get so caught up in the aesthetics of nobility that we forget that it literally is a managerial position that comes with responsibilities that were... very similar back in the day to the same ones we have now. Humans have not changed all that much. At the end of the day, a really good boss in the 1400s versus in one from the 2020s displays most of the same qualities of personality, even if the details of execution are different.
The next question is, of course, "well, but this theoretical liege lord is HIGHLY idealized -- how often did that actually HAPPEN? Wasn't it more likely that everyone was exploited all the time?" and to that I say: Well, maybe. But again, I don't think humans have changed all that much. Just like the bosses of today, there's a SPECTRUM: A really really good boss is rare and precious and one that you tell stories about for years after you've left that job, but a truly, genuinely, homicidally nightmarish boss is also pretty rare. Most bosses are sort of meh -- they have their good moments, they have their shitty moments, but they're tolerable and you can get along with them well enough to do your job, and then you roll your eyes at them behind their back. Generally, humans don't take outright exploitation lying down. Being a bad boss in the historical period is how you get peasant uprisings and revolts, and you know that to be true because your parents raised you with that knowledge, so unless you are very stupid or inbred or an egomaniac, there is literal personal incentive to at minimum be a Tolerable liege lord. And that means hitting at least SOME of the above bullet points.
TL;DR: In the words of Honore de Balzac, "Everything I have just told you can be summarized by an old word: noblesse oblige!"
(for more discussions of the ethics of fealty and what it means to be a good boss when you are an exquisitely beautiful twink of a prince with a hot beefy bodyguard.... [fingerguns] read A Taste of Gold and Iron)
The rule could have heavy impacts towards trans people across society.
Last week, the Trump administration quietly released a sweeping new federal rule that would use funding threats to force institutions across the country to reject transgender people. The 400-page proposed regulation would codify the administration's anti-trans executive orders into binding federal policy, imposing a blanket prohibition on federal funds going toward "gender ideology"
The proposed rule, formally titled "Regulation for Federal Financial Assistance," rewrites the government-wide framework governing all federal grants across every agency. Among its most consequential provisions, it requires that before a federal grant recipient can receive money, the award must pass a "pre-issuance review" conducted by a political appointee—not a career expert or peer reviewer—to ensure it is "consistent with applicable law, Federal agency priorities, and the national interest." The regulation explicitly instructs these appointees to screen for "denial by the recipient of the sex binary in humans or the notion that sex is a chosen or mutable characteristic." [...] An institution that acknowledges transgender people exist—through its policies, its training, its healthcare, its bathroom access, its HR procedures, its name-change processes—could be deemed to "deny the sex binary" or to “support the notion that sex is mutable” and have its federal funding blocked.
Importantly, the gender ideology prohibition has no age limitation—hospitals could be targeted not just for providing care to minors but for providing gender-affirming care to adults, because prescribing hormone therapy to a transgender patient of any age could be deemed promoting the belief that "sex is a chosen or mutable characteristic."
This is all very bad and horrible, but I want to be clear that it’s worse and more sweeping than just eliminating trans research.
This torches everything. And I do mean everything.
A very abbreviated list of its ramifications include (but are not limited to):
ending funding for ALL DEI related initiatives
allowing the government to terminate grants at any point for any reason
preventing researchers from publishing, going to conferences, and being part of academic societies
requiring that topics must support the president’s agenda.
What this means, and if anything I’m under selling it, is the death of science and research in America. It allows the government to restrict any topic they please at a whims notice, putting officials who have no background in the topic in charge of deciding funding continuity. It controls what gets researched and if/how researchers are allowed to share their discoveries. There are no books to burn if the government never allows them to be written. This is fascism plain and simple.
Please, if you only ever write one public comment, this is the one to do.
Bringing back this guide to writing an effective public comment. This gives you the basics you need to know, what you need to include, a basic outline you can follow, etc.
Public comments are not a vote, it is a chance for you to say "here is an issue with this law I think you need to address" and provide justification for legal challenges if it goes forward:
"Comments raise the bar that agencies have to meet when making a rule; “if an agency fails to adequately respond to significant, relevant comments in a final rule, members of the public may seek to challenge the rule in court on that basis and claim it could be struck down.ˮ"
But also, if possible, don't stop at writing a comment. Don't stop at calling your representatives. You should ideally be talking to people in your community about this and organizing resistance on-the-ground; there is a good chance people are already doing that even if you aren't hearing about it.
Some added 101-level context from someone (me) who’s worked in federal grantmaking for 20 years and is literally certified on this document - this is a document that governs all federal grantmaking. It’s been around for over a decade and is a mega-document that combine multiple previous smaller documents that have been around for ages. It is updated every few years and generally the updates are minor - a notable change in the previous update was raising the small procurement threshold from $10,000 to $15,000 for example. Deeply dry boring minutiae that no one outside of federal grantmakers need concern themselves with. It was also federal GUIDELINES, which means there was flexibility.
This year’s is different. They are now federal REQUIREMENTS, which means there’s no flexibility. As was said previously, the 400 pages are not singularly devoted to being absolute shitheads to trans people. Theres a lot of stuff in there, some of which is the standard dry boring grants stuff, some of which is the horrible ideological warfare outlined above.
This document is issued by the OMB, the Office of Management and Budget, which is currently lead by fucking Russell Vought, the principal architect of Project 2025. This is how they’re going to implement all the horrible shit in there that wasn’t covered by Executive Order. Russell Vought is actively coming for my job, my marriage, and my kid, and most of my friends lost their jobs last year because of him. He is the fucking arch villain behind the heinous shit the current regime is doing.
So yes, please comment. You don’t have to read all 400 pages before doing so, it’s dry and dense as fuck, but I thought this information might be helpful. Also, while there is a public comment period, this isn’t voted on by Congress. The OMB just fucking issues it. Pressuring your elected officials into publicly saying “hey what the fuck are you doing here” is good, though.
Please note the comment period is open through JULY 13th, not JUNE 13th. I saw a lot of relogs yesterday saying "last day!" and I just want to say it is very much not too late.
As of today, 7/8/26, we have five days for public commentary on this to go through. I am begging y'all: if you care about independent science in the country that produces the most global science funding in the world, please leave a comment.
Sorry it took me so long to get this out, but in my defense, life lifed and I have exactly zero restraint when it comes to word count. Oops. Thank you @scarletclarinet for your donation to Aloha United Way - I hope you enjoy part 1, part 2 will be coming shortly!
The plane comes on the seventh day.
Zylon is a mining planet. Barren, stripped to the core, and abandoned until satellites in orbit around a nearby planet had picked up distortions in seismic data. Preliminary investigations had uncovered a renewed Separatist presence on the deserted ground. The 212th-- scheduled leave and the accompanying resupply having been suspended once again-- had been deployed to investigate.
A scouting mission. Determine and destroy. Fine. But the suspended resupply had been desperately needed. They had no air support. No surveillance drones. Why send them on a reconnaissance mission without reconnaissance equipment?
But their protests go unheard by the Senate. Surveillance drones-- from the Senate's point of view, the 212th had plenty. What else was a clone, really, if not a drone with legs?
So. Zylon it is.
Cody knows this is going to be a shitshow from the beginning. He knows it when the orders come in. He knows it when the leave gets cancelled. He knows it when their resupply is cancelled next-- because oh, he knows what "suspended" means when it comes to the 212th, even barely two months in; if he didn't know better, he'd think the Chancellor's trying to kill them off.
But he really knows it when General Kenobi's expression empties out as soon he jumps down from the gunship.
Kenobi's face is never empty. Quiet, sure. Calm. Controlled. But there's always something dancing behind his eyes, even when the rest of his expression is wholly and utterly motionless. He smiles easily, too, for all of them (and the treacherous little voice in the back of his mind that keeps count notes that he smiles for you most of all), and the fierce brightness in his face that Cody glimpses in the thick of battle makes his blood sing. But this awful emptiness...
He dares to touch a hand to Kenobi's arm-- the palm against the elbow, fingers curled against his forearm. A gentle pressure, because Kenobi is set apart, but Cody has begun to notice the way he sways into every absent-minded touch.
"Sir?"
There. A blink. A resettling. The blank eyes clear; the thin-lipped emptiness twists into a rueful grin. "Dead earth," Kenobi says, and scuffs a heel against the dusty ground. "Apologies, Commander. It's starving."
Cody does not like the sound of that, and says so.
Kenobi laughs. Cody preens.
"Hungry in the Force, I mean," he says. "It wants energy. Poor thing. It's been drained completely."
Only his General, Cody thinks helplessly, would call an entire planet poor thing.
But. Nothing to be done about it.
The ground is scarred with narrow canyons as far as the eye can see. They split into groups and trudge single file along the remains of the strip-mining operations, searching in vain for any indication of activity. They traverse the cramped and dim tunnels that intersect the gorges, empty apart from metal scaffolding that's free from rust and gleaming brightly enough to make the hair on the back of Cody's neck rise.
The dust gets everywhere.
No rain has fallen here in decades, and in the absence of living roots, erosion has taken its toll. Every step sends up a puff of dried dirt. Every man's armor soon becomes indistinguishable, coated in the same dull and rusty brown. It sneaks through the seals and itches under their blacks. It gets in hair and under nails and between teeth. The sky above remains a clear and disorienting blue, and Cody watches for smoke-- pollution or presence, he would take either-- to no avail.
For six days, no one fires a shot. There's not another living soul to be found.
On the sixth night, the battalion regathers. Tents are pitched on a wide stretch of open plateau; one of the rare spaces left where more than two men can walk abreast. The vast stretch of space sets Cody's teeth on edge-- visibility goes both ways, after all-- but it's either here or in a valley, and the only thing worse than an ambush is an ambush from above. The canyons around them have already been cleared; a retreat, if necessary, can be managed quickly. At least here, they will meet their enemies on an even footing.
No campfires burn. There is no wood to be found. But Terror and his perpetually terrified rotation of secondaries can work wonders, and they have warm food for latemeal. Cody eats next to Kenobi, the two of them bumping knees on the crowded ground around one of their solar-powered burners amid the low and cheerful chattering of their men.
He tumbles into his cot with a smile on his face and is asleep in an instant.
Waking comes suddenly.
Cody squints into his pillow, rolls over, blinks at the ceiling-- then sits up abruptly, staring into the darkness of the tent.
What is it?
Where?
Were it time for him to be up, he would hear quiet churning outside, and see the shadows of footsteps crossing in front of the flap-- but there is nothing so obvious that draws his attention, and for a long moment he cannot identify what had drawn him so abruptly out of sleep.
Then he glances to his left, and realizes that Kenobi's cot is still neatly made.
Not only are the blankets tucked and folded-- Kenobi is the type of man to take that time, after all-- but they do not appear the slightest bit wrinkled.
Had he ever returned to the tent, after latemeal?
Cody has gotten used to the noise of breathing other than his own. The quiet pricks at his spine, and with a sigh, he swings his legs over the edge of the cot and stands.
It's not that he doesn't trust Kenobi. He does. It's just--
(He walks among them like he is one of them. He knows their names before he learns their ranks. His hands have been blood-soaked since the day they'd met. He is not careless with anyone's lives but his own. He is not just someone Cody likes, he is someone Cody does not want to lose--)
He forgets he has people watching his back sometimes, that's all. Cody occasionally needs to remind him.
He finds Kenobi seated cross-legged about a hundred feet past the troopers on watch.
Cody stands behind him for a long moment. Watching him watching the dark.
Then he clears his throat. He's under no illusion that he'd approached undetected, but Kenobi does him the favor of waiting to acknowledge him until Cody announces himself.
"Sir."
"Commander," Kenobi says. His head tilts back, his eyes meet Cody's-- and then he smiles, a flash of white teeth against the encroaching night, and pats the ground next to him. "Couldn't sleep?"
"Not when a superior office was missing, sir," Cody says drily, and settles next to him.
The camp behind them is full of the crowded silence that emerges alongside a mass of sleeping people. Burps, snores, snorts, murmurs, jabbed elbows, the occasional muffled laugh-- none loud enough to be heard on their own, but all together accumulate into a snow-like layer draped across the tents. Wholly comforting, in its own way.
But beyond them, in the dark, the silence is absolute.
Dead and vast and hungry.
(It's starving, he'd said. Poor thing.)
"I don't like this much," Cody confesses quietly.
Again, a sudden flash of a smile--
"No," Kenobi agrees. "Me neither."
"What's the objective?"
Kenobi sucks at his teeth, drums his fingers against the ground--
"We're pulling out when it's light."
That is not what Cody had expected him to say.
"New orders from the Senate?"
"No. There is something deeply wrong with this place. I thought at first my sight was just obscured, but I went down into the tunnels earlier--"
"Sir," Cody says, exasperated, but Kenobi waves him off--
"-- and there was no activity stirring the earth. None. Only all of you, breathing above me. Whatever that report said, right now we are on an empty planet. If the Senate wants more details, then they can equip us with proper aerial support. We're too vulnerable to bombardment as it is. I'll take whatever lashing they see fit to hand out."
Above them, the sky begins to lighten. The deep, uninterrupted black yields to the very deepest purple at the edge of the horizon.
Cody considers going back to bed. By his estimate, he has another hour and a half until he well and truly must be up-- to coordinate departure, and he swallows back the bubbling relief-- and he should know better than to waste an opportunity for sleep. But the thought of returning to an empty, silent tent makes his stomach twist uncomfortably, and he's sat in less comfortable places.
Not many. But still.
The sky is... kind of pretty, he guesses. Kenobi's watching it too, bright eyes narrowed.
Then Cody hears it, and lurches to his feet.
The low, distant drone of an incoming plane.
Sound precedes appearance. It takes a few moments more for the plane to become visible, streaking just ahead of the lightening horizon. Cody jams his bucket on, watches the visual interface light up; the targeting software locks on, centers the plane for a closer view--
One, two, three seconds for him to notice the peculiarly rounded belly.
Four, five, six seconds for him to realize what it means.
The neutron bomb had been outlawed over two centuries ago. It used the molecular make-up of a planet's atmosphere as raw matter to generate a self-replicating reaction. Once triggered, the detonation would multiply at an exponential rate until it had consumed all organic matter available to it, at which point it would neatly self-extinguish. All organic lifeforms would be reduced to steaming puddles- if not evaporated completely- and all non-organic infrastructure would be left intact. Give it a few centuries for the radiation to die down to treatable levels, and the neutron bomb became a perfect tool for aspiring planetary empires who wanted a tidy little solution to the people in the way.
Detonation was tricky. Portable fusion reactors were famously unstable. The longer it ran, the riskier it was. Wire it too early, and you risked the reaction igniting while still within your planetary orbit. Standard operating prasctice dictated that the bomb be wired en route. The drop bay of the porting plane would be built out with a mechanical rig that could conduct the operation for the pilot, providing the distinctive bulging exterior.
So high above them, the plane appears deceptively slow. Thousands of miles an hour turn into a lazy drift across the brightening sky.
A shout goes up behind them. The watch has caught it. The slow quiet of the camp behind them sharpens in response-- voices rise, waking, calling out.
Cody wishes they hadn't seen it.
In the crystalline silence of his own mind, the truth has sharp edges.
They have no air support. The transports that brought them down are still aboard the Negotiator, and are not designed to chase down a bomber. They have no artillery capabilities; their re-armaments are stocked aboard the resupply tug still waiting in Helva-3's orbit. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees a half dozen blue blaster bolts streak upwards; they fizzle out before they get close.
But his brothers don't die easy. Cody loves them for it.
"Commander."
A jump, a jolt-- his throat is very dry--
"Sir?"
"It's all just energy, you know."
Cody dares a glance sideways. Kenobi's on his feet, watching him. His eyes are very bright and very blue.
"Not sure that's very comforting at the moment, sir," he admits.
They have less than a minute until the plane arrives above them. The detonation will trigger approximately five hundred meters above them. The flash will blind them first. Then the radiation will cascade in all directions, consuming the atmosphere and all organic matter until there is nothing left to use.
It will, at least, be a quick death.
What is wrong with him? Shouldn't he be panicking? Grieving? At the very least, reaching for his blaster, so he can die with a weapon in his hand?
(Is this why his brothers never fought, on Kamino? Is this what it does to you, knowing there's no escape?)
Kenobi laughs. Dry and quiet, almost resigned, and Cody is struck with the sudden and absurd urge to take his hand.
The plane is almost directly overhead.
"My old master had a particular affinity for the Living Force," Kenobi says conversationally. He kneels, and starts-- digging, methodically, with one hand. Flexing his fingers into the dry and dusty dirt. "He always said that. It's all just energy. Sometimes destructive, sometimes constructive, but energy all the same."
His free hand presses firmly over the other, half-buried in the dead earth, and scrapes the dirt back into place.
"You cannot destroy it, only dissipate it."
Dust puffs up with every motion. His hands, his sleeves, the bridge of his nose: all stained with burnished red.
"You cannot conjure it, only channel it."
Something's wrong with Cody's visual interface; the color grading is out of whack. The blue of Kenobi's eyes is fading, washing out into something pale and bright.
Above them, the belly of the plane swings open. The bomb falls like a shadow, a little blot of black against the night.
Kenobi extends an arm-- reaching out, reaching up, palm open, as if beckoning the explosion towards him. From sky to soil: a straight line. A stretch. A conduit.
"Brace yourself," he says, his words soft and slurred around the edges. He looks up at Cody with strange and shining eyes. "And don't call home about this, please."
The bomb detonates.
This is the last thing Cody sees, before instinct throws up an arm and twists him into a bracing crouch equal parts desperate and futile:
The dark and deadly metal cracking open, the ignition within, the spark.
Obi-Wan, his face turned upwards, reaching and holding.
The flood of white light, moving wrongly, not outwards in an instant but spinning downwards into a funnel, snapping and crackling, tumbling over itself in a hungry rush towards the outstretched hand--
And the flash of lightning that leaps up to meet it.
part 2! every so often i re-live the realization that i feel sick when i don't write because the thoughts just pile up and turn rotten so sometimes sleep is worth sacrificing!
Cody's trembling breathing sounds very loud in the confines of his helmet.
The sensory ports have shut down. Exactly what they're designed to do, when external input exceeds capacity-- preventing permanent blinding, reducing the risk of hearing loss.
His heartbeat jackhammers at the base of his throat.
He's braced forward. Unbalanced, far enough that he would fall flat were it not for an existing opposition, and then he registers it: the shifting pressure of a terrible wind. Beyond that, the isolation is total. The darkness is absolute, without a hint of shadow. The only sound he can hear is his own panting. Underneath his hand, through his feet, the ground is rumbling.
He'd only been a few feet away from Kenobi. He'd sat close enough that their knees brushed, then-- to his feet, a step backwards in the rising-- had he moved forward at all, when he'd realized? Not wanting to die alone? And then, the lurch away, the twist into a crouch--
He could just stay here.
Keep the helmet on, keep the world narrow, and let death-- if it comes-- take him by surprise. If it doesn't, well, someone will draw him up eventually. There will be a friendly hand, and a living brother, and a next battle.
But what if there isn't?
Most of the camp had been asleep. They'd had, what, fifteen seconds' warning? They would've reached for blasters and comms, not buckets. What if inhalation is ignition? What if this narrow air is the only safety left? What if they're already dead, and he is alone--?
No.
He reaches up, cracks the seal, and lifts the helmet.
The storm slams in like a tsunami.
Cody stays close to the ground. Nearly blind in the face of the unending flash, deafened by the undying roar of noise-- he crouches in a crab-walk, shifts sideways, forward, sweeping the ground in a slow and regular motion with an outstretched hand. Echoes of vast convulsions shudder up his arms and make his teeth jump in his skull. The dust smears across the fingers of his glove, slivers of copper on black. He resists the urge to raise a sheltering arm and stares determinedly ahead. A few feet forward. Three feet, maximum--
There. A flash of red. He claws his way forward, faceplants when the ground convulses under him and gags on a mouthful of dust--
"Sir!"
The noise is unbelievable.
And the light--
Kenobi didn't stop the explosion. They're in the explosion.
And yet. Not dead.
Cody stumbles back to his knees and crawls forward. Head down, bracing, reaching out. It feels interminable, feels like miles, but finally he catches another flicker-- closer, this time-- of red hair, of a brown robe, of a scabbed hand clutching at the dusty earth. He reaches forward, closes a hand over Kenobi's--
His fingers go straight through.
Cody stares for a long, horrible moment.
Then the ground bucks again and the horror is broken. He loses his balance once more and tumbles onto his side, squeezes his eyes shut against the rushing light, thinks furiously--
Okay. Okay.
He just missed. That's all. He's as Force-sensitive as a brick; he doesn't get to fade through things. He just missed. Never mind that Kenobi has pulled off miracles before. Never mind that he's huddled in the midst of another one. He just missed. They're crouched in the middle of a lightning strike; what visibility exists is patchworked and streaked. He just missed.
People don't turn transparent.
Cody knows this. He knows this. He thinks about how much he knows this; he grits his teeth and focuses and holds it in the center of his mind until the rest of the world fades around it. He knows as well Kenobi's hands: broad and gentle and stained with blood in every crease. Patting shoulders and patching wounds and and punching like a brawler and constantly losing his godsdamned lightsaber.
He does not think. He does not hope. That's for people who don't know. He keeps his eyes squeezed shut and knows where Kenobi's hand will be, and he clambers upright and reaches, fumbles, scratches through dust, and when his fingers close over scarred knuckles he does not permit himself relief-- he slides his hand up, knowing he will find wrist and arm and all the rest, and when he does he hooks an arm around Kenobi's shoulders and digs his fingers into the muscle and holds the knowing of him too tightly--
Then he ducks his chin against his chest, digs his heels in against the wind, and holds on.
@scarletclarinet this has literally taken me over and it's entirely your fault--
Patchwork glimpses:
Underneath them, a splintering ground. The groaning earth sounds in his bones. The cracks open narrow but deep, webbing out from seized-up fingers and vanishing into a distance made unreal.
A radiating heat, along every point of contact. Plastoid softens, begins to bubble. Pain knocks at the edge of his awareness; Cody ignores it.
Too much give under his hand. Sensation, not sound: of tearing, warping, the wrong kind of remaking. He tastes copper, turns his head to the side, spits. The wad of bloody phlegm vanishes before it hits the ground, into the rush of light and wind and roaring sound.
From above:
A burst of white light.
A heat that makes the shields glow red.
A hollowing out. Draining a yolk without breaking the shell.
A cracking of the shell, and a disintegration.
An unexpected carpet of green.
There is only so much to be seen, a hundred miles up. Landing transports are dispatched immediately.
There are no scouting droids to be found. But if one was discovered and prepared and loaded and deployed in the time before the transports were launched--
(A tall order, to be sure, for the crew left aboard the ship will move very quickly indeed to maintain their refusal of stunned dismay--)
And if it were to dive down--
Down through the thick and fan-like leaves, each one larger than a man's head; down through the knotted wood from which sprout buds of shimmering white; down through the yellowed ivy shading eucalyptic bark; down through the tiny, star-like flowers dotting towering trees with splashes of orange--
Down through pink and draping pitcher plants, suffused with a sickly sweet scent; down through branches laden with violet figs so ripe as to be splitting at the seams; down through waxen, pebble-like leaves that glint oddly under the dawning sunlight; down through colonies of pale blue fungi looping across trunks large enough that a dozen men with their arms outstretched could not cover the whole breadth--
Down towards clusters of red pickleweed that fan in sweeping carpets across the cracked earth; down towards frond-like ferns embossed with fingerprint-like whorls; down towards dew-dappled moss that bounces back when touched and betrays nothing of its dusty roots; down towards the low-lying bushes bearing all manner of wildberries; down towards the patches of four-pronged nettles that rattle threateningly at the change in the wind--
It would find, in the middle of all of this, a barren crater.
It would find, in this cracked and splintered pit, two men.
It would log without understanding: the first figure crouched over the second, twisting, auditory input spiking, the cracking shout of Helix! Helix!; the latter thrown prone, spasming, back bowing clear off the ground, white lightning cracking muscle and bone--
Perhaps it would linger long enough to catch the third: slip-sliding down the last fifty feet of a towering redwood, leaping the last ten and rolling into a sprint, skidding down the side of the crater in a cloud of dust, the vanguard of a churning movement in the canopy--
Perhaps.
"Talk."
"He ate a neutron bomb," Cody grits out. He'd slipped a hand under Obi-Wan's head when the latter had folded into a seizure, but the next spasm had hit with an inhuman force and he'd felt something crack. Helix's hands are moving very quickly from where he's crouched over Obi-Wan's chest-- something sharp catches the light, but Cody refuses to be distracted; he cannot look away from his face.
Whatever he'd done-- it's eating him alive. Cody had caught him when he'd first fallen, had already been braced for it, only to let go almost immediately when he'd looked down. A flash of white lightning tore a bloody gash down the side of his face, deep enough to see bone, but he'd barely had time to realize what he was looking at before the next streak seared it shut like a bad dream-- only for a gaping wound to open over the cloudy eye, reducing it to pulp until a half-second later all was well again-- then a spray of blood from a freshly-opened jugular caught Cody on the forehead, too hot, the next second the only proof of its origin--
His fingers, curled in Obi-Wan's, slip slick and red for one terrible moment; he doesn't dare look at his gloves. Splotches of a dark wetness bloom on dusty tunics that cave in suddenly in odd places; Cody forces his thoughts to rain and nothing else. A blast radius opens up across his lower jaw, showing teeth from the wrong angle; Cody folds over him and snaps don't you leave me to do this by myself, thinking very hard not of those who did but rather of every brother who still breathes--
And it works.
Half-lidded eyes shine a terrifying, too-bright, crackling white, but what remains of the explosion lancing across visible skin draws no more fresh blood in its wake. The worst of the bone-cracking seizure eases into a wave of full-body trembling; arms and legs twitch inwards as if trying to keep warm. Fingers clench and relax in an unsteady rhythm around Cody's own, and Cody presses his forehead to Obi-Wan's and hisses it again: an order, good soldiers follow orders,but the latter half catches in his throat and it turns into don't you leave, don't you leave, don't you leave--
Then Helix skids to a stop next to them, and the world opens up.
Talk, he says, but what is there to say? The words are too glib but they're the only ones he has. Helix is too good of a man to waste time on questions, and in truth it doesn't matter if he believes Cody or not. Metal flashes once, twice; Helix makes a satisfied noise and leans back on his heels, and a silence Cody hadn't even recognized yields to a whistling wheeze through the straw in Obi-Wan's throat.
"Collapsed airway," Helix says shortly, misreading Cody's expression. "It'll hold until a medevac gets here. Needle'll take over here, I'll comm the secondaries on board to prep the theater. Anything I need to know?"
Above them: the growing whine of engines.
He can't say it out loud. If he speaks it into existence, it becomes real; if it becomes real, Obi-Wan is dead, because there is no way a body survives all of that. It had been only him who'd seen it, after all, and Helix has mentioned nothing about the smear of blood, wet and hot, that had caught him in the face. Perhaps he'd only imagined it. Extraordinary exposure to neutronic radiation messes with perception; they'll all have to go through a decontamination cycle back on board. Maybe it wasn't real. It doesn't have to be real.
(But if Helix leaves, not knowing--)
"Don't let go."
Helix glances up at him, startled, and Cody recalls the way Obi-Wan's hand had slipped through his own like so much light and thinks he turned into a reflection--
"Don't let go of him," he repeats, and Helix, unquestioning, nods.
He curles a hand around Obi-Wan's wrist, fingers to the pulse point. Looks up, nods again.
"Easy," he says, and his lips quirk upwards in a humorless smile. "I don't think I'll be letting go for a bit."
So Cody untangles his fingers from bloody hair. He catches the edge of Obi-Wan's hand, eases his own out, and tells himself he doesn't see blind eyes flick towards him or hear a wounded sound from a torn-open throat. Obi-Wan would not want him to abandon their men, especially not for him.
The first transport lands.
And Cody unfolds himself, steps back on shaking legs, and turns away.
He trudges up the side of the barren crater. His fingers twitch at his side, uneasy at the empty space. Behind him, Helix's voice rises like thunder, shouting orders and cussing out the hapless pilot in equal measure.
On Saturday I said to my partner, as I have said for months, "A ten thousand dollar a year raise would solve so many of my problems."
As of this morning I was reluctantly looking for jobs because I love my job and don't want to leave it, but see: $10k raise problem solver.
As of noon today this was no longer an issue, because my boss called me with the news that I was getting a $10K merit raise.
I feel like a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders. This is roughly $200 extra per paycheck. Enough to pay off debt faster, rebuild my savings, and spend a weekend a month in Milwaukee getting obscenely laid. The sex I'm going to have on $200 extra per paycheck. You can't even.
May all of you get the $10K raise your soul has yearned for. And whatever level of sex you can be satisfied with for $200.
does anyone have good recommendations for indie businesses selling tank tops specifically? science-y, queer, cool animals- it is SO hot and SO humid outside and I just want something with personality!!
This Juneteenth I want people to know and remember Alfred Irving who was finally freed from chattel slavery in 1942 and Mae Louis Miller who was finally freed from peonage slavery in 1963.
Slavery was not "200 years ago," the last living former enslaved african american passed away in 2014 at 70 years old.
Chattell slavery in America did not go away, it adapted. It became peonage, sharecropping, vagrancy laws, "chain gangs" or convict leasing, and continues into the modern day prison system and the systematic incarceration of black and brown people and expanded to forced detention of immigrants in modern day America.
Do not believe the common narrative that the emancipation proclamation freed every slave. There are many more who were unable to tell their stories out of shame or fear of harm.
I reccomend that people read Slavery by Another Name by Douglas A. Blackmon or watch the 90 minute documentary / film adaptation
If nothing else please remember the names of the two people that American society wants you to forget.
Sorry it took me so long to get this out, but in my defense, life lifed and I have exactly zero restraint when it comes to word count. Oops. Thank you @scarletclarinet for your donation to Aloha United Way - I hope you enjoy part 1, part 2 will be coming shortly!
The plane comes on the seventh day.
Zylon is a mining planet. Barren, stripped to the core, and abandoned until satellites in orbit around a nearby planet had picked up distortions in seismic data. Preliminary investigations had uncovered a renewed Separatist presence on the deserted ground. The 212th-- scheduled leave and the accompanying resupply having been suspended once again-- had been deployed to investigate.
A scouting mission. Determine and destroy. Fine. But the suspended resupply had been desperately needed. They had no air support. No surveillance drones. Why send them on a reconnaissance mission without reconnaissance equipment?
But their protests go unheard by the Senate. Surveillance drones-- from the Senate's point of view, the 212th had plenty. What else was a clone, really, if not a drone with legs?
So. Zylon it is.
Cody knows this is going to be a shitshow from the beginning. He knows it when the orders come in. He knows it when the leave gets cancelled. He knows it when their resupply is cancelled next-- because oh, he knows what "suspended" means when it comes to the 212th, even barely two months in; if he didn't know better, he'd think the Chancellor's trying to kill them off.
But he really knows it when General Kenobi's expression empties out as soon he jumps down from the gunship.
Kenobi's face is never empty. Quiet, sure. Calm. Controlled. But there's always something dancing behind his eyes, even when the rest of his expression is wholly and utterly motionless. He smiles easily, too, for all of them (and the treacherous little voice in the back of his mind that keeps count notes that he smiles for you most of all), and the fierce brightness in his face that Cody glimpses in the thick of battle makes his blood sing. But this awful emptiness...
He dares to touch a hand to Kenobi's arm-- the palm against the elbow, fingers curled against his forearm. A gentle pressure, because Kenobi is set apart, but Cody has begun to notice the way he sways into every absent-minded touch.
"Sir?"
There. A blink. A resettling. The blank eyes clear; the thin-lipped emptiness twists into a rueful grin. "Dead earth," Kenobi says, and scuffs a heel against the dusty ground. "Apologies, Commander. It's starving."
Cody does not like the sound of that, and says so.
Kenobi laughs. Cody preens.
"Hungry in the Force, I mean," he says. "It wants energy. Poor thing. It's been drained completely."
Only his General, Cody thinks helplessly, would call an entire planet poor thing.
But. Nothing to be done about it.
The ground is scarred with narrow canyons as far as the eye can see. They split into groups and trudge single file along the remains of the strip-mining operations, searching in vain for any indication of activity. They traverse the cramped and dim tunnels that intersect the gorges, empty apart from metal scaffolding that's free from rust and gleaming brightly enough to make the hair on the back of Cody's neck rise.
The dust gets everywhere.
No rain has fallen here in decades, and in the absence of living roots, erosion has taken its toll. Every step sends up a puff of dried dirt. Every man's armor soon becomes indistinguishable, coated in the same dull and rusty brown. It sneaks through the seals and itches under their blacks. It gets in hair and under nails and between teeth. The sky above remains a clear and disorienting blue, and Cody watches for smoke-- pollution or presence, he would take either-- to no avail.
For six days, no one fires a shot. There's not another living soul to be found.
On the sixth night, the battalion regathers. Tents are pitched on a wide stretch of open plateau; one of the rare spaces left where more than two men can walk abreast. The vast stretch of space sets Cody's teeth on edge-- visibility goes both ways, after all-- but it's either here or in a valley, and the only thing worse than an ambush is an ambush from above. The canyons around them have already been cleared; a retreat, if necessary, can be managed quickly. At least here, they will meet their enemies on an even footing.
No campfires burn. There is no wood to be found. But Terror and his perpetually terrified rotation of secondaries can work wonders, and they have warm food for latemeal. Cody eats next to Kenobi, the two of them bumping knees on the crowded ground around one of their solar-powered burners amid the low and cheerful chattering of their men.
He tumbles into his cot with a smile on his face and is asleep in an instant.
Waking comes suddenly.
Cody squints into his pillow, rolls over, blinks at the ceiling-- then sits up abruptly, staring into the darkness of the tent.
What is it?
Where?
Were it time for him to be up, he would hear quiet churning outside, and see the shadows of footsteps crossing in front of the flap-- but there is nothing so obvious that draws his attention, and for a long moment he cannot identify what had drawn him so abruptly out of sleep.
Then he glances to his left, and realizes that Kenobi's cot is still neatly made.
Not only are the blankets tucked and folded-- Kenobi is the type of man to take that time, after all-- but they do not appear the slightest bit wrinkled.
Had he ever returned to the tent, after latemeal?
Cody has gotten used to the noise of breathing other than his own. The quiet pricks at his spine, and with a sigh, he swings his legs over the edge of the cot and stands.
It's not that he doesn't trust Kenobi. He does. It's just--
(He walks among them like he is one of them. He knows their names before he learns their ranks. His hands have been blood-soaked since the day they'd met. He is not careless with anyone's lives but his own. He is not just someone Cody likes, he is someone Cody does not want to lose--)
He forgets he has people watching his back sometimes, that's all. Cody occasionally needs to remind him.
He finds Kenobi seated cross-legged about a hundred feet past the troopers on watch.
Cody stands behind him for a long moment. Watching him watching the dark.
Then he clears his throat. He's under no illusion that he'd approached undetected, but Kenobi does him the favor of waiting to acknowledge him until Cody announces himself.
"Sir."
"Commander," Kenobi says. His head tilts back, his eyes meet Cody's-- and then he smiles, a flash of white teeth against the encroaching night, and pats the ground next to him. "Couldn't sleep?"
"Not when a superior office was missing, sir," Cody says drily, and settles next to him.
The camp behind them is full of the crowded silence that emerges alongside a mass of sleeping people. Burps, snores, snorts, murmurs, jabbed elbows, the occasional muffled laugh-- none loud enough to be heard on their own, but all together accumulate into a snow-like layer draped across the tents. Wholly comforting, in its own way.
But beyond them, in the dark, the silence is absolute.
Dead and vast and hungry.
(It's starving, he'd said. Poor thing.)
"I don't like this much," Cody confesses quietly.
Again, a sudden flash of a smile--
"No," Kenobi agrees. "Me neither."
"What's the objective?"
Kenobi sucks at his teeth, drums his fingers against the ground--
"We're pulling out when it's light."
That is not what Cody had expected him to say.
"New orders from the Senate?"
"No. There is something deeply wrong with this place. I thought at first my sight was just obscured, but I went down into the tunnels earlier--"
"Sir," Cody says, exasperated, but Kenobi waves him off--
"-- and there was no activity stirring the earth. None. Only all of you, breathing above me. Whatever that report said, right now we are on an empty planet. If the Senate wants more details, then they can equip us with proper aerial support. We're too vulnerable to bombardment as it is. I'll take whatever lashing they see fit to hand out."
Above them, the sky begins to lighten. The deep, uninterrupted black yields to the very deepest purple at the edge of the horizon.
Cody considers going back to bed. By his estimate, he has another hour and a half until he well and truly must be up-- to coordinate departure, and he swallows back the bubbling relief-- and he should know better than to waste an opportunity for sleep. But the thought of returning to an empty, silent tent makes his stomach twist uncomfortably, and he's sat in less comfortable places.
Not many. But still.
The sky is... kind of pretty, he guesses. Kenobi's watching it too, bright eyes narrowed.
Then Cody hears it, and lurches to his feet.
The low, distant drone of an incoming plane.
Sound precedes appearance. It takes a few moments more for the plane to become visible, streaking just ahead of the lightening horizon. Cody jams his bucket on, watches the visual interface light up; the targeting software locks on, centers the plane for a closer view--
One, two, three seconds for him to notice the peculiarly rounded belly.
Four, five, six seconds for him to realize what it means.
The neutron bomb had been outlawed over two centuries ago. It used the molecular make-up of a planet's atmosphere as raw matter to generate a self-replicating reaction. Once triggered, the detonation would multiply at an exponential rate until it had consumed all organic matter available to it, at which point it would neatly self-extinguish. All organic lifeforms would be reduced to steaming puddles- if not evaporated completely- and all non-organic infrastructure would be left intact. Give it a few centuries for the radiation to die down to treatable levels, and the neutron bomb became a perfect tool for aspiring planetary empires who wanted a tidy little solution to the people in the way.
Detonation was tricky. Portable fusion reactors were famously unstable. The longer it ran, the riskier it was. Wire it too early, and you risked the reaction igniting while still within your planetary orbit. Standard operating prasctice dictated that the bomb be wired en route. The drop bay of the porting plane would be built out with a mechanical rig that could conduct the operation for the pilot, providing the distinctive bulging exterior.
So high above them, the plane appears deceptively slow. Thousands of miles an hour turn into a lazy drift across the brightening sky.
A shout goes up behind them. The watch has caught it. The slow quiet of the camp behind them sharpens in response-- voices rise, waking, calling out.
Cody wishes they hadn't seen it.
In the crystalline silence of his own mind, the truth has sharp edges.
They have no air support. The transports that brought them down are still aboard the Negotiator, and are not designed to chase down a bomber. They have no artillery capabilities; their re-armaments are stocked aboard the resupply tug still waiting in Helva-3's orbit. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees a half dozen blue blaster bolts streak upwards; they fizzle out before they get close.
But his brothers don't die easy. Cody loves them for it.
"Commander."
A jump, a jolt-- his throat is very dry--
"Sir?"
"It's all just energy, you know."
Cody dares a glance sideways. Kenobi's on his feet, watching him. His eyes are very bright and very blue.
"Not sure that's very comforting at the moment, sir," he admits.
They have less than a minute until the plane arrives above them. The detonation will trigger approximately five hundred meters above them. The flash will blind them first. Then the radiation will cascade in all directions, consuming the atmosphere and all organic matter until there is nothing left to use.
It will, at least, be a quick death.
What is wrong with him? Shouldn't he be panicking? Grieving? At the very least, reaching for his blaster, so he can die with a weapon in his hand?
(Is this why his brothers never fought, on Kamino? Is this what it does to you, knowing there's no escape?)
Kenobi laughs. Dry and quiet, almost resigned, and Cody is struck with the sudden and absurd urge to take his hand.
The plane is almost directly overhead.
"My old master had a particular affinity for the Living Force," Kenobi says conversationally. He kneels, and starts-- digging, methodically, with one hand. Flexing his fingers into the dry and dusty dirt. "He always said that. It's all just energy. Sometimes destructive, sometimes constructive, but energy all the same."
His free hand presses firmly over the other, half-buried in the dead earth, and scrapes the dirt back into place.
"You cannot destroy it, only dissipate it."
Dust puffs up with every motion. His hands, his sleeves, the bridge of his nose: all stained with burnished red.
"You cannot conjure it, only channel it."
Something's wrong with Cody's visual interface; the color grading is out of whack. The blue of Kenobi's eyes is fading, washing out into something pale and bright.
Above them, the belly of the plane swings open. The bomb falls like a shadow, a little blot of black against the night.
Kenobi extends an arm-- reaching out, reaching up, palm open, as if beckoning the explosion towards him. From sky to soil: a straight line. A stretch. A conduit.
"Brace yourself," he says, his words soft and slurred around the edges. He looks up at Cody with strange and shining eyes. "And don't call home about this, please."
The bomb detonates.
This is the last thing Cody sees, before instinct throws up an arm and twists him into a bracing crouch equal parts desperate and futile:
The dark and deadly metal cracking open, the ignition within, the spark.
Obi-Wan, his face turned upwards, reaching and holding.
The flood of white light, moving wrongly, not outwards in an instant but spinning downwards into a funnel, snapping and crackling, tumbling over itself in a hungry rush towards the outstretched hand--
And the flash of lightning that leaps up to meet it.
part 2! every so often i re-live the realization that i feel sick when i don't write because the thoughts just pile up and turn rotten so sometimes sleep is worth sacrificing!
Cody's trembling breathing sounds very loud in the confines of his helmet.
The sensory ports have shut down. Exactly what they're designed to do, when external input exceeds capacity-- preventing permanent blinding, reducing the risk of hearing loss.
His heartbeat jackhammers at the base of his throat.
He's braced forward. Unbalanced, far enough that he would fall flat were it not for an existing opposition, and then he registers it: the shifting pressure of a terrible wind. Beyond that, the isolation is total. The darkness is absolute, without a hint of shadow. The only sound he can hear is his own panting. Underneath his hand, through his feet, the ground is rumbling.
He'd only been a few feet away from Kenobi. He'd sat close enough that their knees brushed, then-- to his feet, a step backwards in the rising-- had he moved forward at all, when he'd realized? Not wanting to die alone? And then, the lurch away, the twist into a crouch--
He could just stay here.
Keep the helmet on, keep the world narrow, and let death-- if it comes-- take him by surprise. If it doesn't, well, someone will draw him up eventually. There will be a friendly hand, and a living brother, and a next battle.
But what if there isn't?
Most of the camp had been asleep. They'd had, what, fifteen seconds' warning? They would've reached for blasters and comms, not buckets. What if inhalation is ignition? What if this narrow air is the only safety left? What if they're already dead, and he is alone--?
No.
He reaches up, cracks the seal, and lifts the helmet.
The storm slams in like a tsunami.
Cody stays close to the ground. Nearly blind in the face of the unending flash, deafened by the undying roar of noise-- he crouches in a crab-walk, shifts sideways, forward, sweeping the ground in a slow and regular motion with an outstretched hand. Echoes of vast convulsions shudder up his arms and make his teeth jump in his skull. The dust smears across the fingers of his glove, slivers of copper on black. He resists the urge to raise a sheltering arm and stares determinedly ahead. A few feet forward. Three feet, maximum--
There. A flash of red. He claws his way forward, faceplants when the ground convulses under him and gags on a mouthful of dust--
"Sir!"
The noise is unbelievable.
And the light--
Kenobi didn't stop the explosion. They're in the explosion.
And yet. Not dead.
Cody stumbles back to his knees and crawls forward. Head down, bracing, reaching out. It feels interminable, feels like miles, but finally he catches another flicker-- closer, this time-- of red hair, of a brown robe, of a scabbed hand clutching at the dusty earth. He reaches forward, closes a hand over Kenobi's--
His fingers go straight through.
Cody stares for a long, horrible moment.
Then the ground bucks again and the horror is broken. He loses his balance once more and tumbles onto his side, squeezes his eyes shut against the rushing light, thinks furiously--
Okay. Okay.
He just missed. That's all. He's as Force-sensitive as a brick; he doesn't get to fade through things. He just missed. Never mind that Kenobi has pulled off miracles before. Never mind that he's huddled in the midst of another one. He just missed. They're crouched in the middle of a lightning strike; what visibility exists is patchworked and streaked. He just missed.
People don't turn transparent.
Cody knows this. He knows this. He thinks about how much he knows this; he grits his teeth and focuses and holds it in the center of his mind until the rest of the world fades around it. He knows as well Kenobi's hands: broad and gentle and stained with blood in every crease. Patting shoulders and patching wounds and and punching like a brawler and constantly losing his godsdamned lightsaber.
He does not think. He does not hope. That's for people who don't know. He keeps his eyes squeezed shut and knows where Kenobi's hand will be, and he clambers upright and reaches, fumbles, scratches through dust, and when his fingers close over scarred knuckles he does not permit himself relief-- he slides his hand up, knowing he will find wrist and arm and all the rest, and when he does he hooks an arm around Kenobi's shoulders and digs his fingers into the muscle and holds the knowing of him too tightly--
Then he ducks his chin against his chest, digs his heels in against the wind, and holds on.
I sent you an ask a while ago kind of overflowing with how much shoulder the sky meant to me and how you captured the feeling of not being in yourself so perfectly and how much I loved the medics. I just wanted to let you know that I made it. I'm pretty firmly seated back in my body again and the jostling loose is shorter and less often. And the series still holds. I still return to it. I still come back again and again. I still feel the same aching resonance in the callbacks. I still love the medics dearly. It is a gift to have read, loved, and used this fic as a reminder to ignore the urge to drift in the middle of depersonalization and derealization episodes that left me unmoored. It is a gift to be able to return to it and still love every word. Thank you for writing it. Thank you for sharing it.
Hey. Hey.
I'm so proud of you.
I'm proud of you for sticking with it. I'm proud of you for working on it. I'm proud of you for getting better even when getting better is one hell of a crooked path. I'm so glad this series has been able to provide some comfort during a tough time, and thanks for taking the time to share that with me.
Hi, sorry to bother you - I realize you're incredibly busy lately, I was just wondering if it would be alright to have your 212th Medic Team do an extended cameo in a fic of mine? No worries if not I just ADORE them they're everything auwaugh
oh my gosh yes of course!!! thank you so much i'm so glad you like them!! they are near and dear to my heart and it always brings me so much joy when other folks feel the same <333
I’ve been in a bit of a frazzle this whole year, so I totally forgot to send you the fic I wrote this winter that I borrowed Stitch and Terror in passing for (Helix is also heavily influenced by your Helix, so kind of him too).
https://archiveofourown.org/works/77920606
ice shivering down your spine
Bogged down in mountain pass trenches on a planet that the Republic only wants for its resources, Cody does his best to keep himself and his vode alive.
(Also the most recent chapter of like lightning was so good!!)
it has been an insanely busy time for me- i had one day off the entire month of may and i'm pulling so much OT this month as well- but honestly this has made it all worth it. i'm SO EXCITED. thank you so much, can't wait to read it!
Sorry it took me so long to get this out, but in my defense, life lifed and I have exactly zero restraint when it comes to word count. Oops. Thank you @scarletclarinet for your donation to Aloha United Way - I hope you enjoy part 1, part 2 will be coming shortly!
The plane comes on the seventh day.
Zylon is a mining planet. Barren, stripped to the core, and abandoned until satellites in orbit around a nearby planet had picked up distortions in seismic data. Preliminary investigations had uncovered a renewed Separatist presence on the deserted ground. The 212th-- scheduled leave and the accompanying resupply having been suspended once again-- had been deployed to investigate.
A scouting mission. Determine and destroy. Fine. But the suspended resupply had been desperately needed. They had no air support. No surveillance drones. Why send them on a reconnaissance mission without reconnaissance equipment?
But their protests go unheard by the Senate. Surveillance drones-- from the Senate's point of view, the 212th had plenty. What else was a clone, really, if not a drone with legs?
So. Zylon it is.
Cody knows this is going to be a shitshow from the beginning. He knows it when the orders come in. He knows it when the leave gets cancelled. He knows it when their resupply is cancelled next-- because oh, he knows what "suspended" means when it comes to the 212th, even barely two months in; if he didn't know better, he'd think the Chancellor's trying to kill them off.
But he really knows it when General Kenobi's expression empties out as soon he jumps down from the gunship.
Kenobi's face is never empty. Quiet, sure. Calm. Controlled. But there's always something dancing behind his eyes, even when the rest of his expression is wholly and utterly motionless. He smiles easily, too, for all of them (and the treacherous little voice in the back of his mind that keeps count notes that he smiles for you most of all), and the fierce brightness in his face that Cody glimpses in the thick of battle makes his blood sing. But this awful emptiness...
He dares to touch a hand to Kenobi's arm-- the palm against the elbow, fingers curled against his forearm. A gentle pressure, because Kenobi is set apart, but Cody has begun to notice the way he sways into every absent-minded touch.
"Sir?"
There. A blink. A resettling. The blank eyes clear; the thin-lipped emptiness twists into a rueful grin. "Dead earth," Kenobi says, and scuffs a heel against the dusty ground. "Apologies, Commander. It's starving."
Cody does not like the sound of that, and says so.
Kenobi laughs. Cody preens.
"Hungry in the Force, I mean," he says. "It wants energy. Poor thing. It's been drained completely."
Only his General, Cody thinks helplessly, would call an entire planet poor thing.
But. Nothing to be done about it.
The ground is scarred with narrow canyons as far as the eye can see. They split into groups and trudge single file along the remains of the strip-mining operations, searching in vain for any indication of activity. They traverse the cramped and dim tunnels that intersect the gorges, empty apart from metal scaffolding that's free from rust and gleaming brightly enough to make the hair on the back of Cody's neck rise.
The dust gets everywhere.
No rain has fallen here in decades, and in the absence of living roots, erosion has taken its toll. Every step sends up a puff of dried dirt. Every man's armor soon becomes indistinguishable, coated in the same dull and rusty brown. It sneaks through the seals and itches under their blacks. It gets in hair and under nails and between teeth. The sky above remains a clear and disorienting blue, and Cody watches for smoke-- pollution or presence, he would take either-- to no avail.
For six days, no one fires a shot. There's not another living soul to be found.
On the sixth night, the battalion regathers. Tents are pitched on a wide stretch of open plateau; one of the rare spaces left where more than two men can walk abreast. The vast stretch of space sets Cody's teeth on edge-- visibility goes both ways, after all-- but it's either here or in a valley, and the only thing worse than an ambush is an ambush from above. The canyons around them have already been cleared; a retreat, if necessary, can be managed quickly. At least here, they will meet their enemies on an even footing.
No campfires burn. There is no wood to be found. But Terror and his perpetually terrified rotation of secondaries can work wonders, and they have warm food for latemeal. Cody eats next to Kenobi, the two of them bumping knees on the crowded ground around one of their solar-powered burners amid the low and cheerful chattering of their men.
He tumbles into his cot with a smile on his face and is asleep in an instant.
Waking comes suddenly.
Cody squints into his pillow, rolls over, blinks at the ceiling-- then sits up abruptly, staring into the darkness of the tent.
What is it?
Where?
Were it time for him to be up, he would hear quiet churning outside, and see the shadows of footsteps crossing in front of the flap-- but there is nothing so obvious that draws his attention, and for a long moment he cannot identify what had drawn him so abruptly out of sleep.
Then he glances to his left, and realizes that Kenobi's cot is still neatly made.
Not only are the blankets tucked and folded-- Kenobi is the type of man to take that time, after all-- but they do not appear the slightest bit wrinkled.
Had he ever returned to the tent, after latemeal?
Cody has gotten used to the noise of breathing other than his own. The quiet pricks at his spine, and with a sigh, he swings his legs over the edge of the cot and stands.
It's not that he doesn't trust Kenobi. He does. It's just--
(He walks among them like he is one of them. He knows their names before he learns their ranks. His hands have been blood-soaked since the day they'd met. He is not careless with anyone's lives but his own. He is not just someone Cody likes, he is someone Cody does not want to lose--)
He forgets he has people watching his back sometimes, that's all. Cody occasionally needs to remind him.
He finds Kenobi seated cross-legged about a hundred feet past the troopers on watch.
Cody stands behind him for a long moment. Watching him watching the dark.
Then he clears his throat. He's under no illusion that he'd approached undetected, but Kenobi does him the favor of waiting to acknowledge him until Cody announces himself.
"Sir."
"Commander," Kenobi says. His head tilts back, his eyes meet Cody's-- and then he smiles, a flash of white teeth against the encroaching night, and pats the ground next to him. "Couldn't sleep?"
"Not when a superior office was missing, sir," Cody says drily, and settles next to him.
The camp behind them is full of the crowded silence that emerges alongside a mass of sleeping people. Burps, snores, snorts, murmurs, jabbed elbows, the occasional muffled laugh-- none loud enough to be heard on their own, but all together accumulate into a snow-like layer draped across the tents. Wholly comforting, in its own way.
But beyond them, in the dark, the silence is absolute.
Dead and vast and hungry.
(It's starving, he'd said. Poor thing.)
"I don't like this much," Cody confesses quietly.
Again, a sudden flash of a smile--
"No," Kenobi agrees. "Me neither."
"What's the objective?"
Kenobi sucks at his teeth, drums his fingers against the ground--
"We're pulling out when it's light."
That is not what Cody had expected him to say.
"New orders from the Senate?"
"No. There is something deeply wrong with this place. I thought at first my sight was just obscured, but I went down into the tunnels earlier--"
"Sir," Cody says, exasperated, but Kenobi waves him off--
"-- and there was no activity stirring the earth. None. Only all of you, breathing above me. Whatever that report said, right now we are on an empty planet. If the Senate wants more details, then they can equip us with proper aerial support. We're too vulnerable to bombardment as it is. I'll take whatever lashing they see fit to hand out."
Above them, the sky begins to lighten. The deep, uninterrupted black yields to the very deepest purple at the edge of the horizon.
Cody considers going back to bed. By his estimate, he has another hour and a half until he well and truly must be up-- to coordinate departure, and he swallows back the bubbling relief-- and he should know better than to waste an opportunity for sleep. But the thought of returning to an empty, silent tent makes his stomach twist uncomfortably, and he's sat in less comfortable places.
Not many. But still.
The sky is... kind of pretty, he guesses. Kenobi's watching it too, bright eyes narrowed.
Then Cody hears it, and lurches to his feet.
The low, distant drone of an incoming plane.
Sound precedes appearance. It takes a few moments more for the plane to become visible, streaking just ahead of the lightening horizon. Cody jams his bucket on, watches the visual interface light up; the targeting software locks on, centers the plane for a closer view--
One, two, three seconds for him to notice the peculiarly rounded belly.
Four, five, six seconds for him to realize what it means.
The neutron bomb had been outlawed over two centuries ago. It used the molecular make-up of a planet's atmosphere as raw matter to generate a self-replicating reaction. Once triggered, the detonation would multiply at an exponential rate until it had consumed all organic matter available to it, at which point it would neatly self-extinguish. All organic lifeforms would be reduced to steaming puddles- if not evaporated completely- and all non-organic infrastructure would be left intact. Give it a few centuries for the radiation to die down to treatable levels, and the neutron bomb became a perfect tool for aspiring planetary empires who wanted a tidy little solution to the people in the way.
Detonation was tricky. Portable fusion reactors were famously unstable. The longer it ran, the riskier it was. Wire it too early, and you risked the reaction igniting while still within your planetary orbit. Standard operating prasctice dictated that the bomb be wired en route. The drop bay of the porting plane would be built out with a mechanical rig that could conduct the operation for the pilot, providing the distinctive bulging exterior.
So high above them, the plane appears deceptively slow. Thousands of miles an hour turn into a lazy drift across the brightening sky.
A shout goes up behind them. The watch has caught it. The slow quiet of the camp behind them sharpens in response-- voices rise, waking, calling out.
Cody wishes they hadn't seen it.
In the crystalline silence of his own mind, the truth has sharp edges.
They have no air support. The transports that brought them down are still aboard the Negotiator, and are not designed to chase down a bomber. They have no artillery capabilities; their re-armaments are stocked aboard the resupply tug still waiting in Helva-3's orbit. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees a half dozen blue blaster bolts streak upwards; they fizzle out before they get close.
But his brothers don't die easy. Cody loves them for it.
"Commander."
A jump, a jolt-- his throat is very dry--
"Sir?"
"It's all just energy, you know."
Cody dares a glance sideways. Kenobi's on his feet, watching him. His eyes are very bright and very blue.
"Not sure that's very comforting at the moment, sir," he admits.
They have less than a minute until the plane arrives above them. The detonation will trigger approximately five hundred meters above them. The flash will blind them first. Then the radiation will cascade in all directions, consuming the atmosphere and all organic matter until there is nothing left to use.
It will, at least, be a quick death.
What is wrong with him? Shouldn't he be panicking? Grieving? At the very least, reaching for his blaster, so he can die with a weapon in his hand?
(Is this why his brothers never fought, on Kamino? Is this what it does to you, knowing there's no escape?)
Kenobi laughs. Dry and quiet, almost resigned, and Cody is struck with the sudden and absurd urge to take his hand.
The plane is almost directly overhead.
"My old master had a particular affinity for the Living Force," Kenobi says conversationally. He kneels, and starts-- digging, methodically, with one hand. Flexing his fingers into the dry and dusty dirt. "He always said that. It's all just energy. Sometimes destructive, sometimes constructive, but energy all the same."
His free hand presses firmly over the other, half-buried in the dead earth, and scrapes the dirt back into place.
"You cannot destroy it, only dissipate it."
Dust puffs up with every motion. His hands, his sleeves, the bridge of his nose: all stained with burnished red.
"You cannot conjure it, only channel it."
Something's wrong with Cody's visual interface; the color grading is out of whack. The blue of Kenobi's eyes is fading, washing out into something pale and bright.
Above them, the belly of the plane swings open. The bomb falls like a shadow, a little blot of black against the night.
Kenobi extends an arm-- reaching out, reaching up, palm open, as if beckoning the explosion towards him. From sky to soil: a straight line. A stretch. A conduit.
"Brace yourself," he says, his words soft and slurred around the edges. He looks up at Cody with strange and shining eyes. "And don't call home about this, please."
The bomb detonates.
This is the last thing Cody sees, before instinct throws up an arm and twists him into a bracing crouch equal parts desperate and futile:
The dark and deadly metal cracking open, the ignition within, the spark.
Obi-Wan, his face turned upwards, reaching and holding.
The flood of white light, moving wrongly, not outwards in an instant but spinning downwards into a funnel, snapping and crackling, tumbling over itself in a hungry rush towards the outstretched hand--
And the flash of lightning that leaps up to meet it.
I took this post and then. I got silly with it. Please be nice about the legal stuff; I tried.
___
“Ms. Woods? Can I talk to you for a minute?”
Elle spins around fast, the door of her favourite coffee shop within walking distance of the courthouse jangling closed behind her, her caramel mocha frappuccino sloshing dangerously against the domed plastic lid that’s supposed to contain it. She double- and then triple-checks its spatter pattern, making sure there’s none on her crisp white cotton blouse or magenta pencil skirt. Getting coffee stains out of rayon is beyond annoying.
Under her arm, Bruiser leans forward out of her seashell-pink quilted leather Kate Spade bag, a growl rising behind his teeth. Elle strokes his head with the hand that’s not wrangling her frapp, cooing a reassurance before she looks up to see who’d startled them both.
Her first thought is that the guy is cute. Her second thought is that he’s gigantic. Her third thought is that she knows his face from somewhere. Not the coffeeshop, though. Elle can name all the regulars and staff here on sight, and he’s definitely not one of them.
“I’m sorry, I think your name’s slipped my mind?” Elle says, beaming up at the guy. Her sentence is punctuated by Bruiser’s growl breaking into a sharp flurry of barks, and Elle looks down in surprise. “Bruiser! I’m sorry, he usually has much better manners than this. Don’t you, boy?”
“He probably recognises me from court,” the tall cute guy says, holding out a hand for Elle to shake. “Sam Winchester. I’m with the prosecution.”
Elle puts her head to one side and gives his hand her frostiest look, and he slowly withdraws it, hopeful smile fading.
“My client’s already entered her plea,” Elle says, through the teeth of her brightest smile. “Not guilty. And we’re going to prove it in court.”
She punctuates that sentence by flipping her oversized tortoiseshell sunglasses down off the top of her head onto her face, and moving to walk around the guy.
The guy steps into Elle’s path. This time, when Bruiser snaps at him, she doesn’t scold her dog.
The guy gives Bruiser only the briefest glance. “Unless you have some explosive evidence that wasn’t included in discovery, I think we both know that’s going to be difficult. The prosecution has your client on video committing the murder.”
“That was so not Sophie. She got her nails done just that morning. Mediterranean Blue, to match her bridesmaid dress. We included the receipts in discovery.” Elle scootches her sunglasses back up onto her head just so she can bat her eyelashes innocently up at the prosecution guy. Guys hate it when she does that. “Tell me, did you see Mediterranean Blue anywhere in that footage?”
She pushes her way around the prosecution guy, hip-checking him as she passes when he moves like he’s going to get in her way again.
Elle hasn’t gotten more than about four or five steps before she hears dress shoes hurrying against the pavement behind her. She rolls her eyes at the perfect blue sky overhead. Not quite Mediterranean Blue. Maybe L. A. Lapis?
“What’re you going to try to argue?” prosecution guy says, falling into step beside Elle. “That the murderer was actually someone who looked identical to Sophie, but had different nail polish?”
“It introduces a reasonable doubt,” Elle snips back, without looking over. She’s not going to sink to this guy’s level. And she is not going to consider a plea deal. Especially not now.
Not after Emmett had specifically asked Elle, personally, to take his high school best friend’s fiancée’s maid of honour’s case. Not after the way Sophie had broken down during her first meeting with Elle and begged Elle to believe she hadn’t done it, even though no one else did. Even though every other lawyer Sophie’d spoken to had said she should plead out.
Not after Elle had overheard a couple of people talking in the bathroom during a recess yesterday about how an airhead like Elle Woods couldn’t possibly get so lucky twice.
“And who gets her nails done at ten, gruesomely murders a random stranger at eleven, and then meets the rest of the wedding party for dress fittings and sushi at eleven forty-five?” Elle tosses her hair over her shoulder. “You couldn’t get all the blood off in that time. At least, not to be sure you didn’t have any splashed somewhere you couldn’t see. And then it might rub off on the bridesmaid dress. It’s pure silk! You’d never get the blood out. And do you have any idea how hard it would be to get that gown replaced on such short notice?”
“So you’ve come to the conclusion that, since Sophie’s too fashion-conscious to commit this murder, she must have an evil twin?”
“Reasonable doubt,” Elle reminds the prosecution guy, sweetly. Bruiser’s growling again. Elle kind of feels like growling, too.
“You’re going to have a hard time convincing the jury of a theory that comes straight out of daytime TV.” Elle opens her mouth to offer a witty verbal rejoinder, but the prosecution guy cuts her off. “Which is why you should give this number a call.”
Elle’s aware that her mouth is flapping like an unfortunate fish. Luckily, the prosecution guy isn’t looking at her. He’s scanning the street all around them, frowning suspiciously at every passing face.
He passes over the folded piece of yellow notepaper deliberately nonchalantly, without looking at Elle. She takes it without thinking.
“Tell him Sam Winchester gave you that number,” the prosecution guy says, glaring after a passing dude in a shearling-lined denim jacket. Elle glares a little too, just on principle. So out of season, and in this weather? Well, she’s not the one sweating her brains out.
“I told you already. We’re not interested in pleading out. If you have something new and exonerating, introduce it into evidence. Like you’re supposed to.” Elle stops in her high-heeled tracks and plants a hand on her hip as she stares up at the prosecution guy. She’s tempted to rip his dumb phone number up right in front of him, but Bruiser beats her to it, snatching the little yellow paper from her hand with his tiny sharp teeth. “And I don’t appreciate being propositioned by people who just spent ten minutes telling me why my defense strategy is stupid.”
She has to give the prosecution guy this, he does look like he hadn’t even considered that Elle would assume he’d given her his number. “What? Wait, that’s not -”
Elle cocks an eyebrow. The prosecution guy huffs out an exasperated breath, running a hand through his floppy bangs before he meets her eyes. Bruiser gives Elle eyes like that sometimes when he wants a little of whatever she’s eating. Or belly rubs. Or a pedicure.
“You have a reputation for being brilliant, innovative, and unorthodox,” the prosecution guy says, his puppy-dog eyes all sincerity. Elle bites down on the urge to tell him that she knows when she’s being made fun of. “I’m hoping all of that’s true. For your client’s sake. And who knows how many others like her.”
Elle doesn’t really want to admit that she’s not sure what he’s talking about. If law school taught her anything, it was to never show weakness. Of course, life’s taught her a little differently. But there’s a time and a place, and in front of somebody she’s up against in court tomorrow – and whose taste in ties is so deeply questionable – is neither of those.
Still. If Elle didn’t know better –
“Do you think Sophie’s innocent?” she asks the prosecution guy.
The prosecution guy – Sam – makes a face, a kind of smile without any happiness in it, and looks away.
“Call that number,” he says, instead of answering Elle’s question. “From somewhere private. And – don’t tell anybody that we talked about anything other than your client’s possible openness to a plea deal? I just got this job. I’d like to keep it.”
Elle squints at him. It doesn’t really help her make up her mind.
He doesn’t give her a chance to. “I’ll look forward to seeing you and, uh -”
“Bruiser,” Elle says. Bruiser barks.
“You and Bruiser tomorrow in court, Ms. Woods.”
“Mr. Winchester,” Elle answers, automatically.
The prosecution guy – Sam – nods at her a little awkwardly, and then turns and starts walking back in the direction of the courthouse. Elle watches him go, and considers.
That basic-black suit fits him pretty well, but it’s also obviously not custom. And obviously not new. The carefully brushed and pressed wool gabardine is shiny at the elbows and worn at the slightly-too-short cuffs and slightly-too-tight collar. Same with those nice black leather dress shoes – polished to a high shine, but worn down at the heel. Elle hadn’t noticed a fancy Rolex or Bvlgari when he’d offered to shake her hand or passed her the phone number, either, just a cheap digital Timex. His hair’s obviously cut that way on purpose, but by the way he’d kept shaking it out of his eyes, he’s overdue for a trim. And then there’s that tie.
It all paints a picture of a careful, thoughtful man, conscious of the impression he makes on others, doing everything he can with what he’s got. Maybe with…questionable taste, in patterns especially. But what he said rings true. He probably needs the job. So for him to offer to stick his neck out to help the defense, in what Elle’s suspecting more and more is a not-entirely-aboveboard sort of way…
Either he really does believe in Sophie’s innocence, and he’s got something that proves it that he can’t enter into evidence for some reason, client confidentiality or non-disclosure agreement or who knows, as well as principles of steel. Or…
Or this is a trap.
Well, at least Elle knows one thing for sure. Sam’s definitely not one of Warner’s crowd. They’d rather be caught naked in public than looking so dangerously close to shabby.
“Hm,” Elle says, and takes a long drag of slightly-melted caramel mocha goodness. “What do you think, Bruiser?”
Bruiser yips, once.
Elle nods, and absentmindedly scratches behind his ears. “You know? I think so too.”
…
It’s past nine by the time Elle finally makes it home. She kicks off her seashell-pink kitten heels and peels off her pantyhose with a bone-deep sigh of relief. She’s given Bruiser his dinner, wrapped herself up in her marabou-trimmed blush satin robe, and is just pouring herself a glass of rosé when Bruiser pads into the kitchen with something yellow in his mouth.
“Are you sure?” Elle asks, and Bruiser barks, spitting the folded piece of notepaper to the tile. It flutters over to rest on the little pink nose of one of Elle’s baby-pink bunny slippers.
Elle bends (and snaps, a girl’s got to stay in practice even when there’s no audience around) to pick it up.
Ordinarily, she’d think twice about calling anyone after nine PM. But ordinarily, the prosecution wouldn’t be furtively handing her shady leads outside her favourite coffee shop, either. It occurs to Elle to wonder, as the phone rings in her ear, just how Sam had known to look for her there. Not that it’s exactly a secret, but – something about the thought of him observing her, asking around about her, learning her habits without her even noticing, sends a little chill shivering under her skin.
Before she can think too hard about that, though, there’s a click from the phone and then a gruff, Midwestern accent is saying, “Federal Bureau of Investigation. Supervisory Special Agent Clayton. Who are you and whaddaya want.”
“Um,” Elle says. Of course, a murder case could easily bump into the FBI’s jurisdiction, but. This is starting to scream ‘trap’.
Still, there’s one last card left up her marabou-trimmed bell sleeve, and she plays it. “This is Elle Woods. Sam Winchester gave me this number?”
The silence on the other end of the line is briefly broken by a distant, muffled burst of swearing. Elle waits patiently, gnawing a little at her bottom lip, as the swearing gives way to a heavy thumping sound and then silence again.
A moment later, the Midwestern-accented voice is back, sounding slightly less hostile and slightly more out of breath. “He did, did he. And just who the hell is Elle Woods?”
“I’m a defense attorney in the murder case he’s prosecuting?” Elle didn’t mean it to come out sounding like a question. She clears her throat, shakes her hair back, squares her shoulders, and summons her inner Vivian. “Mr. Winchester intimated that you might have access to vital evidence that could help decide the fate of my client.”
“He did, did he.” Elle thinks she catches a quiet, “Idjit,” muttered away from the phone’s handset. “And what kind of ‘vital evidence’ would that be?”
Elle turns in a slow circle on the kitchen floor, crumpling and uncrumpling the little yellow piece of paper in the hand that’s not pressing the cordless handset to her ear. She’s keenly aware that one wrong word here could easily cost her – and Sophie – the entire case. Fruit of the poisoned tree, and all that. But – if this could help Sophie, Elle has to know. “Are you aware that the murder trial of Sophie Dumont commenced this week?”
“Sophie Dumont?” the voice on the other end of the line says, and then there’s a creaking and a sound like paper flicking and then a knowing, “Oh, Sophie Dumont. Caught on camera skinning some poor bastard alive, wasn’t she?”
“Sophie has entered a plea of not guilty,” Elle says sharply.
“Yeah, I bet she has.” It strikes Elle as a strange thing to say, especially in that tone. She’d have expected sarcasm. But the man on the other end of the line sounds – resigned? Maybe? Definitely some flavour of totally bummed out. “Still. Not sure how I can help, Miss -”
“Ms. Ms. Elle Woods.” Elle takes a breath, and a chance. “We have evidence to support that the person captured in the camera footage is not, in fact, Sophie Dumont. Unfortunately, it’s…limited in scope. And Sophie was alone in her apartment during the hour in which the murder occurred. We’ve as yet been unable to locate anyone who can confirm her alibi, or an eyewitness to the murder who would be willing to come forward…”
She bounces up and down on her toes, crossing the fingers of her free hand hard and squinching her eyes shut as she holds her breath.
“Well, now,” the voice on the other end of the line says. “Let me see what I can dig up.”
Elle lets out her breath in one big gust. “Thank you, thank you, thank you! I mean.” She clears her throat, puts on her best Vivian again. “Your assistance in this matter is greatly appreciated.”
The chuckle that comes down the phone line reminds Elle, weirdly, of how her favourite uncle used to laugh when she showed off one of her tumbling tricks. “Don’t mention it. And I mean that – don’t you breathe a word to anyone that I was involved in this.”
Elle nods before remembering, right. Phone. “Of course, Mr. Clayton. Strict confidentiality is the name of the game.”
“Oh, and Ms. Woods?”
“Yes?”
“The next time you see Sam Winchester -” The voice breaks off, into a frustrated huff. “You tell that boy that next time, he can call me himself. And I ain’t the only one wouldn’t mind knowing he’s not dead every now and again.”
Not for the first time since the man calling himself Supervisory Special Agent Clayton picked up the phone, Elle wonders how he and Sam know each other. But that’s none of her business, of course. Just. Clayton sounds like he hasn’t heard from Sam in ages. Like he was really worried about Sam.
Elle might just have to see what she can find out about what happened there. Whether those are fences that could be mended. After all, one good turn deserves another, doesn’t it?
“I will certainly pass that along,” Elle promises into the phone. “Here, let me give you my cell number in case anything turns up.”
She waits for Clayton to be ready with a pen and paper, then rattles off her cell phone number twice. After she’s confirmed it’s correct, there’s a beat. A moment when Elle feels like there’s something she should be saying or asking, that she can’t quite seem to think of.
Before she can make her excuses and get off the line, though, Clayton clears his throat and asks, a little more gruff than he’d been so far, “Before you go. Who’d Sam tell you I was, when he gave you my number?”
“He…didn’t,” Elle admits. “Just said to call.”
“Oh.” There’s another awkward moment of silence. Elle’s just taking her breath to say her goodbyes when Clayton says, “You’ve seen the footage of the murder. Right?”
Unfortunately, Elle has. “It was included in discovery, yes.”
“And what do you think that is in the footage, if it’s not Sophie Dumont?”
Elle looks down at Bruiser, who’s lying beside her bunny slippers. Bruiser looks back up at her, no help at all.
Warner would probably say something about how that’s not what he’s paid to know or care about. Vivian or Emmett would say it was immaterial, which sounds a lot nicer but means pretty much the same thing. But Elle finds herself unintentionally parroting what Sam had said, back at the coffeeshop. “Her evil twin?”
There’s a snort of hastily-stifled laughter from the other end of the phone line. Elle starts to say, “Well, thank you again,” and moves to end the call, but Clayton interrupts her.
“Tell me, Ms. Elle Woods, defense attorney. Are you currently accepting new clients?”
“Not currently,” Elle says, because a murder trial is a lot for anyone to manage. “Why, do you know someone who needs a good lawyer?”
Another of those uncle-ish chuckles. “Who do I know who couldn't use a good lawyer.” He sounds a lot more serious when he adds, “In this line of work, we run into Sophie Dumonts more often than we’d like. Mind if I pass your name along?”
“I would appreciate it,” Elle says, honestly. Even if this whole setup is…a little strange. Even if she really does think that one more big win will really get her name out there – if she can pull it off, of course. In the meantime, she and Bruiser still have to eat. And if the clients are too scary…well, nothing says she has to take on every case.
“I’ll let you know what I turn up,” Clayton says, and Elle thinks she can hear the faintest hint of a smile in his voice. “Nice doing business with you, Ms. Elle Woods. And tell that idjit to call his brother!”
The phone goes dead in Elle’s hand before she can ask any more questions.
She puts the handset back into its charging dock and takes a long sip from her rosé, thinking. There’s something about the conversation she just had that’s sitting uneasy with her, but she can’t quite put her finger on what. Other than the general sense that she’s stumbled into some kind of mafia, which…could end up being a problem.
Elle looks down at Bruiser, who cocks his head to one side and looks back at her with his huge, liquid puppy-dog eyes.
“Oh, all right,” Elle says, and pulls open the cabinet over the stove to get down Bruiser’s treats.
She’s crouched on the floor, feeding Bruiser salmon tidbits, when it hits her like a blinding flash of the obvious. What was sitting so wrong with her about that conversation.
It was something the man calling himself Supervisory Special Agent Clayton had said, when he’d been talking about the murder footage. Something strange. Something really strange.
He hadn’t asked Elle who she thought could have been in that footage, if it hadn’t been Sophie.
