Chapter Text
Jedi Master Feemor has a lot of roles and at least a handful of identities.
In the olden days, he would have belonged to the Auxiliary Corps, whose main task was to support all other branches, temples and concerns of the Jedi Order; the most Jedi in the Jedi Order, service-wise. Nowadays, however, there is no specific branch he can truly identify himself with and belong to; just a measly “Jedi Sentinel” noted on his profile, which is more of a self-identification than anything else.
Still, he is a Jedi.
And, right now, as the clones of Jango Fett that have been so quickly assimilated into Jedi life in at least the Coruscanti temple blank out and turn against those they were so respectful and even protective about, being a Jedi is fatally dangerous.
In the fabric of the Force, the various presences of his brethren – however dimmed they have been by war these three years – have already begun to be wrenched out, each leaving a gaping, empty wound and a trail of jagged, acidic darkness. Betrayal, loss and grief swamp all of his senses, and it is all he can do to keep from crumpling onto the floor.
Ironically, the urgency of the moment keeps him upright and move, move, move. The temple needs to be evacuated as soon as possible, and they might even have to leave Coruscant entirely.
That is, if the clones do not manage to gun them down first as they flee, or shoot them out of the sky should they reach that far.
Blasterfire and lightsabre humming clash with each other from various directions, echoing in the stone corridors beneath the stampeed of multitudes of feet and the quickly growing miasma of betrayal-anger-grief-loss-confusion-desperation.
Dimly, Fee wonders if this is what the Jedi of old felt during the Sacking of Coruscant.
Dimly, he notices beings in Jedi robes crumpled forlornly near so many scorches, also marked by those scorches, as he passes by on his way to the crèche.
Sometimes, living masters shove their padawans at him instead, when they are notified of where he is going.
The so-called Padawan Pack have even managed to track him down. They cling to him in the Force and nearly in reality, like they did after he and his “clean-up” battalion had managed to keep them alive through the wet, cold, muddy, blood-soaked horror that was Jabiim. The battalion shouldn’t have been there, wouldn’t have been there but for Obi-Wan’s personal plea, which the High Council and the High Command reprimanded both for after the fact.
But these flickering-but-there lights were worth it, and more.
And they are, even if he has to claw and bite and kick and punch for each of the lights he manages to keep alive for yet more minutes, hours, days, weeks.
Even so, neither fury nor desperation subsumes him. Even grief gradually becomes a distant thing, as he continues to summon the lightsabres of the fallen defenders to him for safekeeping along the way. The songs of the kyber are mournful and pained, but they also barricade him from the harsher, more poignant versions that the padawans generate, that the universe radiates, and he gratefully hides behind it for even a sliver of reprieve.
The barricade helps, too, when he arrives on the crèche level and finds that some clones have also wrought havoc there, if apparently not for long.
Not without casualties and fatalities, either.
But some crèchemasters are still standing, still here enough to help wrangle their charges and necessary supplies for emergency evacuation, so Fee focuses on just taking charge on the younglings who have recently lost their guardians, in addition to the padawans that have previously been entrusted to him and those that have sought him out.
The oldest and injured crèchemasters offer to guard their retreat to the hidden speeder bay, as they will not be able to keep up with so much physical exertion. Fee is grateful for their sacrifice, but he is not so grateful when they dump their charges on him: the youngest of the crèchelings and a mix of older ones. He can sub for a crèchemaster or clanmaster for a time, but he is not skilled in wrangling younglings indefinitely! Especially not this many!
*
There is a ragtag collection of various transports in the hidden speeder bay one level down; all unmarked, all supplied with bare necessities for an emergency evacuation.
Better yet, there are a series of storerooms with prepacked, labelled and updated personal kitbags for various species and other supplies just on the edge of it, where Fee can send the padawans and senior initiates to to raid while he quickly discusses with the other guardians about their choices of transports and directions.
In the end, he chooses a sturdy, spacious, thoroughly enclosed modified cargo landspeeder that can hold all of his charges plus their supplies, if squished together and even one on top of the other. He tells the others nothing of his route, and neither do they. It is enough that all of them know when to start and to which direction, staggering their departures so that this hidden gate into the temple remains hidden for yet longer.
This way, even if one of them gets captured, they will not be able to blab even under torture.
They will not lose too many of the younglings, too.
It is a very bleak, very harsh, very pessimistic outlook, perhaps, but every one of them feels that it is highly necessary for their very survival, at this point.
For that matter, Fee is to depart first, as he brings with him the very youngest of their people and the greatest number of younglings overall, not to mention the lightsabres of the fallen.
“The Order will survive with you,” Master Vant swears in their parting, and tears spring onto both of their eyes.
“With you, too,” he swears back, prays, demands, even as his eyes move away from hers and over her shoulder, to the row of anxious junior initiates that she will bring with her in a somewhat-too-small airspeeder towards CoCo Town.
There is no more time for more farewells, after that, not if Fee wants to keep to the agreed schedule, and he does need to keep it.
Still, Master Ali-Alann manages to stuff two more crates of rations into the driver’s cabin and who knows what else into the back with the younglings while Fee moves the overstuffed van slowly towards the opening gate, and the beleaguered driver cannot help but laugh.
With no little amount of tears in it, but he laughs.
*
The war touches the people living in the lower levels of Coruscant somewhat differently from those above.
Worse, arguably.
Prolonged power outages and stringent rationing of the already limited resources are the norm here, and Fee should have remembered that, prepared for it.
But he did not.
As it is, more than once, he has to find another, longer, more circuitous route, just to avoid gangsters that are ready to ambush a seemingly juicy target that is the visibly encumbered cargo speeder. And, in the end, when more and more of them seem to notice and prepare ambushes, he has to exert his well-bruised Force-sense to cover the transport in a bubble of `Don’t notice me. Go on. I am uninteresting.`
It thankfully works.
But only for the immediate area.
And only for a time.
The would-be ambushers wise up after a while.
Worse, they seem to coordinate with each other, after a few clearly separate attempts.
`Are we suspected of being Jedi because of the redirection?` Fee wonders, frets, fears. `I shouldn’t have done it, then!`
But it has already been done. And, in any case, he is so close already to his first destination: a shadow port run by Mandalorians for Mandalorians, placed deliberately away from their community here on Coruscant.
Well, it is meant for Mandalorians and Mandalorian-adjacents, to be exact. After all, Fee is not a Mandalorian, but Obi-Wan is a Mandalorian – a pseudo-Mandalorian, at least. And Obi-Wan is the one who set up this fallback point, more than a decade ago, after they had met each other for the first time and bonded over Qui-Gon.
Over being repudiated by Qui-Gon over a brighter, more promising successor, to be exact, though Obi-Wan was only almost repudiated.
Fee is twistedly thankful right now that he cannot feel bitter over it, even though more than three decades have passed since his own repudiation. He just cannot afford to feel anything at the moment, nor think about anything but the actions he needs to take in order to bring himself and all his charges safely off this deathtrap of a planet.
*
The agreement between Obi-Wan and the Mandalorians who ran this shadow port was that the individuals smuggled through it must comprise of mostly children. Mandos apparently have quite a soft spot for children, who knows. And Obi-Wan even said they have the saying “Children are the future.”
Well, it is quite apt, regardless, especially in this situation.
It is also partly why Fee took the landspeeder, which would have otherwise been a very foolish choice on an ecumenopolis that is mostly comprised of high-rises like Coruscant: The shadow port is connected to thoroughfares prevalent in the lower levels, as opposed to the skylanes in-between the blocks of high-rise buildings in the upper levels.
A Mando in full armour and armed from top to bottom comes out just as his overburdened, overheated conveyance whines and whinges its way into the parking lot of the shadow port. They demand his security key the moment he rolls down the window beside him to show them his face.
It’s not something to resite, but a prepared conversation that both need to do correctly. And Fee is heartened for once since the sudden, senseless killings started when both pass muster.
“You are in a hurry,” the Mando states in an accent that is not Coruscanti, afterwards. Fee fights not to snarl back. But maybe it shows on his face nonetheless, for his interlocutor… raises their hands, palms out, and brings their forearms together side by side as if magneted together into place. As if surrendering, or showing him that they do not mean – cannot do – harm to him and his, or maybe even both.
“No news yet round here. We know nothing. I wanted to know,” they defend themself behind that barricade, somewhat apologetically. Fee relaxes. His guess was spot-on, then.
Still, “Let’s go inside first,” he demands, implores, snips back, too anxious for control, for propriety, let alone for the infamous Jedi mask.
The Mando cocks their head, radiates curiosity so much through posture alone that their muffled presence is no bar to it. But still, they usher the van into a more private, enclosed corner and even wait near its nose while Fee goes round to the back to check.
Their easy compliance is fortunate. But even if not, Fee still must do this first, before anything else.
What is in the back is very important.
There is no future without children, after all. Even the Mandalorians know that.