False Dichotomies

16. Mistake;

Obi-Wan is staring down at his bed. He wants nothing more than to crawl into it. The sheets are worn soft from all the years he's owned them, the mattress has moulded to him in the same period of time.

There's no reason why some part of him should want to be back on the Negotiator where the only thing that awaits him is a bedroll with the approximate consistency of stone and the sheets are best not discussed. But then, being on the Negotiator happened to coincide with blissful unawareness. It's not that he wants to be back in the war, he needs this leave. The war is blood and violence and grief that should feel like a constant by now yet somehow aches afresh with every morning. The moment his leave ends, he and the whole 212th ship out, that's almost six-hundred lives at risk once more. The only benefit of being back there was the ignorance.

Specifically, ignorance to the presence of two of his best friends being both on Coruscant and traitors.

Obi-Wan is exhausted. Even on leave, he isn't free from paperwork or High Council meetings and they flay him out in entirely different ways to a battlefield. He should sleep while he can. Sleep comfortably while he can. Instead, he's standing in the doorway to his bedroom, the one he's had since he was a padawan (suddenly having Anakin to care for never gave him the chance to move out, and the two bedrooms of a master-padawan apartment are exactly the same so he would only have been moving out of one apartment to move into an identical one with the same room and, really, what was the point?).

"You should sleep, sir," Cody says, his good and stalwart commander. The two of them have been doing paperwork together. It's part of their rhythm on the Negotiator, every evening. Paperwork, caf or tea, and someone close enough in rank to break down in front of. Despite being home in Temple, Obi-Wan felt all out of sorts his very first night of his very first leave when Cody wasn't around to do paperwork with. Cody had felt much the same, and been the one brave enough to broach the topic. Now their rhythm remains even in Temple.

Obi-Wan sighs. "I should, yes." Obi-Wan should sleep and Cody should return to the barracks he and his vode share on Coruscant— he's all packed up and ready, even. But Cody has yet to leave, and Obi-Wan has yet to enter his room. "Go on, don't let me keep you." Obi-Wan escapes the limbo of the doorway but in the wrong direction, putting his hand on Cody's shoulder to usher him out.

Cody, however, is markedly stronger than Obi-Wan is and doesn't budge. Obi-Wan, admittedly, doesn't try very hard. "Five hours," Cody says.

Obi-Wan has far too much experience with the feeling of a speeder engine stalling. Anakin, his dear former padawan, went through a phase of trialling the absolute limits of any speeder he could get his hands on. There are many interesting features of speeders Obi-Wan knows too well, but stalling is the one he thinks fits this moment best. Just as Anakin always did though, the engine starts up again quickly afterwards. "Am I really so easy to read?"

Obi-Wan knows the answer to that. He didn't gain the nickname The Negotiator for how easily politicians could see truth in him. He also knows Cody can read him like a book. No, not even so complex as a book. Cody can read him like the concise layout of an after-action report.

Five hours is the amount of time Obi-Wan missed Estai and Quinlan by.

"We should really both sleep."

Cody nods. "But you won't, sir, will you?"

Not for the first time, Obi-Wan wishes Cody wouldn't call him 'sir'. This is Obi-Wan's home, he wants to relax here, not be reminded of the lives on his shoulders every day. "Whyever not?"