OOM: The Temple

[iprotectyou]

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."

Comments

[iprotectyou]

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."

[idontneedluck]

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.

[iprotectyou]

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."

[idontneedluck]

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.

[iprotectyou]

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."

[idontneedluck]

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.

[iprotectyou]

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."

[idontneedluck]

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.

[iprotectyou]

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."

[idontneedluck]

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.