“My dear, I do believe this is the best Life Day I’ve celebrated to date.”
“General, we’ve been captured.”
Obi-Wan shrugs. Cody can’t see the motion, courtesy of the blindfold, but he can feel it. “It could be worse.”
“How.”
“We could be getting—”
Cody thunks his head back against the wall. “Do not say ‘tortured.’ I will torture you if you say ‘tortured.’”
Obi-Wan’s laughter shakes through his shoulders and into Cody’s. “Well, we could be!”
Behind the blindfold, Cody rolls his eyes. “Saying ‘At least we’re not being tortured’ engenders torture. You know this.” Futilely, he shifts, trying to take some of the weight off his ass before it falls asleep. It doesn’t help. “I really don’t want to be tortured on Life Day.”
“You make a good point.”
At least he still sounds lucid. At some point during their brief separation and processing, Obi-Wan had taken a nasty hit to the head, and the last thing Cody’d seen before the blindfold covered his eyes was the blood sheeting down his general’s stark-white face. He grits his teeth and digs his heels into the ground, continuing his search for leverage or a more comfortable position. “How long did you say it’ll be until exfil?”
The cell’s small and Cody can feel the heat of Obi-Wan’s skin and the vibration of his chest as he hums. “No clue. With Anakin, one never knows. He might already sense that something’s wrong or he might not notice until the operation is over.”
Which isn’t for another three days. Just their luck. Speaking of luck, Cody hears footsteps outside the door just before it slides open.
“Clone,” someone barks. “Up. No, not you, Jedi, just that.”
That. Cody braces himself.
He won’t remember much of this, he thinks as the man he’s come to know as Clyde drives an electrostaff into his stomach. He never remembers the torture well. It might be a universal human coping mechanism or it might be unique to the clones; he’s not sure. On Kamino, the cadets that got the worst of the training started having memory problems. Some of them broke completely, like Neyo, 8826, who had at least two different sets of memories and mannerisms. Pain does funny things to the mind.
“What is your mission, clone?” Clyde demands.
Increased volume and vocal intimidation have never been useful interrogation tactics, not when it comes to the Vode. Something about them or the way they were raised makes them particularly resistant to shouty shitheads with delusions of grandeur. You can only listen to so many before you realize they’re all talk.
A knife meets Cody’s ribcage up close and personal.
Maybe they’re not all talk.
“CC-2224,” Cody chokes out.
“What is your mission?”
Stupid to capture people if you don’t even know what they’re doing. Cody wonders who Clyde works for and what his boss isn’t telling him. “CC-2224.”
Cody’s head meets the durasteel table. His mind meets darkness.
“If you ever get yourself all turned around, buried in the snow or whatnot, find something to drop. You got nothing, you spit.” The cadets groaned. Alpha-17 shook his head. “Dead serious. You spit, you see or feel which way it falls, you figure out which way is up. Gravity will never lie to you, not when you’re planetside. On a spaceship, be more careful. In water, open your mouth and see which way the bubbles go. Whatever you have to do, you find up and you figure your shit out, do you understand me?”
“Yessir,” Cody slurs. He tips his head as much as he can stand, moving just until his neck starts to lock up and he’s relatively certain his head is square to—something. Wait, if he’s square to something, then he can, he can try and figure out, fucking hell, never mind. His head hurts.
Dutifully, he tracks the drip of blood from his nose across his cheek and towards his ear. Left to right. Up to down. Bit of a slant. He forces the knowledge onto his spinning mental map, wishing more than anything for someone to turn the godsdamned lights on.
“Cody, love, you’re blindfolded. I’m sorry, I can’t get my hands free to help you.”
“...Sir?” Oh, his throat actually doesn’t feel bad. His throat and his ears, even though his balance is all off. Ears, nose, throat. Not sick. Inner ear fluids, he’s concussed, he’s dizzy, something’s not balancing right. Membranes.
“There you are,” Obi-Wan sighs. “Try and stay awake.” There’s a clanking noise and Cody remembers that Obi-Wan’s ankles are shackled. They must have left him near the door, then, if Obi-Wan can’t reach him.
Cody blinks and his eyelashes drag against something. Oh. Blindfolded. That makes sense.
Wait.
“Did I get. Fucking. Tortured?” he manages. It’s a bit hard to string sentences together right now. Time isn’t working quite right, so the beginnings and ends get jumbled together.
“Yes.”
“Told you,” he spits. “Every’every time you mention not gettin’ tortured, w’get tortured.”
For a moment, there’s silence filled only by the ringing in his ears. Good job, Kote, he thinks. Great sense of humor you’ve got there. Then, Obi-Wan’s laughter fills the room, loud and so bright. “Oh, Cody,” he manages. “Never change, dear. Never change.”
Later, discharged from medbay into Obi-Wan’s care, warm and medicated and fed and wrapped in blankets and Obi-Wan’s arms, he drifts hazily on the edge of sleep and waking. His head still hurts like fuck and he can’t help but worry about the inflamed stitches under the gauze on Obi-Wan’s head, but really, Obi-Wan was right. Not a half-bad conclusion to Life Day.
Still, though. It’s the principle of the thing.
Sleepily, he turns over in Obi-Wan’s arms. “Can’t believe you mentioned torture and then we got tortured,” he mumbled. “Fucking told you so.”
This time, Obi-Wan’s laughter is gentler, more contained. “You’re never going to let me live this down, are you?”
“Never.” He buries his face back in the pillow. “Love you.”
“I love you, too. Happy Life Day, Commander.”