Being told they were out and actually seeing them is wholly different and Cody can’t stop staring at the little cribs of sleeping babies.

He’s seen it before and yet somehow he feels like he’s never seen it at the same time.

He’s seen vode decanted before, has actually helped when one tube had an emergency fault and the shiny came out earlier than it should have but still ‘viable’ as the longnecks had said. He never found out what happened to that particular vode, if they survived, if they grew up, if they became another trooper.

But somehow… somehow its different, when the little heads contain fuzzy red hairs.

Somehow, seeing their tiny little hands are different when its Obi-Wan’s clones and Cody doesn’t know why.

Just that it is.

Five little heads, four pairs of green eyes with the last one having blue eyes and Cody can’t stop staring at them, his hand pressed to the glass keeping the rest of the temple from the little cadets.

The Jedi had set up this place for the troopers decanted vode to begin with, something about keeping the babies safe from the environment and immunity.

The troopers didn’t have the heart to tell their Jedi that they had stronger immunity from the get go, engineered by the longnecks and had been more flattered by the amount of care the Jedi were showing their youngest.

Now there’s little clone Jedi in there too and Cody knows he’s not the only one that’s come by to see the little Skywalker, Kenobi and Yoda clones.

He knows the others will come to see the Secura clones once they come too, knows the entire 327th will come to see them along with curious Jedi and other curious vode.

But Cody had been shyly invited.

Obi-Wan had arrived at their quarters, startling a barely awake Cody as he had thought the man still asleep in the temp quarters he had to move into for a week. Obi-Wan’s room had a leak spring into it, so it had required some repairs to ensure it was still a viable living space, the sealant needed time to harden without someone walking over it.

Two days after the first leak, Cody and the guest bedroom had also sprung leaks, informing the repair team that it was under the entire floor in that section and they had gotten to work with Cody too now relegated to a temporary bedroom.

Thankfully, their living quarter and kitchen was fine, the water line went under their bedrooms and the neighboring quarters, but Master Windu had been unfortunate enough that it was his entire quarters instead of just the bedrooms.

Cody had thought he’d be nice, since Obi-Wan had yet to wake up and arrive, usually the first of the two, had started on breakfast for the two and was halfway into the pancake batter thinking Obi-Wan was asleep.

Instead of sleeping though, Obi-Wan had apparently been awake all night and looked it too when he suddenly slammed into the quarters, frazzled and disheveled but before Cody could make more than a concerned noise, Obi-Wan had grabbed Cody’s hand and pulled him along, eyes wide.

“The babies are decanted.”

The sentence had Cody silenced and following, suddenly nervous and eager and now fully awake for sure, despite not having his caff.

That was it, he’d been there ever since.

It might have been a minute, an hour, a karking day but Cody couldn’t bring himself from moving, could simply stand there, staring at the little heads. Only when a warm hand wraps around the one hanging limp at his side does Cody manage to force his eyes away, turning his head to meet Obi-Wan’s hesitant, shy smile.

Without words, he laces their fingers and holds on tightly, wondering if all the hints he had carefully been dropping had finally gotten through, wondering if Obi-Wan had finally realized that Cody had been following all those little courting traditions Jedi seemed to have.

He didn’t ask, instead he simply squeezed Obi-Wan’s hand with his, watching as Obi-Wan shifted closer, leaned his head on Cody’s shoulder and went back to watching the little redheads.

Slowly, Cody turned his head back, wondering… well… what if one of those little redhead’s had amber eyes… would that be so bad?

‘…No, I don’t think that would be so bad,’ He thought airily, feeling like he could take on Grievous alone if the bastard cyborg suddenly rose from the dead again. ‘Not bad at all.’