Not easy—though it was that too, sometimes, and terribly so—but safe.
Cody takes a breath like sharpening a blade, like racking a round, and tries to focus on the intel report that he's run his eyes over three times already. His brain stutters over the words. It keeps catching on grief.
“Sir?” Boil asks, parting the tent flap with a gauntleted hand and a single second of hesitation. Cody checks his chrono. It’s been exactly an hour since Waxer came by; Cody would admire the consistency of their check-ins if each interruption weren’t a reminder.
“Come in, Lieutenant,” Cody says, sighing, looking up. He doesn’t know what they expect to find each time they peer in. He doesn’t know what they want him to say, to do.
“Forward scouts have found two additional Separatist camps north of Shyrikaw,” Boil says. A week ago, that would’ve been a comm message. A week ago, it would have been an alert accompanying an automatic update of their battle map.
A week ago, Obi-Wan would have mentioned it to him in passing, their heads huddled over the holoprojection, their fingers trailing possible paths through the blue mountains of Kashyyyk.
Now, Cody nods. This is an answer easy enough to give. “Thank you, Lieutenant.”
Boil hesitates again, waiting. The song of cicadas rises to a crescendo, then fades, then rises again.
“If you need to take some time,” Boil says, “Wax and I can—”
“I don’t need time,” Cody snaps, then breathes, then calms. “We lose people every day. We lose people on my orders every single day. I can’t stop to grieve them. Why should this be different?”
Boil looks at him, uncertain, wary. Kashyyyk’s atmosphere has the approximate water content of Kamino’s oceans. Sweat beads on Cody’s forehead; he wipes it off. Dirt streaks the back of his hand, and he scrubs at his face irritably.
“Cody,” Boil starts. Stops. Cody wonders if Boil would need to take some time if Cody died, if Waxer died, if either of them were shot in the dark by a coward hiding behind a scope.
Grief claws at his throat, clogging it like the gritty Kashyyykian mud.
“Check the perimeter,” Cody chokes out, ducking his head back over the report.
A whisper of canvas, and Boil leaves.
His hands shake. His knees shake. His chest expands in pointless pursuit of oxygen that his blood can’t seem to process, and he drops the pad.
Loving his brothers was a given, written into his soul, in every whorl of his fingerprints. He loved them, all of them, but there were no promised tomorrows for clones. And, beyond that, Cody had to put those well-loved lives on the table himself, to personally up the ante of the war with their lives.
It required a distance. No need to make it any harder to be the one who survives, he had thought, but—
He never thought he’d survive Obi-Wan.
Wetness gathers on his lashes, threatening to spill into the tracks carved by his sweat. Loving Obi-Wan was supposed to be safe, simple. He could never have Obi-Wan, and he could never lose him. Always perfectly just out of arm’s reach. And the love Cody couldn’t afford to spend on the brothers he would lose, he spent there.
And lost there anyways.
The sour summer heat soaks his blacks through. They’ve lost a few datapads to the humidity, and they keep having to scoop water out of their fuel supplies. Mud has seeped into anything with more than a hairline crack.
Misery breeds in his lungs thicker than the atmosphere, and Cody hates himself for it.
He collapses into a chair, surrendering the fight to gravity. What would Jango have said, to see Cody mourning an outsider more than he ever mourned a brother, more than he mourned Ponds, his batchmate, more than the thousands of names Cody still reads through every Remembrance Day?
Guilt seeps through the cracks in him like mud.
Guilt, because he must have cared for this man more than his brothers. Guilt, because after two years of loss, it was not the loss of his brothers who brought him to his knees, gasping in mud that is as red and wet as love.
And he thinks that that isn’t how love should work—there should be no finite quantity of love, for which loving one person more means loving another less—but few things in his life ever work the way he thinks they should.
Cody is so awfully sorry that he does not work the way he should.
He stands. Mud stains the sun streaks on his armor.
Beyond his tent, he hears a squelch, a throat cleared. A white and black and gold gauntlet appears in the slit between the tent flaps.
“Sir?” Crys says.
“Come in, Corporal,” Cody says, and his guilt drowns out the grief.
Surprise! the numbers were related to my spotify top 20 hahaha. This probably isn’t a very new years eve-y story, oops! But thank you very much for the prompt 💖
chel, aaaa, I just got my codywan zine and your piece had me so 🥺🥺 like oh Cody with a baby... Cody learning that he deserves to take up space and live for himself as well as the war... Cody learning that grief is perhaps infinite but so is love... I am clutching it so tightly to my chest and loving it so very much. Thank you for gifting it to us all!!
oh!!! Serie!!! thank you so much!!! this means a lot to me! It was definitely a very self-indulgent fanfic, giving Cody a baby and a home and the knowledge that he can and should take up space... that grief and love will take up as much space as you can give them... these were definitely life lessons for me that I wanted to also give to him.
Serie I'm so glad you enjoyed this, and messaged me about it. I was trying to say a lot in a very short story and I feel extremely heard by you <3 thank you!!!
highwayman obi-wan fic ... i am looking politely. intently.
HAHA I've already posted a few snippets of this fic... it's styled very much in a 5+1 format, which lends itself to tumblr posting. here's one more lil bit for the ask:
---
“Not once?” Fives is asking, again. “Not with anyone? Not even, you know—”
And he makes a gesture with his hand that forces Cody to grab for his arm and tuck it back by his side. He’s under none of Fives’ illusions regarding how well their cloaks are hiding their faces. The sharp shine of their shoes alone would reveal their distinct lack of working class, let alone the fine tooling along the leather of their gloves.
“Fives!” he hisses, trying not to glance over his shoulder and give away the game even further. “Please, can we just go back to the house.”
He doesn’t try to make it a question.
“Not on your life,” Fives says cheerfully, hooking the arm Cody just grabbed around Cody’s shoulders, pulling him into a swagger. “Dad’s going to see you married by the end of the year, and who would I be if I let you go to your wedding night with no idea where to put it?”
Hello! I just wanted to stop by and say that I absolutely adore your writing and that your fics are some of my favorite to read and re-read and re-re-read. I cannot begin to tell you how much joy they have brought me over the past few years. So thank you so much for sharing then with us!
hello!! this is so kind of you, thank you so much! i’m so glad that my fics continue to bring you joy. writing fics that people feel are worth re-reading (and especially re-re-reading!) is one of the greatest compliments I can get as an author. thank you so much for dropping by to let me know!!
I'm just dropping in with a reminder that you're incredible, your writing is amazing and your smile brightens people's day!
thank you! genuinely, i mean, thank you. that’s very kind.
i also feel like i know what motivated this, and though i’m glad for the words, i’m sad for the reason. i know i haven’t contributed my two cents to the event of glimmer’s departure, but that’s really because… I don’t think there’s anything for me to say. nothing i could add. it’s clearly motivating some change but i don’t know how long the change will last.
i hope we can all add some more effort, and continue to do so, and continue to do so, and on and on… i am glad that you are doing so, and i hope you are starting a trend.
I was tempted by so many of those prompts, but I'm going to have to go with codywan, 20.❤️
Thank you so much for the prompt, my dear! (Let me know when you first started to suspect the premise, will you ;) ? )
#20. When we have nothing left to give; Codywan
They've been under general quarters for more than an hour, but the flashing red lights and shrill alarms aren’t getting any easier to ignore.
“We’ve lost deck three and half of four,” Boil reports with grim focus, his fingers flying across his screen as he tries to keep the other half of deck four from joining their list of casualties.
“Hull integrity?”
“Holding at 30%, Captain.”
“Let’s keep it above zero, at least,” Obi-Wan says, trying not to clench his fingers on the armrests of his seat. “Lieutenant Waxer, how’s our comms system holding up?”
“Subspace relays are still online, sir, but not for long. Our transmitter’s over the aft shuttle bay, and—”
“And we’ve already redirected power from aft shields to life support, yes. Very well. I need you to send High Command a data packet with our location and the warp signatures of every ship here, now.”
Waxer’s fingers hesitate over the keyboard. “Sir, if High Command comes in to assist, it might mean full-scale war. We’re in neutral space.”
Obi-Wan’s only concession to being questioned is a slight tightening of the lines at the corners of his mouth.
“It’s not to request assistance, Lieutenant,” he says. “Do as I ask.”
Waxer nods and starts compiling the data without another word. Obi-Wan watches the transmission send, and he lets out a breath of relief when their relay holds just long enough for the data to transmit. The viewport is filled with the red bursts of phaser cannon fire and the weakening blue bursts of what’s left of their shields. His crewmembers are holding their panic in as tightly as they can, pressing shaking fingers to their readouts and touchscreens, and Obi-Wan tries to focus on ten things at once. As he looks back towards the bridge, movement flickers out of the corner of his eye.
“You’re trying to prevent anyone from turning this event into a disinformation campaign,” Cody says, having moved to stand in perfect parade rest by the crook of Obi-Wan’s elbow. He adds, too softly for the rest of the bridge to hear, “You don’t think we’ll make it out.”
Obi-Wan doesn’t dare look away from his readout for more than a second, but he spares that second to give Cody a grin.
“As astute as ever, Commander. Even if I can’t save this ship, I might be able to save our good names, hmm?”
A wry smile, so small that Obi-Wan has to glance back a second time just to confirm its presence, lifts the corner of Cody’s mouth.
“Indeed.”
“Aft phase array offline!” someone shouts, and it’s echoed by more reports of failing systems: port photon torpedo launchers, the port warp nacelle, the RCS thruster quad.
On their viewport, the degraded husk of the ship they had come to save begins to break apart in the cold grip of space and the hot sear of phaser cannons. Bits and pieces of her drift towards the faint pull of distant stars just as the Negotiator jerks with an impact her shields couldn’t stop.
Obi-Wan grits his teeth and stares through their viewport as three warbirds spiral around for another pass at his ship. Ahead of them, the massive O’deridex flagship stays perfectly mockingly still. “I take it warp is gone?”
“Completely offline,” Boil says. “We’ve lost both nacelles and the energy field grips.”
The ship shudders with a staccato series of photon torpedo impacts, thud-thud-thud, and the white lights in the bridge click off. The flash of red emergency strobes flickers across every frantic, worried face for the long second it takes the emergency lights to come on: dim and sickly white. Obi-Wan stands from his chair, his brow furrowed. He wants to stroke his beard, but every person on this bridge knows it’s one of his tells.
Another explosion rocks the ship. He almost stumbles, but then Cody is there, an implacable wall of strength, keeping him steady with a hand in the small of his back.
Obi-Wan takes a deep, grateful breath. Right. “Ok, what do we have? Weapons systems, impulse power, anything, just. What can you give me?”
Around him, the bridge is in disarray. Emergency lighting reflects in screens sending error message after error message; steam and smoke is beginning to fill the bridge as the flush vents fail; and sparks spit from the comms relays snaking their way to their manual control stations.
The battle is all but lost.
From the navigation port, Boil turns, and Obi-Wan sees the same conclusion etched into the worry lines of Boil’s face.
“We’ve got nothing left to give,” Boil says. Frustration wars with pain and loss in his voice. “Sir, I’m sorry—sir. We can’t run, and there’s nothing left to hit them with.”
Obi-Wan presses his lips together, nods, and then says, “Not quite nothing.”
“Sir?”
“Commander, what would it take to bring impulse power back online?”
“We’d have to sacrifice life support for it,” Cody says, but it isn’t a protest. Obi-Wan wonders if Cody has guessed his plan already. He wouldn’t be surprised if so.
They’ve been through worse hells than this together.
“Do it,” Obi-Wan says.
Waxer doesn’t question him before complying, this time; instead, he questions while complying. “Sir, we won’t be able to go far, not on our current power reserves.”
“That’s fine,” Obi-Wan says, inputting their target coordinates into the navigation console himself. “We don’t have far to go.”
The whole bridge crew watches, becoming more conscious and careful of the extent of their breathing, as the Negotiator start lurching, broken and limping, towards the massive flagship just beyond the wreck they failed to save. Every crew member joins Obi-Wan in standing before the viewport, teeth and hands clenched, as they gain speed..
As if in sudden realization, the nacelles on the enemy’s ship light up in preparation for warp, and Obi-Wan’s lip curls in grim satisfaction. It’s too late. There are perhaps five seconds between now and when the Negotiator will crash into the other ship’s bridge, and that isn’t enough time to activate warp drives.
He won’t blink, but he does look away. He watches starlight intermingle with the ship’s warning red glare on the familiar, dear planes of Cody’s face, and he sees the line of Cody’s throat move as he swallows.
“Captain…” Cody says, and then he extends a careful two fingers into the space between them. “Obi-Wan.”
Obi-Wan touches his own two fingers to Cody’s, and even the flashing red of the ship’s alarms can’t erase the faint tinge of green spreading across Cody’s cheeks and the pointed tips of his ears. Obi-Wan smiles back, eyes creased, and he opens his mouth to reply just as the bow of their ship slams, shudderingly, shiveringly, devastatingly, into the O’deridex’s main hull.
The impact is immediate. An earthquake ruptures the bridge, and the crew collapses to the floor. Oxygen vents into space. Fires erupt and are quenched by the lack of atmosphere.
The light is gone in the world.
And then, the lights come back on.
The crew stagger painfully to their feet. Most of them cast apologetic glances at Obi-Wan as they do, and the rest only stare, lips pressed together in frustration, at their blank screens. Obi-Wan shakes his head; it’s no one’s fault but his.
Obi-Wan accepts Cody’s offer of a hand up with a wink that is more grateful than flirtatious, and he dusts the soot off his uniform as he stands. Cody pulls his hand back quickly as Admiral Windu steps into the simulation center and gives the room an assessing stare before beginning, slowly, to clap.
“Not quite a performance worthy of applause, Mace,” Obi-Wan says, trying not to let his frustration slip through even as he turns to face his old friend.
“On the contrary, Obi-Wan, you did well.”
Mace steps up to the captain’s deck as two medical interns filter in behind him, looking for anything more severe than bruised skin and bruised pride. He’s traded the standard admiralty uniform for something closer to purple than maroon, and, any other time, Obi-Wan would joke about Mace starting a new fashion trend than admit defeat.
But with Cody at his back, with the lingering warmth of Cody’s palm on his, it’s easier to be honest.
“Hardly,” he says. The words are bitter on his tongue. “We lost both the Kobayashi Maru and the Negotiator. Frankly, I’m not sure how it could have gone worse.”
Mace’s answering smile is enigmatic and, unless Obi-Wan misses his guess, more than a little proud. Smoke stops filtering from the vents, and the screens reset to battle-ready. Obi-Wan’s crew move to stand at his back, curious.
“You kept control of your ship and your crew. You kept the political implications of the attack in mind even as you made tactical calls,” Mace says, speaking a little louder for the sake of Obi-Wan’s crew. Then, under his breath, he adds, “And I think you have the highest romulan casualty count of anyone who’s taken the test thus far.”
Obi-Wan blinks at him. “Wait, what?”
Behind him, Cody steps forward until their shoulders form a solid line. The crease between his eyebrows has deepened to a trench.
“The test was designed to be unwinnable,” he concludes, an edge of accusation in his voice, and Mace nods even as Obi-Wan stares at each one in turn.
“Yes. Or, rather, you don’t win by defeating the romulans. You win by defeating the fear and panic in yourself.”
“Hmm. Well. That’s a very… vulcan… way of looking at a problem,” Cody offers, And Obi-Wan has to bite back a laugh at the frustration he can hear hidden deep beneath the calm.
“I’m sure you’d know, Commander,” Mace replies. “Now, take a few days off, both of you. Don’t think I didn’t see how many simulator hours you both logged this past month.”
Cody and Obi-Wan makes no promises, but they do bow to Mace and give their sincere thanks to each member of their cohort that volunteered to help Obi-Wan through the test. They walk, side by side, out onto the fresh green lawn of Starfleet Academy. The omnipresent Bay Area fog spills over the long clean lines of the Golden Gate Bridge, and the multi-colored row houses of San Francisco glint in the butter-yellow afternoon sunlight filtering down.
Obi-Wan holds out two fingers again, and Cody lets his own rest against Obi-Wan’s as they make their way back to the Starfleet dorms. The spring air seeps into Obi-Wan’s skin, lightening his heart and clearing his mind. It was a long test, he thinks. It’s been a long month. He glances over at Cody, and he can see the frustrated relief at passing an unwinnable test gathered in each tense knob of Cody’s spine.
He knocks their shoulders together.
“A few days off, hm?” Obi-Wan teases. “Whatever shall we do with ourselves?”
With insulting immediacy, Cody says, “Sleep.”
Obi-Wan rolls his eyes in mock outrage, but he can’t say sleep isn’t also first on his list. Mace might know their logged simulator time, but Obi-Wan had hidden the counter after it passed 400.
Just as Obi-Wan is about to make a token protest, though, Cody looks over at him. The sunlight catches in his dark brown eyes, sparking through them with joyful warmth, and that near-hidden smile crooks his mouth again. “But after that? Well, you’re creative. I’m sure you’ll think of something.”
Obi-Wan’s eyes twinkle as he smiles back, delighted. He twines their fingers together even as it deepens the green of Cody’s blush—even as he feels Cody’s mind brush against his—and stares up at the stars waiting for him just beyond the sky’s thin veneer of blue.
***
Three years later, Anakin cheats his way through the Kobayashi Maru, and a legal student at Starfleet Law named Padme Amidala levies accusations of cheating against him in an academy-wide disciplinary hearing.
Hope you enjoyed this! Thank you so much for the prompt! <3
Oooh I’d LOVE to hear about ‘and narrow the way’!!!
Ahaha I cannot even begin to explain how very excited I am for this story. It's going to be a bit long!! I think it'll be about 50k and 6 chapters long. I'm 10k in, so fingers crossed I work fast!
I won't say too much about this story, because it's a mystery (!) and y'all know how much I love surprising people. I will, though, say that it's established relationship Codywan from the get-go ;)
Cody plucks the papers from Obi-Wan’s unresisting hands before pressing Obi-Wan into the bookshelf until the book spines slot neatly around Obi-Wan’s own. When Cody noses in to kiss him, sweet and tender and slow, Obi-Wan at last lets himself relax. He really has been working too hard, he thinks, reaching up to run his nails through Cody’s hair.
He feels fingers dig into the meat of his thighs and, with a burst of strength that stokes the fire in Obi-Wan’s belly, Cody lifts him straight up. He wraps his legs and arms around Cody’s torso and hangs on with a fierce strength of his own, digging his heels into the upper curve of Cody’s ass. Cody carries him into their bedroom, laughing against his lips, and, immediately, all of Obi-Wan’s worries feel galaxies away.
obviously no no no pressure to write anything for them (honestly if you did I would burst into flames) but. do you have any than/zag/meg headcanons you might be willing to share? :)
HAHA yes absolutely let me just [cracks knuckles]. head’s up these are ALL spicy and almost all spoilers:
Meg has three strap-ons, all of which are bigger than Than or Zag
Zagreus has died in Tartarus at least twice because he didn’t allow for enough recovery time following a Particularly Strenuous date with Meg & Than
Zag really needs to get a door, but how else is he supposed to let Meg or Than know to come join the festivities if one or the other isn’t there when he first crawls out of the Styx?
(He does get a door once his mama comes back down.)
((Psychic damage is fine for Lord Hades but Not for Persephone))
Alecto does not once ever cotton on once. she NEVER gets it. (“I’m going to find a way to make you SCREAM, redblood!” “Oh, Meg hasn’t told you? I thought you two were close.”)
Meg and Than consistently team up to draft scenes for RP scenes, and they communicate via Hermes… who read their messages once and Did Not Ever Read Them Again.
Meg and Than as younger kids used to “fight” over Zag, and they eventually stopped fighting and promised to share. This promise fell by the wayside when they got a little older, but, now, they keep it well :’)
I have others but I’ll leave you with these two images as summary HAHA:
