Clonebi-Wan AU part 2
There’s something very strange about General Kenobi.
Rex doesn’t think the 212th notice. He’s the natborn they have the most contact with. He’s the first natborn most of the vode ever saw, as a matter of fact. It’s no surprise that they wouldn’t notice.
After all, the strangest thing about him is that none of the clones find him strange.
Rex has a lot of contact with natborns. Probably more so than the majority of the GAR. He knows how differently natborns see the galaxy, how they take so many things for granted. Identity. Self-worth. Self-preservation. Choice.
With the possible exception of natural clones--twins, he thinks they’re called, but he has no idea how those work or what’s expected of them--natborns are not created and raised with the knowledge that they are a copy, something that exists only because they are of use to others, and will cease to exist once that stops being the case.
Rex has been trained to devalue himself since he was decanted. It’s painfully obvious when he’s in a firefight, because a natborn’s first impulse will always, always be to protect themselves. It can be overridden, he’s seen it happen--with the Jedi, with natborns and their offspring--but they have to consciously choose to value another life over their own.
Rex and his brothers never had that in the first place. Sometimes, rarely, he meets a brother who has learned how to put himself first, over the objective, even over his brothers, but that is always a conscious choice, too. It’s never the knee-jerk self-preservation instinct that natborns have, that the Kaminoans took out of them to make better soldiers.
That is something that General Kenobi never learned to fake. General Kenobi fakes a lot of things--smiles, laughs, familiarity, memories--but that instinct escapes him, just like it does Rex and his brothers.
He thinks that General Kenobi wouldn’t want to fake it, even if he could. There’s a lot that’s false about him, but anyone who sees the torment he puts himself through, for anyone’s sake but his own, knows that he’s not faking his values. And he seems to value everyone and everything above himself.
It’s how Rex feels about his brothers. How he’s come to feel about Commander Tano, just a shiny kid who always does her best to do what she thinks is right, no matter what the galaxy throws at her or what the temple throws her at.
But General Kenobi doesn’t have any brothers, not like Rex does. He has his own version of Commander Tano in Skywalker, but Rex knows it’s not reciprocal. Kenobi doesn’t have anyone willing to sacrifice everything for him. (Rex does. Rex had brothers die to keep him alive when he was still shiny, and he was willing to do the same for them. It’s a given, for any vod.)
A lot of the people General Kenobi cares about seem to die on him, die because of him, but no one dies for him. No one but Rex’s brothers in the 212th, who’ve claimed him as one of their own without fully realizing why.
After all, he’s their brother, too.
-
No one suspects a thing. They just let themselves believe that the shadows in Kenobi’s eyes are better left alone, that he’ll heal, with time. And if he doesn’t go back to the hotheaded, too eager, too passionate initiate they knew him as, well. That’s just part of growing up, isn’t it?
Even if he looks a little too young, as if he hasn’t aged at all in the years since he last set foot in the temple, it’s a face they’re used to. They knew him as a child, not as a young adult, so when they see that same child, it’s easy to forget that he shouldn’t look so familiar. And if time alone in a war zone, with only other children at his side, hasn’t marked him, then isn’t that only a good thing? Doesn’t it make sense that Master Jinn keeps him out of the temple, taking mission after consecutive mission? That he keeps him isolated from his age mates once they eventually return?
(Isn’t it better, some of them whisper, that the maverick keeps the deserter isolated, so that he doesn’t inspire any others to forsake their vows?)
Quinlan thinks that’s all banthakark.
He hadn’t been especially close to Kenobi, when they were both initiates. They were in different clans in the creche, and a few years apart in age, besides. The times they did talk, Kenobi took Quinlan’s ribbing personally, rubbed raw by Bruck Chun’s calculated cruelty. And it’s not like Quinlan would apologize just because he got his tunics in a twist. (Quinlan has never made friends easily.)
But he was a decent sort, and had brought Quinlan his coursework when he was laid up in the Halls of Healing after that first eventful mission with Master Tholme, so. Quin’s not the type to forget when someone does him a solid.
He thinks that Kenobi could probably use a friend right now.
(Quin thinks of little Aayla, their bond pulsing bright and beautiful right next to his bond with his master, and knows that he would’ve left the Order to fight for her, too. Thank the Force she was Force sensitive. Thank the Force Tholme never made him choose.)
So he tracks Kenobi down the next time that Jinn lets him leave their quarters unsupervised. It takes months, seriously, what kind of training from hell is he putting that kid through?
Kenobi is meditating in an unfrequented corner of the Room of a Thousand Fountains. Quinlan pauses for a moment, surprised at how quickly the baby fat had melted from his cheeks. What the kriff, Jinn wasn’t starving him, was he? But no, it must be a growth spurt--his shoulders are noticeably broader, and instead of a proper meditation pose, he’s got his legs stretched out in front of him. Growing pains, probably. (Quin is no stranger to those, but if Kenobi grows taller than him he’s gonna be pissed.)
Whatever. Quinlan will figure out if something’s wrong with him. Psychometry is awesome for blackmail.
“Hey, Kenobi,” he says, sneaking up behind him and giving him a noogie.
The boy under his hands is not Kenobi.
He takes a few seconds to rouse from his meditative state, another to jerk away from Quinlan’s touch.
Quinlan kind of forgets he even has a body for a second, lets his arms hover where the boy that is not Kenobi used to be, trying to sort through the sudden influx of memories that are not his own.
The boy goes whiter than a wampa, suddenly terrified in a way that Quinlan’s never felt from anyone before.
He thinks I’m gonna get him killed, Quinlan realizes, and feels abruptly sick. He thinks Jinn will decommission him if someone figures out he’s a...
Damningly, Quinlan’s not sure if he’s wrong. Not sure that he doesn’t hold a life in his hands.
He has to tread very, very carefully here. If the boy suspects anything, he will swallow his fear and report it to Jinn, against his own survival instincts. He’s been too well conditioned to do anything else.
“Is everything all right...?” Kenobithe clone the padawan asks, peering up at him with wide turquoise eyes, identical to... well, obviously they’re identical, that’s the whole point.
Quinlan didn’t know Kenobi well enough to tell if the Force signature is identical, too, and he’s glad of it. His skin is crawling enough as it is. He’s suddenly and terribly aware that this boy should not exist.
“What’s wrong, you forget your ol’ pal Quinlan Vos?” he forces through a grin that’s a little too wide, plopping down on the grass beside him, careful to leave a wide gap between them. “It’s been a while, man, I barely recognized you! How you been?”
The padawan does admirably in the ensuing small talk--of course he does, Jinn has been coaching him for this--and Quinlan does the same. He’s training to be a Shadow, after all, and this guy isn’t anywhere near as intimidating as the people Quinlan usually bullshits. And Quinlan knows, with terrible certainty, that he’d sooner die than besmirch the legacy that’s been shoved onto him like an ill-fitting coat. (The legacy he’d fought so hard for, the legacy nine others just like him had died trying to earn--that Kenobi had to die for him to get--)
He’s five years old and he’s already been through a lifetime’s worth of suffering.
Later, once the padawan begs off and retreats to the quarters he shares with a monster, Quinlan falls back in the grass and tries to ignore the burning of his eyes, the shaking of his hands. He gives himself an hour to mourn a boy no one else knows to mourn.
(Except Jinn, but Obi-Wan deserved better.)
And then Quinlan picks himself back up, puts himself together, and promises himself that this new version will last longer.
-
Vos never tries to touch him again. OB-1 is too grateful, too scared, to wonder why.