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“So how long exactly is this supposed to last?” Obi-Wan sat curled up in bed, Healer Lior’s small figure displayed on his wrist-comm. “It’s rather… bothersome.”
Healer Lior’s image flickered. “I am sorry, Obi-Wan,” she said, with no small amount of amusement. “I didn’t think this would happen.”
He sniffed haughtily. “It’s listed on the box,” he complained, and Lior huffed.
“You haven’t experienced it before,” she said, throwing her hands up. “You know that we used this after Melida/Daan and Mandalore and it worked well both times, and while I apologize that you are experiencing side effects, I couldn’t have predicted this. We only want the best for you, Obi-Wan.”
Obi-Wan shook his head. “No, no, I know,” he said, sniffing. “I just - I’m leading a war, Lior, and I’m apparently going to be sobbing whilst doing so.”
Lior shook her head. “It’s only for a few days,” she soothed, “Just until the rebound-sickness has subsided.”
Obi-Wan hummed unsteadily, and brushed his wrists against his eyes, his sleeves coming away wet and damp. “It’s embarrassing,” he complained.
“Well, at least you’re on medical leave?” Lior seemed mostly unrepentant, despite her apology. “It’s better than starving yourself because you forgot to subside on nutrients instead of the Force. Crying is a small price to pay for the rest of your life.”
“Why must you be so wise,” he groaned, and Lior flat-out laughed.
“I’ll talk to you tomorrow, Obi-Wan,” she said gently. “Stay hydrated.”
With that, the comm clicked off, and Obi-Wan sighed, rubbing at his eyes as he resisted the urge to curl up into a small ball and roll away into the void. Sithspit.
Roughly four weeks ago, he had been captured. Not by Separatists, or Sith, for once, but by rather annoying pirates, who had decided that Jedi did not, in fact, need food, and had only given him water for the long weeks he spent in their merciless care. They hadn’t hurt him beyond that, and so he had just spent four weeks bored out of his skull and making small talk with the mouse droids that cleaned his cell. His troopers had come for him eventually, and little remained of the pirates who had wanted to ransom him, so there were no true worries there, but he had - well.
The pirates were partly right, in that Obi-Wan knew how to sustain himself through the Force and live without eating. It was dangerous, and he wasn’t supposed to do it at all, but he had gotten through his own past horrors by supplementing his nutritional intake with the Force. It was tiring. It wasn’t as good as actually eating. But it was possible, and so he had done it. Initiating it wasn’t the hard part.
Ending it, however, was. He was three days back into being on the Negotiator and hadn’t been able to eat for any of them, prompting a rather inwardly frantic Pyre to call Healer Che at the Temple and ask what they should do. And so here Obi-Wan was, yet again, on a medication to both suppress his unconscious access to the Force and to bolster his appetite. While on it, he could not rely on the Force to sustain himself, though he could still fight and meditate and perceive the world around him. It also made him rather ravenous, compared to his normal self.
And now, despite it being the third time that he had been on this medication, it was also making him cry. Constantly. At every available emotion.
He hadn’t told anyone about that part yet, aside from his mindhealer. However, he was expected in medbay in fifteen minutes, and this?
This was not something he was going to be able to hide.
Obi-Wan took a circuitous route to medbay, aiming to avoid as many of the vode as he could on his journey. In that, he succeeded. However, it added almost thirteen extra minutes to the trip, and he arrived to medbay ten minutes late with four increasingly frantic messages on his comm from CMO Pyre.
Pyre was already on the war-path when Obi-Wan slid into the room.
“You,” he said, arms crossing and gaze judging. “Are going to be the death of me. Late. Late. To your check-in to make sure you don’t die of starvation because the Force shut off and you still haven’t eaten anything -“
Obi-Wan felt the tears well up, and he did the mental equivalent of sliding down a wall in despair.
“- and haven’t met your fluid intake quota and - oh, kriff,” Pyre said, noting the way Obi-Wan’s face was now streaming as he started to sob. “Kriff, kriff, kriff,” his normally stoic medic panicked, hands flinging out to wave wildly. “Are you - sir, I didn’t mean it, I’m not mad - kriff, are you in pain? I - here, sit, sit, -“
Pyre all but shoved him onto a medcot, and took out his scanner, panicked and almost teary himself. “Shh, sir, it’s okay,” he rambled, and Obi-Wan hiccupped, pressing his hands to his eyes.
“I’m fine,” he said, the words turning into a lie by the sheer amount of fluid waterfalling down his face. “It’s a - side effect.”
Pyre’s eyes widened. “Sir, were you drugged?” He demanded, seeming even more frantic, and Obi-Wan groaned.
Instead of explaining, he took out the canister of medication from his pocket, and shoved it at the man. He’d taken the time, in a fit of annoyance earlier, to highlight the ‘uncontrollable crying’ symptom listed on the side.
Pyre looked at it, and then back at Obi-Wan, and then back at the medication.
“Oh,” he said.
“It should only last for a few days,” Obi-Wan said miserably. “It’s to help me eat. I’ve taken it before, and this didn’t happen, but… well.”
“Well indeed,” Pyre said, and Obi-Wan could see the rest of the medics behind him, peeking their heads out as they stared at the sobbing form of their General. “Is it just… constant, or…”
Obi-Wan hummed, taking the moment to attempt to dry his eyes again. “No,” he said ruefully. “It’s triggered by emotion. Any emotion, in fact. I started sobbing over my socks earlier because there was a hole.”
“Well, socks are very distressing,” someone in the background chimed, and they were quickly shushed.
“So when I…” Pyre trailed off, and Obi-Wan sighed.
“Yes.”
“Huh.”
Obi-Wan attempted a smile. “Don’t let it trouble you,” he managed.
“…Have you told Cody yet?”
Obi-Wan’s smile dropped. “Not yet.”
Pyre smirked. “Please, sir,” he begged, all but getting on his knees and prostrating himself before him. “Get it on video.”
Obi-Wan sniffed. “Exploiting me for personal gain, trooper?”
“Oh, always, sir.” Pyre gave a mock salute.
“Carry on then.”
After a brief period where he was observed eating a ration bar and drinking some water - neither of which came up again, a marked improvement from the day before - Pyre let him go with a final plea to record Cody’s reaction to his General’s newfound emotional state of being. Obi-Wan acquiesed after some mild haggling, and came out the other side with a twenty percent cut in whatever Pyre ended up trading the holovid for on the Neogitator’s black market that he was barely pretending didn’t exist.
He was on medical leave. He didn’t really need to go to the Bridge, or to meetings, even though he was keeping up with his paperwork and slowly chipping at the backlog from the weeks he had been gone.
But boredom had never sat well with him, and so after leaving the Medbay he dried his cheeks and set off for the office he shared with his Commander, a space carved out for the two of them to work on paperwork and planning in relative peace, away from the hustle of the Bridge or the cautious intimacy of his quarters.
He only made it halfway there.
Obi-Wan crossed a corner, in his un-hurried pace, and immediately collided with a solid form, the force of it sending him to the ground. He sat there for a moment, mortified as tears started to gather in his eyes from the mild shock, and looked up into Cody’s face.
Cody, whose face had frozen as he stared down at Obi-Wan’s crying form, like he had seen hell and watched as the devils rejoiced.
“I’m alright,” Obi-Wan said horridly, before Cody could get out any of the frantic apologies welling up.
“Sir,” Cody said desperately, dropping down to his knees. The concern written across his face only prompted more tears to well up, and Obi-Wan sniffed. “I’m so sorry, sir, are you alright? Did I hurt you? Kriff, I’m so sorry -“
Obi-Wan held up a hand, but Cody pushed it down almost unconsciously as he started to check Obi-Wan over for injuries. “Did you hurt your knee again? Karking hells, sir, I didn’t mean - I didn’t -“
“Cody,” Obi-Wan managed, and his Commander stopped talking. “I’m fine,” he said again, the words completely ruined by the tears spilling down his cheeks. “This is nothing.”
“Obi-Wan…” Cody murmured, voice so soft, and Obi-Wan shook his head, still unable to stop the outpouring of emotions. Force above, he thought to himself grumpily. He was never going to live this down.
“Shh,” Cody hushed, glancing back and forth down the hallway before hitting something on his comm. Obi-Wan’s eyes widened as the hallway lights dimmed, the sterile whites of the fluorescents turning yellower and softer. Cody sat back on his heels, face set in worry but steadfast.
“You’re okay, sir,” his Commander said, voice gentle. “We’re on the Negotiator. You’ve been back for a few days. You’re safe, I promise.”
Obi-Wan shook his head, tears still coming, and Cody scooted a few inches closer. His heels squeaked against the ground. “I’m right here,” Cody promised, voice warm and gentle and soft. It would have been comforting, if Obi-Wan was actually panicking, but all he could feel right now was embarrassment. “It’s going to be okay.”
Obi-Wan, after a long moment, finally managed to strangle his vocal cords and force them back under his control. “Cody,” he said again. “Cody, I’m not - I’m fine. It’s a side effect. I really am -“ he took a breath, and sobbed on the exhale, emotions tangling up and threatening to choke him once again. “I know this does seem like I’m lying, but I really am fine.”
Cody’s eyebrows twitched.
“Sir, avoiding your emotions isn’t healthy.”
Obi-Wan just barely resisted the urge to slam his head against the wall.
Instead of responding, he grabbed the bottle of medication out of his bag and shoved it at Cody.
Cody stared at it, and then back at Obi-Wan, and then down at his comm, which was now vibrating with a message from Pyre, the one-two-three beat the frequency Pyre had hacked into everyone’s comms so they knew when he was messaging.
“…Oh.”
“It’s only for a few days,” Obi-Wan said miserably.
Cody hummed, and handed the bottle back over. “Well, then,” he said, awkwardly.
Obi-Wan, finally able to shove his fondness for the man down deep where it would stop sparking tears, rubbed his sleeves against his eyes and looked up again. “I do appreciate the response,” he said. “The trick with the lights was nice.”
Cody flushed. He scratched at the back of his neck, mouth opening and closing but no words coming out. “There’s… a policy,” he said eventually. “For, uh. Random panic attacks. Or flashbacks.”
“Rational.”
Cody swallowed. “Right,” he croaked. “Uh. So. The crying, is it… I mean… are you… sad?”
“It’s more any emotion, really.” Obi-Wan hunched forwards, resisting the urge to wipe at his face again. His eyes were starting to become irritated, and he could already feel the ghost of Pyre haunting him to say he should be drinking more water. “Surprise, happiness, fondness…”
Cody nodded slowly. “Okay,” he muttered. “Sure. Weird Force banthashit, sure.”
Obi-Wan was fairly sure he wasn’t supposed to hear that.
“Well, sir,” Cody said, a hand reaching out the cautiously cradle his face. Obi-Wan leaned into it, closing his eyes briefly as Cody swept his thumb under his cheeks, wiping away the tears. “I suppose we should make sure you have plenty to cry about.”
There was the soft press of lips to his forehead, and Obi-Wan let out a half-sob half-laugh as Cody smiled. “The others were planning on surprising you with a holonight in the cargo bay,” he said softly. “That mando movie you like, the one with the subtitles.”
“That could describe so many movies,” Obi-Wan murmured.
“The one with the shirt-eating bugs.”
Obi-Wan flushed. “Ah,” he said dumbly, laughing as Cody wiped away more tears. “That one, of course. How could I assume otherwise.”
“Well,” Cody smiled, “It is your favorite.”
Obi-Wan grinned up at his Commander, his friend, his companion. “You know me so well.”
Hand in hand, they wandered off, leaving the hallway behind.
The tears stopped eventually, though not until what felt like the entire ship had seen him weep over the sappy romance playing on holoprojectors in the cargo bay. It was a small price to pay for the ability to eat, he supposed.
And the vode did need some levity, and Obi-Wan really could use the sugar rations he ended up scoring from Pyre’s marketing of Cody’s impromptu ‘panic protocol’ moment in the hallway, the entire thing recorded on the ships cams.
So in the end, he supposed it was fine.