iprotectyou | OOM: The Temple

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OOM: The Temple

This is a terrible idea.

Baze can't remember if the thought to visit the Temple of the Kyber years after it fell was his or Chirrut's, but it's already terrible. They scale the outer wall at night--which makes no difference to Chirrut, but it certainly does to Baze--in order to avoid the attention of the stormtroopers.

Baze notices the lack of herbs burning in the winter braziers out in the courtyard as he trails Chirrut's unerring steps. Shadows and quiet suffuse the temple, a place previously filled with light and life.

Blaster fire and dried blood mark the steps of the entrance, and Baze's heart shatters in his chest. There's a hole there, a hole filled with ground glass.

He licks abruptly dry lips. "Well," he says, soft in the darkness, "we're here."

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Chirrut walks carefully, more carefully than he ever had to in the temple since he was a young child. Rubble and ghosts of memory alike strew the path. A couple of the great pillars splintered, spreading shards of carved stone to sprawl in the courtyard. A rougher tile, chewed by blaster fire, drags on the sole of his shoe, remembered for the way it had dug into his knee when he'd been forced down, the night they came. He picks his way between rubble and darker patches where friends rejoined the Force. The slim shard of kyber in his staff hums, a feeble substitute for the greater song that used to echo down the hallway.

Still, he walks, unafraid. All is as the Force wills it - if the Force wills that he die tonight, there is precious little use worrying about it now.

Baze is not as sure-footed as Chirrut. The larger Jedhan keeps stubbing his toes on the rubble. He tries to walk quietly, spooked by the stark reminders of death and the threat of stormtroopers outside the temple's wall, but the crackle of stone pillar moving across stone floor is dangerously loud.

Once they're past the doors--which don't creak when Baze opens them--he notices the utter lack of fabrics hanging on the walls, and the lighter squares of stone on the walls where they once proudly rested. All the tapestries--with their bright colors and patterns of figures performing zama-shiwo--are gone. Looted by Jedhans, probably, or scooped up for a higher up among the Imperials.

Baze stops walking, and closes his eyes. He clenches a fist, crying silently.

"In darkness, cold." Chirrut says the words slow, low, a chant, the echos of it rolling slow down the hallway, trailing into desolate silence.

"In light, cold." But they are old words, older than him, older than the elders who would once have greeted their return after a long absence.

"The old sun brings no heat." There is no heat here, without their coverings the stone sucks away any warmth they might have trapped during the day. Chirrut's breath mists in the faint light of the kyber, but he continues on, regardless.

But there is heat in breath and life.
In both, there is the Force.
And the Force is eternal.

Baze knows the prayer. He knows it. But he refuses to finish it; Chirrut knows--he knows, damn it--that Baze has lost his faith in the Force, and renounced the order. Baze Malbus, once the most devoted of them all, is no longer a Guardian.

His head comes up sharply--so sharply he feels a twinge in his neck--when Chirrut starts, and by the time he finishes, Baze sucks a breath in over his teeth. He turns away, stalking to a wall, and leans his arm on it--and his head on his arm. If Chirrut won't let him grieve in peace, Baze will close himself off from him.

Temporarily. Just for a moment.

It will be enough. It has to be.

It has been a bone of contention between them, an unfamiliar, and ever-present pain that Chirrut can't help but poke at. He can't understand how Baze can simply not believe - that would be like stating one doesn't believe in gravity. Gravity, and the Force, do not need belief to exist... they just do.

If Baze thinks that Chirrut won't pray, one last time, in the temple...

Well.

He'll just have to check Baze for a concussion later.

They pass the kitchens first, and... they didn't come for this, but he wanders in anyway, edging carefully past fallen crates, trailing his fingers across dusty barren counters. There isn't even the ghost of smell here, nothing to mark the ages of feasts and emergency preparations, teas and snacks and quiet moments.

There are, however, skeletons.

While there are no distinguishing marks or much in the way of flesh left, it's fairly easy to tell which species the bodies belonged to, with fur clinging to the white bone.

It's also easy to tell which of the skeletons belonged to children, with them draped across the adults' laps and tangled up with each other, tossed aside like so much refuse.

At the sight of the mass grave, Baze retches, tasting bile. He can't get enough air. He's tempted to flee the room in tears, but that would dishonor those who died here. As it is, he's crying harder than he ever has in his life.

He drops to his knees, letting loose keening sobs, tears flooding his flushed face. Burying his eyes in his hands, his shoulders shake. He can't bring them back--any of them. He can't make their deaths have meaning. He can't...

Baze thought his heart had shattered at the entrance to the temple. He was wrong.

Chirrut turns sharply when Baze gags, and flits to his side when he drops, in high alert all at once.

"Baze? Baze?" Chirrut barks sharply, his searching hands finding armor, and grief, and...

No injuries.

He would demand an explanation, but how could he demand discussion when Baze's heart is clearly breaking? He makes a rough judgement as to which direction Baze is looking, and carefully sets out to find out himself, his steps forward slow and cautious.

His staff taps against something solid, where he doesn't remember anything solid being. It could be another fallen crate or piece of rubble... He crouches, and reaches out with inquisitive fingers.

The curve of a skull is unique, and not easily forgotten once learned. Chirrut sucks in a sharp breath, pulling his hand back with a jerk.

"... Baze?"

Baze can't bring his hysterical crying under control. He staggers to Chirrut, wrapping the larger Jedhan's arms around him and dragging him away from the bodies of their fallen friends.

"Don't, don't," Baze blubbers, nearly biting his tongue. He draws shuddering breaths, kneeling in front of Chirrut and burying his face in his friend's robes. Baze clenches his fists in the cloth, sobbing like a terrified child.

He doesn't know what has happened. Not really, not for sure. But they have been through more than their share of loss and pain these last couple of years. Stumbling upon one body would not drive Baze to this.

He hasn't been told what is going on, but that doesn't keep him from understanding.

Chirrut doesn't know why the Force didn't will that he die along with his brothers and sisters. He doesn't know why he isn't on some Imperial prison colony now, or worse. He can only be thankful that the Force did not will Baze's death either, that they can be alive to grieve those that have rejoined the Force.

Even if their funeral rites have been horribly delayed, and now will never be carried out correctly. That bothers him, another tear to join the others that he hopes, someday, he'll have peace enough to mend.

For now he'll just have to put up with their bleeding.

Chirrut's voice is low, but steady - slow and solemn, the words nearly older than the temple itself. The last funeral prayer for a faithful Guardian. He tries not to think of their voices, the cadence of their steps, favorite foods and favorite stories. He should, he knows, this is a time for remembrance... but he cannot carry that weight too.

He hopes, if they can watch from beyond the Force's veil, that they will understand.

Edited 2017-09-07 05:47 (UTC)

Baze's breath hitches. Chirrut's words pierce the fugue of sorrow built up around the larger Jedhan, and he slowly uncurls his fists. He still cries, but it's softer now, tempered, as he strains his ears to hear the mantra.

He wants to join in. He wants to say the sacred litany, let the chant fall from his lips to build on Chirrut's praying.

But Baze can't. The words stick in his throat, drying it out. He disavowed that life, and doesn't deserve to send his friends on to the afterlife. He doesn't want to pray to a Force he no longer believes in--because so many people have died.

"Thank you," Baze croaks, wiping his nose on the back of his sleeve. It's the best he can do, but he does mean it.

Chirrut reaches down with his free hand, gently wiping away the dampness of tears from Baze's cheeks. He doesn't chastise Baze for not joining in - what would be the point of that? No one has been brought to faith through punishment. He cannot repair Baze's broken belief with shouting.

Besides. He can't bear to argue here, as the only two alive.

"We should let them rest." He says instead, offering Baze a hand up.

"Yes," Baze says, and allows Chirrut to help him up. He plods out of the gravesite with a heavy tread, his former grace having leaked from his bones like water. Like blood.

Baze feels he'll never truly be able to escape the horror of the mass grave--he'll see the imprint of the initiates' skeletons on his eyelids for a long, long time--but he does feel like he's fleeing the room. He turns his back on the dead, and tries to close his heart to them as well. There's nothing he can do for them.

The darkness of the temple is almost a relief. The shadows conceal him, and conceal the rest of their losses from his blurred vision.

Baze's steps lead him to the library, which has been plundered of all its treasures; the datapad chips and translated texts and scrolls are missing, stolen. He leans against the door frame, feeling his broken heart thud in his chest.

Edited 2017-09-07 06:08 (UTC)

Chirrut refuses to believe what Baze declares, studiously searching every aisle, every desk, every cubby-hole. Surely something still remains. He was never the best student, preferring movement and active service to quiet and rote, but over time he came to appreciate having the wisdom of the ages, to have the chance to have a peace others had found.

He even learned to love the smell of it, that unique smell of paper and dust and... scholarship, as indefinable as it sounds.

It can't all be gone.

It is.

Chirrut ends up with his hand spread over the spot a stone plaque had been chiseled out of the wall, the long-familiar words replaced with roughened stone.

Baze's sorrow--spiked by the searing pain of loss from the kitchens--morphs into a vicious anger in the library. He stands in the middle of a profound lack, spiraling deep, deep down into himself. His jaw starts to hurt, and he wonders why, until he realizes he's clenching his teeth so hard, he's liable to crack a molar.

He turns and stalks from the room, leading the way to the training hall. His blood curdles at yet another loss: the staves, lightbows, and even the mats are gone.

Thankfully, his stash of sapir--hidden in a closet behind a stone in the wall--was untouched in the raid. He retrieves it in secret, while Chirrut is occupied with examining the empty weapons racks across the hall. Baze stuffs the half-used block of tea--wrapped in plastic--in a pocket of his jumpsuit, and returns to Chirrut's side.

"We... We need to see our rooms."

Edited 2017-09-07 06:32 (UTC)

Chirrut frowns, mute. He thought... hoped, vainly, but still. He thought something might be left behind here. What use did the Empire have for it?

He walks away from Baze, half-tripping when he reaches the spot the mat should be, the one Master Sheotar preferred, the one he has spent most of his life training on. There was enough of his blood in that mat to make it as close to a blood relative he will ever have.

It can't be gone.

Here is where he taught Eiko and earned the glory of her laugh just as surely as she worked to earn his praise. Here is where his friends and masters would bring him back to heel when the winds drove him beyond tolerance. Here is where he proved, over and over, that a blind man could fly, that all things were possible in the Force.

Chirrut stands in the middle of the place a training mat should be, and stops, the toy soldier run out of steam.

Baze doesn't notice that Chirrut has stopped until the larger Jedhan reaches the doors to the hall. He turns back, frowning, and snakes an arm around the smaller one's shoulders.

"Come, my friend. We have to see this through."

Chirrut nearly balks, but... Baze is right. There may not be a chance to do this again... he may never be able to gather the strength to do this again. Chirrut allows himself to be led, a path he knows by heart even though tonight it seems to go on forever.

The Empire has been there as well. The door hangs askew off its hinges. Inside the wind whistles - someone has broken in the window, the glass littering the floor below.

Baze is prepared for the lack this time, but the losses still take him by surprise. The intricate lantern which chimed in the wind--gone. The blue flower crown, preserved and kept--gone. The scroll of a Jedi prayer with raised inks that Baze made Chirrut for his birthday--of course, gone. Everything that made the room theirs is missing. Now it's a shell of its former self. Even the beds have been looted; the wood frames are all that remain.

Baze tries to ignore all this. He strides to the middle of the room with purpose, and crouches down. Removing a knife from his boot, he pries a massive stone loose from the grooved floor--the centerpiece of the room. Grunting, he hefts the giant stone--which is almost too heavy for him, and required two people to set it--and shoves it to the side. He reaches down into the cool, previously guarded cave, and retrieves Chirrut's lightbow.

"Here," Baze says, stepping around the hole in the floor to hand his friend the weapon. "It's still here."

Chirrut cuddles it close like a lost childhood toy despite the chill of the metal frame. He built this weapon himself, painstakingly and over persistent protest. It's almost unreal, after so much loss, that this one thing has been granted to him.

He isn't going to complain.

"And yours?" He asks, finally shaken out of his silence.

Baze doesn't respond right away. Instead, he lets his actions speak for him: he crosses to the stone, and settles it back into place with another grunt.

The scrape of stone on stone thunders in the silence. He replaces his knife in his boot, stands, and brushes his hands off on the thighs of his jumpsuit.

"That's a Guardian's weapon," Baze says eventually, glaring at Chirrut, as if daring him to object. "I have no use for it."

Chirrut doesn't protest.

Not in words, anyway. The only sound he makes is faint, and pained - the gasp of a gutshot man. Grief and shock he could understand, or at least find a path towards doing so.

This is so final, so resolute. The heavy boom of the stone could be the dropping of a coffin stone. He reaches out a hand, pale in the thin light of the kyber.

Pale, and shaking, because with his own heartbeat thundering his ears, his own breathing rough, he needs a little proof that he hasn't somehow lost Baze entirely as well.

Baze takes Chirrut's hand immediately. Their shared losses, their shared grief--the Empire may have desecrated the temple, but and Baze refuses to allow this pain to drive them apart. He squeezes Chirrut's hand, anchoring him in the present moment despite the ghosts of memory whistling around them like the wind through the broken window.

The larger Jedhan knows he has hurt his smaller friend--knows the rejection of the lightbow, a damned Guardian's weapon, would hurt, and did so anyway. Baze can't be a Guardian anymore, and that means shedding all of their trappings. His E-5 carbine rifle--pilfered from a stormtrooper's corpse and modified to punch through armor--suits him just fine.

"Come on," Baze says, his voice raspy with unshed tears--tears that surprise him. The rejection of the lightbow was premeditated--he didn't think he'd cry over it. He refuses to cry. So he doesn't. "Let's get out of here."

A wave of hopelessness swamps Chirrut, bowing his shoulders. He will never come back here, he knows it, down in his bones. His life ended, but the Force has decreed that he go on regardless.

At that moment, he has run out of plans, out of hope. Why continue to fight? The Empire has taken the heart of NiJedha.

I am one with the Force, and the Force is with me.

Chirrut squeezes Baze's hand back, and turns back to the door, to head back to their current shelter in the backways of NiJedha. The Empire has taken NiJedha's heart, but Chirrut can still fight for her soul.

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OOM: The Temple

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