Simulacrum
Cody has never felt more like a clone than when General Kenobi looks at him.
That’s not to say that Kenobi treats him like most non-Jedi do; far from it, in fact. The general makes a point to treat him and all his brothers with the respect that natborns seem to warrant just by existing. Kenobi acknowledges both their individuality and the unique culture that arises from being created and raised as a unit. He’s not just respectful, he’s kind.
The thing is, Kenobi is perhaps one of the only people in the galaxy that Cody would not blame for showing a little cruelty.
Cody hadn’t been there for the first invasion of Geonosis, but he’s heard the stories. All the vode have. How the Prime had turned on the Republic to stand with the Separatists. How Kenobi had tracked him there. How, even in the midst of all the chaos, he’d been begging Fett to reconsider, to stop forcing his hand.
How, after the battle, he’d replaced the beskar gauntlet Fett had been conspicuously missing, and took the cloth belt Fett wore everywhere beneath his armor.
But Cody has his own, even earlier memory of Kenobi, during his first visit to Kamino. He’d looked up to the observation balcony above, surprised to see someone unfamiliar standing with the Kaminoans. But more than the Jedi robes or the dripping water, what had struck Cody most intensely was the horror, the surprise, the grief on his face, as if he’d seen a ghost made flesh.
That’s what he thinks about now, trapped under a collapsed building with his General, who’d tried and failed to save two other troopers from being crushed. There’s a lot of blood. Cody isn’t sure how much of it is Kenobi’s, how much of it is his, and how much of it is his brothers’.
The general’s clothes are soaked in it, in any case, and he’s gotten that rapid breathing, pale skin, and cold sweat typical of blood loss. Cody presses harder over the biggest wound in his torso, his own blood dripping into one eye and obscuring his vision. His general groans, which is a bad sign; Kenobi tends to take his licks quietly.
“It’ll be all right,” Cody keeps muttering, over and over again. He doesn’t want to be the first of his batch to lose their general without going down with them. He doesn’t want Kenobi to leave him behind.
“I know,” Kenobi says, so softly that Cody can barely hear him. His eyes are glazed. He lifts a trembling hand to touch Cody’s face, and Cody freezes. A natborn has never touched his bare skin before.
“I trust you, Jango.”
His eyes are so, so warm. Cody’s never been looked at like this. He doesn’t think anyone in the galaxy has. Besides the Prime.
“I just want you… t-to know that I…”
Cody can’t speak. He can’t breathe.
“Ni kar'tayl gar darasuum.”
Cody says nothing. He doesn’t–he can’t–
The slightest of furrows appears between Kenobi’s brows, even as a sad smile twists his bloody lips. “I know you don’t feel… as I do. Maybe you never did.”
That’s a lie. Cody knows what trading armor means. All the vode do. They knew what Kenobi meant to Jango the moment they saw him taking off the gauntlet.
He can’t let his general die thinking he wasn’t loved.
“I do,” Cody whispers, leaning into the hand on his cheek despite the deep cut in his temple. “O-Obi-Wan, you know I do.”
The smile that breaks across his face is blinding. Cody wonders, absently, if he’s bleeding internally, because he feels like he’s been stabbed.
It takes an hour for the 501st to dig them out. Kenobi is unconscious by that point. Cody nearly refuses to give him up to the medics, but Rex puts a hand on his shoulder and Skywalker is watching and Cody–
Cody can’t.
Not right now.
Cody tells the medics to let the cut scar, which they do without a fuss. Scarification is pretty common amongst the vode, especially those who don’t get tattoos. There doesn’t need to be a deeper reason behind it.
He just wants his face to be his own.