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

[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.