Chapter Text
Ferus awoke to a chill sunk deeper than his bones – cold, except a gash of agony burnt deep into his chest, turning each inhale into fresh hell. He gnashed his teeth against a scream. The air rang with the kind of lingering silence only terribly violent events could bring. The bombardment a Sith Lord called to murder him still rang in his ears. Voicing that he lived seemed...ill advised.
Not just a Sith Lord, either. Not with that familiar fighting style, for all another teacher sparked from the Dragon Form a hateful fury. Ferus' arms ached from the clash of sabers, yet he'd known by instinct the transition from one strike to another. He'd fallen naturally into familiar patterns from another life, from the Temple. Patterns he hadn't used – hadn't needed to use – in a decade.
Anakin.
Ferus finally found a fellow Jedi – what was left of one.
Each breath was an undertaking. His lung, shorn in two, fought for air as liquid burned fragile pink flesh and bubbled in his throat. Ferus tried to focus on the Force, to center attention on his Luminous Self and not this crude, wounded matter. Difficult, when crude matter struggled for breath, but he had a decade of practice.
Practice, and the strength of a living thing, desperate to continue.
Ferus' meager healing, enough for blaster grazes and sprains, only drew out the agony of his existence. Medic. He needed a medic. Could he drag himself to one? If a medic could be found in the hell that invasion and war made of Umbara?
Ferus clawed at rubble to brace himself and dragged one leg up to stand. The pain! Exquisite agony bloomed in place of his breath. Oh...that felt like pulling an iron bar out of crude matter. Every fiber of his chest screamed like Anakin had struck the mortal blow anew with every straining second. His leg's strength turned to water, unable to hold up. Ferus, perfect Padawan, the Council's pride, fell. Too weak. Couldn’t stand. Couldn’t manage one step towards help...if there was help to be found for a Jedi on another conquered world in the name of the Sith.
Failed, for the last time. Ferus hadn't finished what Master Windu began with Anakin's new Master. His former boyhood rival had Fallen further than he ever imagined, the Dark Side overwhelming as it never had in golden Padawan years. In a fair fight, Ferus could beat him, but arrogance! Which Sith fought fair? What meager injuries he’d managed to inflict could be easily healed by the medics he doubtlessly had and this betrayer would be back on the battlefield. More worlds would fall.
Each breath took too much effort for his failing lung. Ferus lay where he collapsed, in the rubble and dust, another broken thing on a broken world. One attempt to rise stole what effort remained in his dying crude matter. “m sorry,” he slurred, slumping against the ground. Beneath him, stretched vaster than the greatest sea, the planet's own luminous spirit – like every orchestra the Galaxy over – faltered. Umbara's song grew discordant as if individual players all jarred out of tune, overcome with a plague. The all-encompassing melody beneath him pitched inexorably towards a scream.
Ferus never so dearly desired to join as he did now.
Korriban haunted his thoughts, especially after the Sith Empire's invasion. He remembered the dust there, red as if soaked in thousands of years of blood, faceless statues standing sentinel over the tombs of Sith Lords whose unending greed for power couldn't conquer death. A grave world. Not even the hardiest plant grew there. Yet, not a silent world. A realm of ghosts, certainly enough, and greatest of all haunting spirits was that which he heard-felt-sensed before his first step on rusty red soil: the Force Presence of Korriban itself, upon which genocides had ravaged.
He was feeling one happening, right now.
“M sorry,” he repeated to the dust of Umbara, stained like Korriban by his blood. For all his Master said each day's survival was a success, he felt more like each day's life was a fall – and he'd been falling since the Fall of the Temple. Overnight, the world turned impossibly harsh. The safety of home, the warmth of family, shared food and shared space, the luxury of cleanliness, the protection of Temple Guards, the care of Creche-masters.
Gone.
As was for him, now for Umbara.
He pressed his Luminous spirit into war-ruined duracrete beneath, an attempt to sooth the Planet's own crying spirit. A futile attempt. An ant could better soothe a beached whale. It was all he could do. The Force itself, cradle and grave of every living thing, wept too. But cradled them nonetheless. The Force too suffered at the hands of the Galactic Empire, abused and twisted to terrible ends in the hands of the Sith, but what the Force could give, it gave.
How could he abandon it?
At least Ferus would join the Force at last. Had he claimed victory, had Anakin died by Ferus' blade instead? His brother in the Force would linger. No rest. No peace. Some Sith clung to their crude matter after death, haunted the worlds they died on and Ferus had not come to Umbara to redeem him. Perhaps, one more mistake. Obi Wan would have been the better choice – if anyone could find him.
The planet's song dimmed, a scream overpowering all else, the kind of haunting scream that would echo in Umbara's Soul until the heat death of the universe. Ferus felt that sound envelop him like the darkness of the cavern trapping him. This was the Dark the Sith wrought. Darker than the lightless cavern of fallen debris where Ferus couldn't see the hand stretched out in front of his face. This Dark ate at Ferus' vision. This Dark was his whole universe.
Almost all. Dimly as his own heartbeat, Ferus felt the Force nudge him. A soft touch, at first, but growing insistent. Urgent, like someone desperately trying to wake him before he slipped in a long cold sleep.
Sleep sounded delicious. Rest, after a long decade without. The ground was so comfortable to his crude matter now, the cradle of the Light more comfort still for his luminous spirit. Comfort he hadn’t felt since the Temple…
Growing closer.
“...anybody?”
The desperation had a voice. Someone else was here.
Forcing his eyes open took more effort than his attempt to stand, but Ferus wrenched himself from that final sleep just enough to cry out. All that passed his lips was a rasp. His throat was too dry, his lips too chapped. A trickle of liquid crawled across his face. His tongue darted out, desperate for the moisture and came back with the sharp metallic tang of blood. Still it moistened his dry throat.
“Here” Too soft. His voice broke into a coughing fit louder than any call. Too loud. Too much. The retching force tore through battered muscles and fatal wounds. His throat had been treated more kindly by Force Choke. Finally the wracking, retching coughs subsided, leaving Ferus too weak to do anything but slump back down against the gray rubble.
And listen.
Footsteps. Someone found him. Someone cared. His hearing faded as the final pull of the Force strengthened, but through that increased connection, he could feel the Light of another soul like the first warm rays of sun after a harsh winter, like a single flower sprouting from a plum tree – a single blossom of warmth. After the cold and dark of a decade it was the most beautiful sight he'd ever seen.
“...m a medic!”
A medic. Oh Blessed Force! His remaining strength was dying fast but perhaps this civilian medic could save him still? Ferus might have failed Umbara but could a medic ensure he survived that failure?
He had to trust. The Force flowed through all living things. That a medic arrived in his time of need was no coincidence. His throat was too damaged, his voice weak, his strength bleeding out but still Ferus summoned what he had and called – half with crude matter and half with the Force.
Nothing. He had no voice left.
“Hang on.” He felt hands on his limp wrist, the sudden, overwhelming concern of another living being soft amid the harshness of his own dying body and the screaming soul of a tortured planet. The medic's Light was a flickering lamp in the darkness, a spirit curling in on itself from loneliness, as war-weary as Ferus, tired in a way that scarred the soul. Oh, Ferus felt that. He reached out to the other’s soul with his own, to soothe as he would another Jedi. He wasn’t dying alone in failure.
Ferus opened his eyes.
Blank white armor. A Stormtrooper.
Flinching took more effort than he had energy. Ferus could barely lift his head, could only watch the Stormtrooper approach – the light from their helmet cutting through darkness – with the dull-eyed disinterest of one who had already accepted death. The blank-featured armor was entirely at odds with the soul Ferus could still feel.
The Masters said to trust the Force
...as they died.
Ferus could feel, like an eclipse, the sudden shadowing of the Force on Umbara – in the Temple – in the beating heart of his family. The Masters died there, ten years ago, beginning with the Guards, like the death of stars all at once. The Temple turned to a realm of Death like Korriban. Umbara's soul sounded so like the Force Nexus on Coruscant as to transport Ferus back there. Above all the screams in crude matter and luminous spirit alike – the ominous creak of plastoid as blank whiteness of armor marched inexorably towards them. Invading.
“Run Ferus! Run and don't look back.”
Master Tachi told him that, and Ferus obeyed his Master to the last. He didn't look back. He ran with all the speed he could muster, the Force giving his feet wings and wind snapping at his robes from the power of his sprint. He never looked back.
He hadn't needed to.
They had a bond in the Force – Ferus and Siri – strengthened over years as Padawan and Master. Their Luminous Selves tied together and no-one who shared such compassion and love could simply close off all feeling from each other, so Ferus couldn't shut off their bond now. He ran, unharmed and untouched for the moment by the war and death around him. Yet he felt the blaster bolts, each impact as if he were the one impacted, as if he were the one dying beneath the bolts of a dozen. A hundred. A million times over.
Siri couldn't shut the bond off either. Ferus felt the bolts, the burning sear of each one as if cauterizing his own flesh.
She, at least, died defending, died on her feet deflecting bolts and flinging the first of the new Sith Empire's men away – the Stormtroopers, they would become known as – but back then no one knew them. They had come out of nowhere. Sheer numbers overcame her in the end, but she had made the invaders work for her death.
Here, now, Ferus couldn't even get to his knees.
The Stormtrooper's touch was shockingly gentle – this Sith-bred Soldier of War who had brought down the Jedi Temple. Amid his own over-loud heartbeat, Ferus could still feel the brightness of the beautiful soul he never expected of one who had fired on his family, who had hunted down all they could and spared no one they had found.
Ferus had learned as a child what happened when Sith invaded a Jedi Temple. History was an important subject to Jedi and well-taught. He gave it the same devotion he had all his education and the subject had come to him just as easily. But the Sith were distant history, the scars of their empire healed after a thousand years of peace since the Russan Reformation.
Until they weren't.
He'd gone for the Creche where Clans were already evacuating because the Crechemasters too were well-versed students of history. But the Stormtroopers had known of their escape tunnels and the paths of their evacuation routes. They shot down Clans (children) without mercy, without hesitation. He'd followed cries in both the Force and his ears to find one such Clan, Crechemaster already splayed on the floor with dozens of smoking blaster wounds (like Master Siri). Younglings huddled behind the corpse. Stormtroopers closed in on the children like the Sith's power over their home.
Ferus had only been a Padawan and felt nothing like the oft-complimented old soul, but he would fight. And, he resolved, tell the younglings to run as his Master had told him.
A shock of fear, like a bucket of ice-water, snapped Ferus from the cage of memory to the sight of a Stormtrooper's retreat. The medic added new horror to that which lingered in his mind. Terror hit him like a physical blow. The fear felt sickening. Overwhelming.
(Like the Temple).
Ferus choked on fear, the fear dragging him back to his home as he'd seen it last, stumbling over the bodies of dead Guards, Masters, Knights
Fellow Padawans.
Younglings.
He hadn't saved them all. Sometimes he wondered if he saved himself, because Ferus felt like he was drowning – in blood, in fear. Being a Jedi, once so natural and easy to him, had become a daily struggle for survival where following the very code he'd sworn himself to would only lead to death. He'd done nothing but drown in the last decade and at last his lungs gave up on him. He couldn't breathe, and whether the desperate lack of air came from his crude matter or Luminous Spirit, he couldn't tell, only that both needed air.
A phantom sensation of a hand tugged a braid he no longer carried.
(I am one with the Force and the Force is one with me)
The planet's soul rose to a keen. Duracrete dust flecked his cheeks and stung his eyes. He could smell the ash, the metallic stench of his own blood, feel the soft dark wool of his own tattered robes, growing wet but not cold. Dimly, he registered the light the medic carried, a fragile glow that shone bright only because of the complete darkness around it.
Ferus had saved something of the Jedi, hadn't he?
What was there to fear? No younglings depended on him now, no other lives hung in the balance. Only his own inexorably slipped from his grasp. He was dying already and a Stormtrooper would only save him from a slower, lingering death.
Fear still drummed deep in his chest, but no longer did it drag him down with cold dark currents of water. He could swim through this fear, could stand without it reaching his throat. The realization of his death came slow and creeping into his bones. He would die. He would join the Force. Join the rest of his family he hadn't seen in ten long years. See Master Tachi again.
Sorry I didn't make you a Grandmaster, he thought.
(There is no death, there is the Force)
He accepted it. This was here. This was now. He was dying. Death, at least, held nothing so evil as war – even in the Sith hells. He couldn't even hold his head up. Fear was a distant stranger. Again he felt the rush of warmth, the pain dimming, opened himself up once more –
The Force didn't greet him. Air did, with a startling painlessness. His lung worked without even a twinge. How easy it was to do something a simple as breathe, the lack of agony a joy in of itself. The pain hadn't diminished because his luminous parted with his crude matter, but because his crude matter knit back together. He blinked again, looked up – his head lost its leaden weight – to find the Medic kneeling over him, fear replaced with determination rooted deeper than any fleeting emotion. In one hand he held a needle, the vaccine that pulled Ferus away from Oneness with the Force (away from Death). A mercy – and from a Stormtrooper of all people.
“Thank you,” he whispered. The Stormtrooper medic startled again, wariness rising like mist clouding the dawn even as healing hands remained steady. Ferus marveled at this soul, who gave healing to a foe, someone who couldn't possibly be trusted. He had missed this kindness in the face of horror, thought it lost with home and family, but clearly Light shone from the most unexpected places. He felt his lips quirking with a smile, soft as the medic's hands.
“Beautiful,” he whispered reverently.
His eye stung, washing out in burning, stinging red as his own blood marred his vision. A moment later gentle hands swiped a soft cloth over his lid. Ferus blinked his gaze open again, shivering involuntarily. Without the fires of agony burning him up, his lifeblood grew chilly and Ferus grew aware of the cold around him.
Again, gentle hands helped. The medic pulled out a sheet with a metallic sheen, thin as tissue paper. “Hang on, just a moment.”
Ferus didn't have anything to hang on to. His whole world broke apart when the first Stormtroopers invaded the Temple. Now a Stormtooper gathered those pieces back together with gentle touches, pulling the blanket over him like he was an unsettled initiate still.
He shut his eyes, memories brimming of the (his) dead Creche-master, all the initiates, all the younglings, all his friends and teachers. But he focused on the arms lifting him up against a solid chest, the steady beat of a heart beneath death-pale armor, the comforting murmurs of a person who cared and beneath all that crude matter the medic's soul blooming bright, the worst of dark shadows easing and old losses beginning to heal.
Instead of drowning in the past, Ferus took his first sluggish steps to a future shore in the medic's arms.