Excerpt of Possibly Abandoned Soulmate Fic
Dec. 7th, 2018 12:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sanerontheinsideoriginal post
With apologies tonorcumi :( I'm just not sure I'm coming back here
though, I may post a later Force-ghost scene + actual premise of what happens here
bizarrely I'm pretty sure those parts are handwritten
There has always been something on the edge of his awareness, like a shadow on the wall where there should not be, gone as soon as he looked. Or, perhaps, like a light flashing dully in his peripheral vision. It is not there, not really, but scents and sensations sometimes creep along his skin, like memories.
Memories Rex can’t possibly have, not from his training on Kamino.
Memories of things he’s never experienced.
For instance, the smell of tea. A very specific tea, one that he eventually learns is a particular favourite of General Kenobi’s. But Kenobi is Cody’s General, and any number of people in the world might enjoy that tea at any given time. Perhaps he’d caught a whiff of it coming from General Shaak Ti’s quarters.
Then there is light just that shade of blue, like General Skywalker’s lightsaber—incidentally, like General Kenobi’s also. Rex would have settled on the idea that he’d been seeing flashes of General Skywalker’s lightsaber easily enough, were it not for the fact that just as often he sees flashes of green paired with it, sparring, weaving, together and apart. Blue-green fire, like General Kenobi’s eyes.
That, he tells himself firmly, is ridiculous.
He’s no hero-worshipping shiny. Yet he can’t help feeling a bit lighter every time the 501st and 212th fight together. He has his own crazy Jedi to protect, but something about seeing Kenobi on the field gives him a sense of single-minded focus, completeness. The way the General dances, ever eager to get ahead of the lines (to Cody’s eternal tooth-grinding exasperation), the way the elegance of his dance is ferocity incarnate—Rex more than simply admires it. He wants, wants to lay claim to it. The way the General stands with them, fights with them, it sings out to Rex and calls him, and every part of him wants to answer mine, mine, mine.
It’s the same with all the brothers, he thinks. More than once he’s heard the ripple of whispers: General Kenobi is Mando’ade, cuun’vodé—ours, ours, he is ours. Rex never thought he had any other claim to make.
But when Kenobi is being his stubborn self, holding himself upright by Force and will, sometimes Rex knows it before Cody. Obi-Wan gives in to Rex almost entirely without protest—surprising, when with anyone else he might have insisted that he was still needed. The Commander sends Rex a brief look of thanks.
The press of the General against his side, or the weight of the man’s arm over his shoulders when necessary, both affect Rex in entirely unreasonable ways. He feels a slow spread of warmth even through the beskar’gam, and the flutter in his chest at Kenobi’s small smile competes with his lungs for attention. When his crazy Jedi laughs, he feels weight lift from him, like the armour falling away.
(And when did Kenobi become his General?)
Force, there are so many ways it’s wrong—chain of command—General—not even his CO—Jedi don’t form attachments, for kriff’s sake! But if Rex notices General Kenobi’s guard relax ever so slightly more beside him, if he sees how Kenobi trusts him, utterly and completely, to have his back even when trying something flatout insane (taking out Sep turrets comes to mind), he takes these moments as the gifts they are, and forbids himself from thinking anything more of them. There’s no good place those thoughts could go.
With apologies to
norcumi :( I'm just not sure I'm coming back herethough, I may post a later Force-ghost scene + actual premise of what happens here
bizarrely I'm pretty sure those parts are handwritten
There has always been something on the edge of his awareness, like a shadow on the wall where there should not be, gone as soon as he looked. Or, perhaps, like a light flashing dully in his peripheral vision. It is not there, not really, but scents and sensations sometimes creep along his skin, like memories.
Memories Rex can’t possibly have, not from his training on Kamino.
Memories of things he’s never experienced.
For instance, the smell of tea. A very specific tea, one that he eventually learns is a particular favourite of General Kenobi’s. But Kenobi is Cody’s General, and any number of people in the world might enjoy that tea at any given time. Perhaps he’d caught a whiff of it coming from General Shaak Ti’s quarters.
Then there is light just that shade of blue, like General Skywalker’s lightsaber—incidentally, like General Kenobi’s also. Rex would have settled on the idea that he’d been seeing flashes of General Skywalker’s lightsaber easily enough, were it not for the fact that just as often he sees flashes of green paired with it, sparring, weaving, together and apart. Blue-green fire, like General Kenobi’s eyes.
That, he tells himself firmly, is ridiculous.
He’s no hero-worshipping shiny. Yet he can’t help feeling a bit lighter every time the 501st and 212th fight together. He has his own crazy Jedi to protect, but something about seeing Kenobi on the field gives him a sense of single-minded focus, completeness. The way the General dances, ever eager to get ahead of the lines (to Cody’s eternal tooth-grinding exasperation), the way the elegance of his dance is ferocity incarnate—Rex more than simply admires it. He wants, wants to lay claim to it. The way the General stands with them, fights with them, it sings out to Rex and calls him, and every part of him wants to answer mine, mine, mine.
It’s the same with all the brothers, he thinks. More than once he’s heard the ripple of whispers: General Kenobi is Mando’ade, cuun’vodé—ours, ours, he is ours. Rex never thought he had any other claim to make.
But when Kenobi is being his stubborn self, holding himself upright by Force and will, sometimes Rex knows it before Cody. Obi-Wan gives in to Rex almost entirely without protest—surprising, when with anyone else he might have insisted that he was still needed. The Commander sends Rex a brief look of thanks.
The press of the General against his side, or the weight of the man’s arm over his shoulders when necessary, both affect Rex in entirely unreasonable ways. He feels a slow spread of warmth even through the beskar’gam, and the flutter in his chest at Kenobi’s small smile competes with his lungs for attention. When his crazy Jedi laughs, he feels weight lift from him, like the armour falling away.
(And when did Kenobi become his General?)
Force, there are so many ways it’s wrong—chain of command—General—not even his CO—Jedi don’t form attachments, for kriff’s sake! But if Rex notices General Kenobi’s guard relax ever so slightly more beside him, if he sees how Kenobi trusts him, utterly and completely, to have his back even when trying something flatout insane (taking out Sep turrets comes to mind), he takes these moments as the gifts they are, and forbids himself from thinking anything more of them. There’s no good place those thoughts could go.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-07 05:30 am (UTC)There are quiet moments, though, on the Negotiator or the Resolute or planetside, when Kenobi isn’t doing anything possibly ill-advised or reckless. Sometimes it’s a caught moment, either arranging for refugees to evacuate or move, or setting up tents and organising basic first aid. It’s a rare thing that they aren’t dragged from one campaign to the next or attacked out of nowhere, but shore leave isn’t always exactly a party either. They stay behind to clear the wreckage on Christophsis as best as possible and assist Bail Organa’s relief effort, distributing supplies and searching for survivors.
Finding bodies of Christophsians and brothers alike in the broken and collapsed towers is something Rex never wants to repeat again, though the likelihood of that is rather low. The Jedi search for the living, of course, but the dead are important, too. Nu kyr'adyc, shi taab'echaaj'la—not gone, merely marching far away: it would be the gravest disservice to forget them.
Broken clanker pieces litter the streets, but those are gathered up quickly. The Christophsians almost immediately went looking for ways to cannibalise the droid parts, figuring they could at least rip out the circuitry and melt down their casings. For them it seemed a kind of reclamation, or perhaps a reparation—something useful out of something deadly and defeated.
The firefight in the city left behind a sea of crystal and transparisteel shards. For all that they are sharp and might never be fully cleared away, the pieces glitter in a chaotic symphony of colours when the sun’s light falls just the right way. Were it not for how they came to be there, Rex wouldn’t hesitate to call the mess of refractions beautiful.
No, it is beautiful, he admits, as the sun creeps toward the horizon.
Rex doesn't even notice General Kenobi’s approach until the man is standing right next to him, watching the riotous lightplay in the street, scattering along the ground and the remaining intact walls. He’s about to draw himself up to salute, but Obi-Wan’s quiet, informal acknowledgement forestalls him. For a long moment he said nothing else, and seemed to bask in the view just as it was. Rex, distracted, finds himself staring at the glints of refracted light as they pass over the General’s face and weave gold into his hair.
“Now this is a sight,” the General murmurs, squinting like a pleased feline into the warmth of the late evening.
It is, Rex thinks, and thinks it appropriate that he’ll never be able to look at Cody’s General again and not see him as he is now. The look of that sunset stands out in his mind as one of the few memories that he can almost reach out and touch.