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@frenchkey gave me the prompt 'getting the blood out' last night and I turned it into CodyWan angst
He shouldn't have taken it. It wasn't his to take, and had been abandoned as unimportant. It was just cloth, after all; empty and useless and bloodstained.
Bloodstained. Because Obi... Because General Kenobi had helped a wounded soldier to their transport before the Sith had attacked, and the General had discarded his cloak in order to give chase. There was no reason for Cody to have retrieved it, and less reason to have kept it, rather than returning it to its rightful owner.
The bloodstains bothered him, though. It seemed... rude to return the cloak in its dirtied state. So he'd kept it.
The fabric was soft under his fingers, well worn and thick enough to provide protection from the elements for a wide range of human and near-human species.
For a wild moment, Cody felt the urge to slide the garment over his shoulders and feel the weight of it falling into place, to feel a sensation that was so familiar to his General. He gave himself a mental kick in the shebs to move on from the urge, rather than do something so ridiculous as try on a Jedi's robes.
Instead, he moved to the 'fresher, glad that, as Marshall Commander, he was afforded his own berth with attached cleaning facilities. He had everything needed at hand to remove blood from clothing, though he usually sent his blacks to the laundry rather than washing them himself, regardless of their state. It wasn't as though his blacks were any different from anyone else's, so he was hardly worried about them getting mixed up in the wash.
The cloak held onto the dried-in blood more stubbornly than Cody's blacks ever had, crafted more with the intent to be sturdy and long lasting than with consideration for the number of bodily fluids likely to soil the fabric. Still, Cody was patient, refusing to devolve into frustrated scrubbing and risk damaging the cloak.
It felt almost soothing to work the flakes of blood out of the weave, and while the harsh scent of chemicals stung at Cody's nose, he found great satisfaction in the results of his work.
He hung the garment up to dry, resolving to bring it to General Kenobi in the morning.
His berth seemed cold when he finally made it back, though Cody was sure that the cause was entirely emotional.
They'd been betrayed. The Jedi had turned on the Republic; tried to murder the Chancellor. He couldn't understand what would drive them to such an act. Obi-Wan had always spoken of a desire for peace, for an end to the war and senseless killing. Why would the Jedi - why would Obi-Wan - then try to undermine the Republic in such a way? Had it all been a lie from the start?
Who would fight for the clones, now that the Jedi had turned traitor? They'd been among the few to treat the clones as anything more than droids made of flesh and bone, and that made the betrayal sting deeper. How could Obi-Wan abandon them like that? How could he leave them to face a galaxy that saw them as unthinking, unfeeling tools? How could he leave Cody?
Buried at the very bottom of his footlocker, under his spare blacks and his dress greys, Cody withdrew a bundle of brown fabric, worn soft and still smelling faintly of tea and cleaning chemicals. He'd never had a chance to return the cloak, having been thrown into an ambush before the ship's night cycle was over, and then running from one engagement to the next until it had seemed far too awkward to reveal he'd had the cloak the entire time, and Obi-Wan had soon requisitioned a replacement, leaving Cody to hide the original away.
He should have thrown it away long ago. There was no good reason to have kept it at all, and yet...
The fabric felt warm as it settled around his shoulders, the scent of Obi-Wan's favourite tea mingling with the ozone smell off blasters and lightsabers. Cody's eyes began to burn, and he lowered himself to his cot, wrapping the voluminous folds of the cloak around himself like a youngling in a blanket, swaddled safely by a parent.
Obi-Wan was gone.
Cody had killed him.
Traitor or not, Cody had killed the first and only natborn to call him a friend. Obi-Wan was his friend, and he'd betrayed everything they had fought for, everything they had sacrificed and bled for, and so Cody had been made to do the unthinkable.
Lifting one overlong sleeve to his mouth to muffle his sobs, Cody fell apart, tears soaking the fabric in a matter of moments as he shook with the force of his grief. Obi-Wan was dead, and Cody had killed him, and now he would never have a chance to beg for answers, never know why Obi-Wan had chosen to betray the Republic.
He fell asleep still wrapped in the cloak, unable to bring himself to forgo the comfort of one last embrace from the man he'd called his friend.