Work Text:
Leia had been captured. By the Empire.
It was Ferus' worst nightmare come true. Ever since she had involved herself with the Rebel Alliance, his role as Leia's protector, hidden in plain sight, had become much more difficult. His assumed identity as Fess Ilee did not lend itself to heroics, so he could not follow her on the missions for her father that were benefiting the Alliance. He made reasons to find himself off of Alderaan and in that sector of space during her missions when he could. That is what had saved him from the incomprehensible fate that had befallen everyone else on Alderaan.
Bail had known the Empire was up to no good with its latest weapon. There had been that whole debacle of him being captured at the signing of the Corellian Treaty two years ago, where he was taken with other Rebel leaders to an in-progress battle station that Rebel Intelligence pointed to as the same behemoth that had kicked off this disaster.
Bail's capture had actually been the first time Ferus literally had nightmares about Leia being captured by the Empire. It had always been a concern, as a young child there was the possibility that she could be kidnapped to force Bail into the open as a rebel sympathizer rather than the perfect imperial senator that he pretended to be. As she entered her teenage years and began to take on her role in the political world, and then the Rebel Alliance, those fears only grew. But the night that Bail's capture was reported back to the Alderaanian palace was the first time that Ferus dreamt of not being able to sense or find Leia anywhere on the palace grounds, and the mechanical breath of what Anakin had become seemed constantly just behind him.
He hoped that wherever Leia was now, (and she couldn't be dead, he would be able to feel that if it had happened, she couldn't be dead!) that she was not with her biological father.
Ferus had been aware of the ongoing Operation Skyhook to investigate this latest imperial monstrosity. Bail and his Alliance had sent strike teams out to all of the rumored locations of plans for the superweapon. In the end, Polis Massa had come back to haunt him. The Alliance strike team there had received the schematics of the battle station and had relayed that to the Tantive IV, which Leia was once again using for Rebel activities under the guise of a diplomatic mission.
Bail's frantic call had been excruciating. Bail was a steadfast presence, and seeing him terrified by the reports that the Tantive IV had been destroyed had shaken Ferus to his core. “Yes,” he had said, “I will find out what has happened to her.” He didn't know how exactly, but he would.
As he had upon leaving the Jedi Order, Ferus fell back on his talent for slicing.
It was something that had always come easily to him. From his first technology classes in the Temple, the logic of how systems worked had just made sense. Slicing was a useful skill on missions, so when it came time to choose elective classes, he had allowed himself to take more slicing classes as something easy to fill out his schedule as he pushed himself harder in other areas.
It was a good thing that he had. The core subjects of a Jedi’s schooling alone were a much better education than most of the galaxy got, and he was prepared in multiple disciplines for what turned out to be transferable skills for employment after he left the Jedi Order. With his diplomatic training, he could have found work in any level of planetary or interplanetary government. He could have put his knowledge of starship and droid repair to work in a well paying job on any world. He had a strong base of knowledge and an accredited record to pursue higher education if he wanted to work in a scientific or technical development field. He had more options than he could count from various skills he has picked up on missions and from courses taught by Masters hosting studies in art, literature, and cultures of the Galaxy.
He could have done any of those things. But he found meaning in his work as a slicer. His crazy idea of starting something to protect whistleblowers from corrupt corporations and governments - he still couldn't believe that Roan had wholeheartedly thrown himself into it. But that was who Roan was, his partner in every way. Ferus could never repay Roan for what he had given him… and now he would never have the chance to even try.
But they had been good years. Ferus couldn't bring himself to regret them. His skills as a slicer made the whole operation possible. Creating false identities was part of it, but so much of what made it hard for people to hide were the traces of themselves that they left across the holonet. The holonet was much more of an integral part of everyone's life outside the Jedi Order than in it, and it made security difficult. But, because Ferus knew how to slice it, he also knew how to protect it, and he had created a life for himself with Roan that had meaning in helping others with those skills.
Roan was gone, but Leia still needed his help.
Brushing off the ghosts of his past, Ferus moved to the paneling that hid his slicing station. Bail had paid for the best for his ship. He could slice the Imperial systems without a problem.
Bail. He couldn't even begin to wrap his head around the fact that he and Breha were gone. That Alderaan was gone. It was just the latest in a long string of losses in his life, but that didn't make it any easier.
Ferus just hoped that what he found would not be confirmation of what Bail had heard that the Tantive IV had been destroyed, and everyone aboard it killed.
It couldn't be true.
He would have felt it if Leia had been killed.
This was the last thing Bail had asked him to do, he could not fail to bring Leia to safety.
Slicing the local Imperial systems was easy, but not fruitful. They didn't have any information about what was happening in the Arkanis sector. He needed to get closer to one of the Imperial communication relays near a hyperspace lane that was a routing point for data from elsewhere in the Galaxy. There were a couple that Bail had made him aware of from Rebel Intelligence, in case he did need to make use of his slicing skills for something like this.
The only relay points that didn't have proximity alarms were the ones at the busiest jump points, so if he wanted to use one of those, he would have an audience, and would have to work fast if he didn't want to arouse suspicion by loitering far longer than it would take to calculate the jump to hyperspace. That wasn't going to be a problem however. He could do the prep work now, so all he had to do upon arrival was press a few buttons.
As he worked, Ferus caught sight of himself in the metal’s gleaming reflection. The years had not been especially kind to him, but the circumstances of his mission had necessitated it. It killed him a little bit to be the yes man, the sycophant. But he had his diplomatic training to fall back on, and protecting Leia was worth it.
Anakin Skywalker would never recognize Fess Ilee, but few of the people from his past life would.
Ferus had been a mess for a couple of years before Bail helped him sort himself out. Starting out as a herder on Alderaan had been a mistake. The heartache of losing his dream of reuniting the Jedi, of once again losing everyone, and above all of losing Roan had broken him. While the Alderaanian plains were beautiful and he liked the animals, isolation was not good for him. Bail had seen this. He had seen that their communications had become less frequent, seen the way depression clung to him, and the way his clothes began to hang off of him, and called him back to the palace. They spoke often behind closed doors. Eventually Ferus broke down and wept. Wept for Roan. For the Jedi Order. For Siri. For the Republic. For Darra. For Bellassa. For Fy-Tor-Ana and Garen Muln. For The Eleven. For his dream of hiding Jedi survivors and other Force Sensitives on that asteroid.
Bail was kind. Bail was patient.
Bail held him accountable.
Ferus wanted to be there for Leia. To protect her when everyone else he had tried to protect had died. While Ferus couldn't bring himself to crawl out of the abyss of grief for his own sake, he could do so for hers.
But actually, he couldn't.
As much as he wanted to be better, to be who he was before Vader's lightsaber had pierced Roan's chest, depression still clung to him.
Bail continued to spend time with him. That made Ferus feel worse. Bail was a busy man, he didn't have time to babysit a failed Jedi. A failed rebel. A failed husband.
Bail delicately suggested that Ferus see a neurotherapist to talk about everything that had happened to him.
As much as Ferus knew that would help, he couldn't be responsible for anyone else's death. Any shard of who he was now had been part of the mosaic of every part of who he had been. And it was all dangerous. Jedi. Rebel. Spy. Inquisitor. He couldn't tell anyone, anyone but Bail, who already knew. Adding his weight to Bail couldn't hurt him. Bail had Anakin's daughter. Nothing could be more dangerous than that.
If he wouldn't see another living being, what about a droid, Bail had suggested. Balancing his neurochemistry could help.
Well, that was probably true.
Early in his apprenticeship Siri had called a halt on his training. She was worried about him, and the way he worried, stressed, and held himself to standards that were “unattainable” and “not at all necessary.” He could recognize a piece of truth in what she said. His anxiety did affect his performance in certain areas, and if there was a way to fix that, he was on board.
“That's not the point, but I'll take it,” Siri had said, and ruffled his hair.
First they tried a different type of mediation. Obi-Wan had struggled with this too, Siri had told him, and while he wasn't sure he believed that, she did seem knowledgeable in the way a friend would who had helped someone with this before.
The meditation helped. So did the extra mindfulness exercises Siri taught him. But he still struggled.
Siri had been as gentle as Bail when she brought it up, and she'd used the same expression of “balancing your neurochemistry.” Both of them knew he'd listen to the scientific explanation, damn it.
Finding the right anxiety medication for a Jedi was not always straightforward. In some ways, the Force behaved a lot like anxiety. A sudden stab of wrongness of a situation or tense feeling could be a warning from the Force, or it could be your brain misfiring and telling you there was something to be stressed about when there wasn't. The healers at the Temple were experienced with this however, and it hadn't taken long for Ferus to see improvement. It really had helped him then.
When leaving the Order, he had quadruple refilled his prescription before departing, and found a pharmacy to refill it where he settled on Bellassa. Over time he'd experimented successfully with titrating down off of it, as he wasn't living quite as high stakes a life as he had been. When the Republic fell to the Empire he had looked for it again, but by then the supply chains were all messed up and that particular medication was no longer available on Bellassa. He hadn't wanted to experiment with another then, there were too many moving parts.
But with Bail, his life had quieted again. He could use a droid as a prescriber and figure out what worked for him, both in breaking this fog he lived in, and not affecting the way he could connect to the Force.
He found one that worked for his brain and with the Force. It changed his body, swinging the pendulum the opposite direction it had been in his depression, but that was okay. He was more at peace than he had been since before that horrible, horrible night when he had woken up to what remained of his connection to the Force telling him that Jedi everywhere were dying.
He was at peace, and he was ready to protect Leia. That was what mattered.
It also helped to remember how when he had been self conscious about the amount of scars on his body, Roan had asked for the stories behind them, in detail, from those missions. Roan had memorized the names of the lives saved associated with each scar, and would list them as he touched them on Ferus' body. Roan would probably have something to say to him about getting caught up in his own head about this too. Even though he wasn't there to say it, it helped Ferus be kinder to himself. Roan would be delighted by any way Ferus' body changed. He would love to play with his now longer hair…
Roan, and Ferus for that matter, had always liked the lighter streak of hair that sprouted from his forehead. Blonde in his youth it had turned gray within the first year of the Empire. The streak had to go, dyed darker shortly after he entered the palace. The Empire knew what he looked like, and a bright streak of hair was too distinctive.
With Vader especially knowing he was alive, he had needed a name other than Ferus Olin if he was going to be part of the Alderaanian palace. Obi-Wan was still going by his full name it seemed, but Obi-Wan hadn't spent years running security for people being hunted by those corporations or their governments now had he? He very briefly considered going by Roan's nickname for him, but that was just - too much. Any assumed mission name, nickname, or diminutive of his childhood wasn't on the table either, if by some chance whatever part of Anakin was still in Vader remembered them.
No, he had needed a new name, for the new person he was to become. He wanted it to be something that would be easy for a child to pronounce. No one but Bail could know that he was there for Leia's protection, but if there were subtle ways he could endear himself to her he would take it. The hope was that he could be a strange but beloved uncle, spending his time in the gardens and greenhouses, and hopefully Leia would come to him, making his role as her protector all the more feasible if she naturally wanted to be around him. And what child didn't love to dig in the dirt? Well- not her father, he was never part of the "dig a big hole" efforts most younglings seemed instinctively predisposed to. Dirt was too much like sand he had said. Whatever that meant.
Leia had no such aversions. Much to the dismay of palace staff charged with keeping her neatly dressed and presentable to the various dignitaries and whatnot who visited the palace, she loved to play in the dirt and the mud as a child. Unfortunately she was much more likely to rip up his botany projects than she was to aid him. The eccentric uncle idea hadn't worked out for them. The child detested him.
He still loved her.
His preparations completed, he lifted the paneling back into place for the hyperspace jump to the intersection point of the Perlemian Trade Route and the Hydian Way. That junction was about as crowded as interstellar space could be, so it would not be unusual for his ship to sit there a while under the guise of making a trip to yet another populus world.
As the stars melted into lines, he settled back into his seat and thought of Leia.
While he wasn't able to do much directly to help educate her, even if she didn't like him he could still teach her things.
In the garden he taught her stealth. She wanted to rip up what he was trying to cultivate there? Fine. But she would have to learn how to do it without detection. It was not too dissimilar to one of the games younglings played in the Temple. He could not teach her the aspect of hiding oneself in the Force, but he could teach her, and her frequent accomplice Winter, to move quietly and out of sight - reinforced by whether or not he let her succeed in wreaking havoc with whatever flowering brush was her latest target.
Her mischief, irreverence, and blatant disregard for any person or rule set meant to keep her safe was not unlike that of her biological father, and that did scare him a little bit.
It made his heart ache that, like Anakin, she hated him.
That is why it was so critical that he locate her, and rescue her if necessary. She was nineteen and rash, so close to the age Anakin was when Darra-
Ferus still had not forgiven himself for his role in Darra’s death. Anakin shared the guilt with him, or at least he should, but Ferus was still to blame. The one time he hadn't been such a stickler for the rules, for what was proper.
Darra had just been the first of many, many deaths.
Ferus didn't know why he seemed so targeted for tragedy. Every time he felt like he belonged somewhere, misfortune struck. First Darra, so he had left the Jedi. He made a home for himself on Bellassa, fell in love, found a new calling in protecting people who had stood up for justice. Then the war happened, and then the Empire.
“We can still fight,” Roan had said. Brave, intelligent, funny, gorgeous Roan. Who could not touch the Force, but had the heart of a Jedi in so many ways. So they started a resistance movement. The Eleven. And then Obi-Wan Kenobi dropped back into his life and put him back on the Jedi path. Raina found the asteroid, and Ferus had the foolish thought that he could make a real difference in the Galaxy by creating a place where Jedi could safely gather to regroup.
His whole life, all he had ever tried to do was the right thing. And it seemed like with every stolen moment of happiness and success, death and defeat followed. Once again, on Alderaan, he had been trying to do right by protecting Leia. And now the whole blasted planet was incomprehensibly gone.
This was going to be different, he told himself, pushing down the sick feeling in his throat. He was going to find Leia, and take her out of danger. It was the least he could do for Bail and Breha after all they had done for him. He was not under any delusions that he was likely to survive this, but he could do this one last act. For Alderaan.
Due to Leia's contempt for him, he never had her as a little assistant in the greenhouse. Even so, there were ways he could help to teach her the skills she would need as a leader in Bail's Alliance. Bail did spend a lot of time with him, asking his advice as a Jedi on Alliance strategy, asking questions about the Sith, and above all, discussing Leia. Ferus outlined the education modules he had gone through at the Temple, comparing notes with Bail about what they thought was critical to Leia's success and safety. Ferus taught Bail several youngling and padawan games that helped improve awareness, memory and problem solving skills to pass along to Leia. There were a few times he caught sight of her playing them with Winter and it warmed his heart.
While Ferus had known Leia's biological father, Bail had been close with her mother. She seemed a remarkable woman, Ferus was baffled as to what she saw in Anakin. Bail spoke of her fondly, and Ferus could see her attributes in little Leia as well.
It was late one night, pouring over strategy for the Alliance that Bail finally told him in detail what had happened to Padmé Amidala. Bail had cried, and Ferus just felt sick. Anakin. How could Anakin do that to someone he loved? Ferus would die before he hurt Roan at all, but especially like that.
Anakin had killed Roan. And Ferus had done nothing to stop him.
Ferus would not let Anakin kill his daughter the way he killed his wife. The way he had killed Roan.
The stars reverted from lines to points, and Ferus stood, crossing back over to the panel on the wall and lifted it off.
It really was not difficult at all to access the Imperial relay and scrape every single piece of data from it. They needed better security, it was embarrassing honestly. Not taking the time to process any of the data, Ferus calculated the next jump point, a random spot in interstellar space. His eyes stayed a little too long on the glowing point of Bellassa on his system's navicomputer, but he tore himself away and hit the hyperdrive.
Alderaan is, was, so close to his second home. Bellassa is only one grid square down from the Alderaan system. Always there, with Roan's parents and extended family, but Ferus never returned. He would not risk Roan's family, or any other Bellassan with his presence.
Ferus stood, stretched, and put all of that out of his mind as he got to work on the data he had downloaded.
A lot of it was irrelevant. He needed to search for keywords if he was going to be able to process through this in any functional amount of time. “Tantive” and "CR90 corvette” returned nothing, and “rebel” returned far too many results to be useful. Bail had said it was a Star Destroyer that had encountered the Tantive, but he had no information about which one it may be. Bail told him this took place above Tatooine, perhaps that would ping in the relevant datasets? Yes! There was an entry for a prisoner number, and it was noted that the prisoner had been transferred to… the Death Star. Well, that made locating her simple. It either still was or had recently been at Alderaan because there was nothing else in the Galaxy that would have been capable of destroying the entire planet.
The Alderaan system would be a quick hyperspace jump away, but he needed a plan. He would not survive an outright assault on the station long enough to assist Leia, so that left sneaking aboard under a false identity. Killing a stormtrooper to steal their armor and then joining the next troop transport would probably be the quickest and easiest way aboard, and the helmet had the added bonus of anonymity, but that had a glaring problem that he would no longer fit that uniform. An Imperial officer would likely be a safer bet, as long as no one knew the officer whose credentials he stole.
Ferus punched in the coordinates to the navicomputer to get started on the jump to the Alderaan system, and rubbed his hands over his face. There were multiple Imperial bases on Delaya, the other habitable planet in the Alderaan system. If the Death Star was still there, then striking one of those locations would have the benefit of proximity, so he could likely get more information about Leia’s precise whereabouts now that he had her prisoner number.
Or, someone's prisoner number anyway. If this whole operation ended up rescuing some spice runner instead he was going to very be upset.
It was going to be a short trip into the Alderaan system, and Ferus steeled himself for what was next. He needed to carry himself with a bluster befitting an officer of a fascist regime. He had to say that as distasteful as the persona of the palace sycophant was, it was easier to put on than this would be. He had spent so many years as Fess Ilee, this would just be another role. But if he died rescuing Leia, he would die as Ferus Olin.
Ferus' ship jolted back into realspace, and he dipped it downwards into Delaya’s atmosphere. Landing near an Imperial base was relatively straightforward, several were in densely populated areas where a ship landing was nothing of note.
Ferus rose from his seat, and again crossed to his slicing station. He would need a layout of the base, and if he could get anything else about Leia's whereabouts he should do that now, as he would likely be departing in an Imperial shuttle, and probably in a rush.
There was nothing spectacular about the structure of the Imperial base. Ferus committed it to memory and downloaded it to his handheld device just in case. He threw his mobile slicing equipment into a small bag with it in the chance it was necessary while in the base or on the Death Star itself.
Which, as he ran a few commands through his terminal, was still in the Alderaan system, apparently having not moved significantly. Its location was the same as where the display still claimed Alderaan was in orbit. A fresh wave of grief washed over Ferus, and he staggered back into the pilot's seat.
Breathe.
He needed to breathe.
He had helped shape Leia, but why would his influence be the deciding factor in who she would become when Obi-Wan of all people had raised Anakin? It was not difficult to argue that Obi-Wan had failed.
Leia liked to argue.
It irritated her to no end how passive Fess Ilee was, and she would often try to goad him into an argument just to try and force something other than docile acceptance of everyone else's views on him. He let her bait him, and used these verbal spars to improve her debate skills, all while appearing to be the slimy courtier he presented himself to be.
Ferus couldn't imagine what she must be going through. Losing her planet, losing her family and everyone she knew. Being able to love and let go was something Anakin could never do. What if the loss of Alderaan had turned her to the Dark Side? Was that even possible when she had never been trained in the ways of the Force? What if Anakin realized that she was his daughter and trained her as a Sith?
Ferus pushed himself back up out of the chair. He needed to get moving. In any case, Leia was likely running out of time, and he refused to let her be another person he couldn't save.
She would not be another victim of Anakin.
Back at his slicing terminal, Ferus sorted through personnel records for the base, looking for a target to assume the identity of.
Leia was so much like Anakin. And as much as he loved her, that scared him. She could be rash, temperamental, and if he was honest with himself, she was downright cruel to him at times.
He had to reach her. Quickly.
A deep frown set on his face as he selected his target of an officer who was a rough approximation of himself in size and stature. Even when it was necessary, taking a life was a horrible act.
Anakin had taken so many lives. Needlessly and cruelly.
A notification pinged on his terminal. The search running in the background for her prisoner number had turned up a location of cell number 2187, detention block AA-23.
If this base had access to the layout of that part of the battle station… yes! He could plan his route through the station from here.
Ferus' eye caught a small notification on the display. Selecting it, a box expanded outward and text rolled across the screen.
A prisoner escape. From cell 2187 in detention block AA-23.
Leia.
The clever girl had gotten out of her cell! It had to be her, who else could do that?
Who else.
Anakin.
The realization struck him like the barbed tail of a nashtah.
He didn’t need to go.
After tracking her across the Galaxy, and being prepared to die in a direct assault, he did not need to board the battle station and rescue her.
Leia was like Anakin, but that was not solely a bad thing.
She was strong, intelligent, commanding, and quick witted, qualities that Ferus had once seen in Anakin too.
But where Anakin was selfish, Leia gave of herself, always willing to help another in need.
Her fearlessness was like Anakin's.
Ferus had watched her grow, and subtly influenced her tutoring so that she was as capable as a Jedi without ever training her in the ways of the Force. Leia was kind and giving, with a good heart and strong sense of justice. She was not going to fall to the Dark Side like Anakin had.
The warning that Ferus had given Obi-Wan all of those years ago about Anakin, it did not apply to Leia. She was the best of Anakin, even if she did also have some of his flaws.
She was her own person, and a capable one at that from how she had been raised.
By the time he made it to the battle station, she would be gone.
He had already saved her.
She didn't need him anymore.
Leia could handle this.
Ferus started takeoff procedures on his ship and smiled.