Chapter Text
The night is choking him. The night is choking him and he does not remember his own name and he is bleeding freely from his thigh and he is running towards the silhouette looming on the horizon because his mind is screaming safe safe safe safe. He is not paying attention to his surroundings. He catches his foot on a rut in the buckle of a flagstone. His leg give out beneath him. He stumbles. He falls. He scrapes his arms on the pavement. They sting. People jostle around him. Someone curses. Someone else stands on his fingers.
He gets up.
It is the most difficult thing he has ever done.
He wants to lie on the rain-soaked ground forever until he bleeds out. He gets up. He gets up. He keeps going. He keeps going. He keeps going. His face is wet. He touches his cheek. His fingers come away wet too. He does not understand why. He does not understand why.
He does not understand why, and he does not remember his own name and he is bleeding freely from his thigh, so much so that he is dizzy with it, and he has been running for a thousand years and his mouth is dry and his cheeks are wet and he has reached the building, he has reached the building, he is safe, he is safe. He rests his hands against the duracrete wall and his rests his forehead against it too and he breathes, he breathes, and, oh, he could weep with the relief, except he’s already crying.
He climbs the wall.
It is old and there are minute cracks in it that he can fit his fingers into, though his nails tear and rip for it. It is also maybe the most difficult thing he has ever done. He has the capacity to experience many horrifically hard things at once. He climbs the wall. He climbs the wall. His thigh is screaming at him. He would scream with it, if he could but find his tongue. He climbs the wall. He climbs the wall. He climbs the wall. It is impossibly high. He can feel the blood running down his leg and his foot and he can hear it dripping onto the ground far below.
He climbs the wall. He climbs the wall. He climbs the wall. He does not think he will ever stop climbing it. He climbs the wall. He climbs the wall. His grip slips from the hold he forced his fingertips into, and then he is dangling by one hand, breath coming harsh and fast and ragged, heart thundering in his ears. He looks up. The sky is clouded with smog and too many blinking ships. He looks down. The ground is very far away.
He does not want to die.
It would be easy to die, but he does not want to let go and go crashing down to his death. It would hurt. He is tired of being hurt. He is tired of pain.
He does not want to die.
It is with momentous effort that he reaches up and grasps the wall, and reaches up again and again, and then the top of the wall is in sight, and then he is closing his grip around the ledge and a half-choked sound drags itself from his throat of his own accord, and he feels tears run down his cheeks anew. He collapses on the top of the wall, panting, and stares at the smoggy, ship-clogged sky. It is—familiar. His chest and his fingers and his leg all ache and burn and he does not remember his own name and he has just scaled a sheer wall and he has recognised something. It is a novel feeling.
When there is breath enough in his lungs that he is no longer panting, he peers over the edge of the wall cautiously. It is dark. He can see—trees. There are a lot of trees. Some of them are tall. Some of them are very close to the ground, and have little trunk to speak of. There is a tall tree but a few metres away. The top of it is only slightly shorter than the wall. He pushes himself to stand, grinding his teeth when his thigh twinges in protest, and focuses on the tree. It is yet another of one of the most difficult things he has ever done. His vision spots and darkens, and his treacherous body sways. He does not want topple and fall. He wills himself to stay upright. It works only a little. And then he drops into a crouch and rocks back and forth carefully, and then he is jumping for the tree like he is diving into a pool of water. He jumps. He jumps. He jumps. The night air is cool against his cheek. It makes him feel alive. He is glad of it. He jumps. He jumps. He jumps. He is suspended in the air like a fly in glycerine.
He jumps.
He jumps.
He jumps.
He lands.
The impact hurts like—it hurts. Stars, but it hurts. It knocks the breath that he so recently got back clean out of him with an explosive gasp, and he almost lets go of the branch he’s clutching onto with the shock of it. But he needs to be in this garden. He needs to. He needs to. He orients himself, looks down at the ground, slowly lets himself down so he is hanging by only his fingertips and not clutching the branch to his armpits, and breathes, and breathes, and readies himself for the drop, and lets go.
The impact of this also hurts. He lies on the soft earth and chokes out a wheezing breath, and stares up at the night sky. Blossoms flutter down around him. The smog and the ships are gone. He can see the stars. He can see the stars. There is a multitude of them beyond reckoning. He can see—ka’ra.
He can see the stars.
The air is colder than it was when he was climbing the wall. There is a slight breeze. It rustles the foliage of the trees and the shorter trees. It sounds like it is whispering a myriad secrets. It is sharp and beautiful. He wants to stay here forever. He does not know what to do next, except that the building is safe safe safe safe, and he thinks he could follow the feeling like a beast tracking a scent if he but tried. He stands, and something buoys him up. He feels lighter. Freer. His leg still hurts like a little bitch, but—it’s like being cocooned in—in—something soft and beautiful.
He stands, revelling in the feeling, and then doubles over and empties his guts at his feet. It is an unpleasant experience. And yet—when he is done, the safe safe safe safe feeling is stronger than ever. He can breathe easy. He can breathe easy. The night is not choking him any more.
He looks up. There is a person standing ten metres away from him, staring openly at him. He stares back at them, still doubled over, hands braced on the knee that doesn’t have a bloody hole above it. They have tried to hide themselves behind one of the short trees, which is ineffective, because it is about half their height. Their skin is ghostly pale in the moonlight. There is a guilty expression on their face that he can only imagine he is mirroring. They are both frozen in place, and then he thinks, oh.
Because it isn’t the building that is safe. It is the person hiding behind a short tree ten metres away.
Slowly, they shuffle towards him. They are wearing robes of a voluminous nature. The cloth trails on the ground behind them. He suspects that whatever they are wearing does not belong to them. He holds his breath. He holds his breath. He holds his breath. They stop when they are within touching distance, puddle of vomit like a barrier between them. They tilt their head, quizzical.
“Er. Um. Hello?” they say. He knows them. He knows them. They look wrong. Their hair is the wrong length, shorn near to the bone except for a narrow and trailing braid flicked over their shoulder. The shape of their face isn’t right either, too-soft around the jaw and oddly bare. Their voice is much higher than he expected it to be. He does not know why. They pause. They appear to be searching for words. “Do I—know you?”
His breath catches in his throat. His ears are ringing. His ears are ringing. His ears are ringing. The person—Obi-Wan Obi-Wan Obi-Wan (safe safe safe safe)—tucks his hands carefully into the too-wide sleeves of his obviously stolen robe. He cannot speak. He cannot find his tongue. He does not know what he would say, except I know you. I know you. I know you. I do not know my own name but I know you.
“I know you,” says Obi-Wan faintly. “I—I know you. How do I know you? I—you’re not—I mean, you’re not a Jedi, you’re—”
His ears are ringing. His ears are ringing. His ears are ringing. Standing here is the most, most difficult thing he has ever done. He wants to cry, again. He thinks he may already be crying. Tears are gathering themselves in Obi-Wan’s eyes. They are the most brilliant blue.
“I know you,” says Obi-Wan desperately, like he’s trying to force some greater meaning into it, some huge understanding, like he’s teetering on the edge of a precipice and lunging for a guiderope just out of reach. Obi-Wan reaches out as his nose begins to bleed. Obi-Wan’s hand finds his temple. It stings. It stings. He does not know why. Obi-Wan cups his face, and, just for a moment, a surge of recognition blooms, bright and beautiful and alien. “I know you,” he says, softly, gently. “Cody. Cody.”
It is then that Cody passes out.