#i have plans for Stewjon and Catyline that would take about 25k to write

[galateagalvanized]

chel those prompts... they are SO GOOD. was very hard to pick, but what about 9? or if that one's a repeat, 19?

Ah, Byte, thank you so much for the prompt!! This one got away from me a bit, but I hope you enjoy it <3 (And welcome to my Stewjon!)

For prompt #19: A spear as a walking stick

So the saying goes

"You know, all this reminds me of an old Stewjoni saying," Obi-Wan says, leaning against their balcony and gazing at the sprawling gardens below. 

"Oh?" 

Cody looks over, curious. Obi-Wan never speaks much of his home planet or its culture; he'd assumed, perhaps foolishly, that Obi-Wan had adopted Coruscant as his home wholesale.

Obi-Wan’s eyes are unreadable when he glances towards Cody. “Yes. It goes: a smart man fears the hidden knife, but a wise man fears the dull one."

Beneath them, the roiling sea of ivy-like plants lies lazy and untamed in the blue-white light of Stewjon’s supergiant of a sun. The garden and the structure that overlooks it have been kept at the barest minimum threshold of livable through the sporadic maintenance of the nomadic trains that, once or twice a solar cycle, eventually make their way here. Cody runs a thumb over the brittle pink sandstone of the stone railing and feels a few pieces brush away as he tries to understand what Obi-Wan is saying. His training had been in information and not metaphor. The war’s problems had been more logistical than literary.

Cody leans over and knocks his shoulder into Obi-Wan’s and attempts to respond in kind. "A dull knife’s not so bad so long as you’re not the one wielding it.”

“Indeed,” Obi-Wan says, as frustratingly non-committal as he was before, and when Cody squints at him for more information, he shakes his head. The gold medallion around his neck swings with the motion and glints strangely in the blue sunlight. Cody has wanted to pick it apart earlier, to hunt for how any voice recording device could survive the sun's erratic emag, but Obi-Wan had waved it off. Cody stares at it, bites back the same urge, and swallows his questions as he runs the words back over in his mind. 

‘A dull knife?’ As much as he hates the Stewjoni tendency towards metaphor and idiom, he has to admit that it’s an effective protection against ever being caught in a lie. How can you find a lie in someone’s words when you can’t even find their meaning?

Wait. “Do you think other Speaker believes he’s doing the right thing? That he’s just—incompetent?"

“I think it’s something we should consider,” Obi-Wan says as a door opens behind them. They turn, as in-sync now as they ever were on the battlefield, and they face the messenger who steps into their rooms as a united front.

“We’re ready for you, Speaker Kenobi,” the man says, and Cody and Obi-Wan step forward together.

—

It’s only the third day of debate, but Cody feels as though they're in the middle of a three-month siege. The air is filled with that same mix of tension, dread, and monotony, although there’s considerably more food.

Stars, he even can’t lean towards Obi-Wan for an explanation like he did that night at the Corellian opera, where the opera house had banned translation devices out of some archaic belief in the inherent beauty of the incomprehensible. Then, Obi-Wan had whispered explanations beneath his breath into the close space between their cramped mezzanine seats, his voice smooth and clever and, honestly, more interesting than the drama playing out a sixty feet away.

Now, Obi-Wan’s the one on stage. And he isn’t alone.

“And why should we continue to pay the Republic’s fees? When Republic protection was the only thing that threatened us?” 

Speaker Catiline’s voice echoes through the open-air auditorium with a gravity and weight that Cody almost envies. It’s a commander’s voice, deep and authoritative, and on the field, it would brook no argument. 

Across the raised platform from him, Obi-Wan brooks an argument.

“Alleged threat,” Obi-Wan corrects, but Catiline shakes his head.

“It is true that a Republic ship entered our airspace and crashed to our surface,” he says. “A ship can be defined as a Republic protection. And regardless of how it got there, that protection killed six men.”

Cody bristles, his back teeth grinding. By that reasoning, the Separatists could have loaded Republic starships into cannons and launched them at the Speaker caravans—and Catiline could still claim the danger came from the Republic.

But he is still, technically, corect. 

“We didn’t need a crashed Republic ship on our roads. We didn’t even need working Republic ships in our skies,” Catiline continues. “The Separatists could not have taken this planet any more than the Republic could not defend it.”

Cody tucks another protest behind his teeth. Unlike on Coruscant, Stewjon’s courts do not forbid speculation. He keeps a careful eye on Obi-Wan’s hands. Other than the Speaker Medallion, he hasn’t changed any part of his wardrobe. His hands flash from beneath the long bells of his sleeves, and Cody calms to see them warm and steady and Obi-Wan speaks.

“Regardless of the planet’s natural protections, you still benefit from protected Republic trade routes,” Obi-Wan says. “And if we are in the business of speculation, Speaker, I might note that the next martial threat to the galaxy may not take the form of an army formed entirely of robots.” He gestures to the murmuring crowd filling the concentric lines of sandstone benches. “Organic armies, as you may remember, have no trouble surviving here.”

“No need to question whether I remember the histories, Kenobi. But it has been two decades since you learned them, has it not? Perhaps we should hold a Telling and see whose memory is sharper.”

Cody leans forward, curious. He’d known that Obi-Wan’s impeccable memory for stories and language stemmed from Stewjoni practices; he hadn’t realized there were competitions for it, though. He wonders—

“My memory is sharp enough to remember what we are debating, Speaker, and I don’t think it was the histories,” Obi-Wan says, and titters of laughter crop up in the crowd like weeds through duracrete. 

“Mm,” Catiline concedes with a nod of his head more gracious than Cody had thought him capable of. “Perhaps. But your armies never studied here, Kenobi. No army has. No modern army could wage war without their droids and datapads, their terminals and their communication arrays. They would be helpless without all of their technological methods of thinking and remembering. So why should we worry?”

It’s the first time Cody’s heard a Stewjoni native acknowledge the disparity between the galaxy’s technology and their own—or, more accurately, their lack of it. The massive blue-tinged sun hangs high in their pale atmosphere, apparently unremarkable beyond its size and color, but Cody knows better. He wonders what the flares look like from the planet’s surface; he wonders if, given enough time, the flares could become predictable. From the corner of his eye, he thinks it gets a smidge brighter, and he wishes he’d checked the shielding on their dropship a fourth time as he turns his attention back to the stage.

“The modern army of today, perhaps not. But the modern army of tomorrow? Of ten, twenty years from today? I don’t think we can rule it out,” Obi-Wan argues. “The cost of that future security is a simple agreement to remain within the Republic. It seems a small cost to me.”

Catiline laughs. Even his laugh is arresting: deep and resonant. “A small cost? Careful, Kenobi. That statement’s up for review on the Medallion, now. How could the cost be small? When it would invite thousands of your clones to make their residence here?”

Cody sits up, senses sharpening, and he sees Obi-Wan mirror the action in lock-step  from twenty feet away.

“If you have a problem with clones—”

“Not with clones,” Catiline interrupts, and an angry murmur at the faux pas stills as he continues. “With men who were bred and born to combat. They can have no other story in their hearts but violence. You can use a spear as a walking stick, Master Kenobi, but that does not change its nature. He is dangerous. They all are."

Even from this distance, Cody can see Obi-Wan bristle. The line of his shoulders could be used to level a foundation, and his eyes flash an electric blue in the strange sunlight. Cody has rarely seen him so angry.

"And a hammer can build as well as break," Obi-Wan snaps. "Do not forget that some people in this galaxy have managed to acquire more than one use, Speaker."

An excited murmur rolls through the crowd, accented by a few soft claps, and a bell sounds for both order and a break in the proceedings. Obi-Wan and Catiline bow to each other, to the crowd, and to each other again before stepping off opposite ends of the stage. Cody makes his way down the amphitheater steps, and he doesn’t think he’s imagining the relief in Obi-Wan’s small smile when he looks up.

“Cody,” Obi-Wan says, as exhausted as he ever lets himself sound, and Cody resists the urge to put a hand in the small of his back to keep him upright. “They’re calling for an hour recess. Would you mind terribly taking lunch in our rooms?”

“I’ll grab it for us now,” Cody says. “You go on up.”

He gives into the urge to rest his fingertips in the shadow between Obi-Wan’s shoulder blades as he walks towards the food, pushing lightly as he goes.

—

Their rooms are light, airy, and in a state of managed-disrepair exactly the same as the outer balcony. The sheets are fresh, though, and the pallet is clean of bugs even if it is on the floor, so Cody can’t complain. Obi-Wan is sitting cross-legged on the bed closest to the window when Cody elbows his way through the curtain that separates their rooms from the rest of the hall.

“Hey,” he says softly, careful not to spill food or drink as he makes his way over. Obi-Wan must already know that he’s here, but some meditation states are harder to cleanly withdraw from than others. He wants to give Obi-Wan as much space as he can. “You ok?”

“Perfectly fine.” 

Cody wonders if that particular lie will be caught by the council reviewing the Medallion records. If the Jedi Council never caught on, though, he doesn’t have high hopes for Stewjon’s.

Obi-Wan opens his eyes slowly, then shakes his head when he sees the monochrome assortment of square flatbreads, jerky, and small red berries on the plates. “Ah. I’d forgotten how much I didn’t miss the food here.”

Cody grins and tears into a piece of bread. 

“I don’t mind,” he says. “I’m still getting used to food that hasn’t been cranked out of a nutritional vat and baked into a square. It’s nice to get back to my former definition of a square meal.”

Obi-Wan’s answering laugh bounces from the sandstone walls towards the open window and its waving, gauzy curtains. They eat in silence for a few long minutes, both of them still accustomed to the battlefield routine of inhaling as much food as possible before the next alarm or crisis sounds. 

When they’ve both finished, Obi-Wan sits back, and Cody meets his eyes with as much steady calm as he can muster. Obi-Wan draws on the air of Jedi sage as surely and obviously as Cody straps on his plastoid armor.

“Cody… I must apologize for my words earlier,” Obi-Wan says, holding Cody’s gaze. “I hope you don't mind my equating any of you to tools. Relating any of you to objects is to make a shoddy metaphor. All of you are far more than—than your ability to serve a purpose.”

Ah. Ah. Cody is the one who has to struggle not to look away, now. It’s something that Obi-Wan has told him before, but he has never understood it. As much as he wants to believe Obi-Wan, he understands Catiline’s viewpoint more than Obi-Wan’s. The war is over; the clones are struggling to find their place in peacetime. They, all of them, are desperately looking for a purpose to serve. 

Cody is grateful beyond words that his own purpose survived the war.

“It’s fine,” Cody says. He remembers Obi-Wan’s earlier warning about Catiline’s motives, and he wonders, for a brief second, if Catiline really would be doing the right thing by keeping the clones off Stewjon. The clones were at least half the war, and the war never came here. Maybe it’d be best if it never did.

As if he catches the tail end of that thought, Obi-Wan shakes his head. The kindness in Obi-Wan’s eyes, as clear and impenetrable as well water, drives Cody to glance down at the food between them. He won’t argue, he thinks. It isn’t an argument worth winning.

But Obi-Wan’s warm, scarred hands reach for his, and Cody looks up again.

“You know what the Medallion means,” Obi-Wan says, and Cody nods. It’s one more thing he knows but doesn’t understand. “You know I’m not lying. So then, believe me—Cody, you must believe me—that you have far more than violence in your soul. You can be a spear and a walking stick and a hammer, and even if you were none of those things, I would still want you with me. I would want you with me even if you served no other purpose than being in my life.”

The words slide, hot and too heavy, into Cody’s throat and stick there. He can’t swallow past them; he can’t swallow them. The Medallion gleams green-gold in the sun. They are, in a word, unmaking. Impossible to believe, and impossible to refute. 

Catiline’s words ring in Cody’s head, pounding to the rhythm of a new headache. He’d said his piece while wearing a Speaker Medallion too.

Obi-Wan squeezes Cody’s hands. “Okay?”

And Cody marshals himself as he once marshaled armies, and he tucks the wildfire inferno of his emotions and protests back behind the safe haven of his ribcage. He isn’t a Speaker, he thinks. He has no Medallion. No one’s listening for his lies.

“Okay,” he says, and the noon bell tolls.

------

Thank you again for the prompt; I hope you enjoyed it!

#codywan #prompt fills #bytebun #tcw fic #commander cody #obi wan #am writing #my fic #i have plans for Stewjon and Catyline that would take about 25k to write #and i'm THINKING about it!! i'm thinking about it! #so who knows hahaha #maybe i'll write more #explain what i'm talking about in this strange new world #;) wink wonk #until then everyone look up luminous blue variable stars!! #how NEAT #cheers! #my works