Chapter Text
Korriban is as desolate as Luke expects. They land the ship near an area the charts of Korriban called “The Valley of the Dark Lords,” which sounds both promising for their search and foreboding in general. The plan, as Ahsoka described it, was to simply follow their feelings—Ezra had scoffed at that, but Luke knew what she meant. When Luke had tried to find Jedi outposts before, there were some systems that immediately seemed promising and others that immediately felt to be dead ends. Though he had searched each planet with the same care, ultimately the only success Luke had had was on one of those planets that simply called to him through the Force.
As soon as stepping onto the surface of Korriban, however, Ahsoka’s plan falls apart. Next to him, Ezra shivers. “Do you feel that?” Ezra asks.
“It’s the dark side of the Force,” Ahsoka whispers. “It’s far more powerful here than I anticipated.”
In front of them is a canyon, dusty and devoid of life. Great columns, the ruins of past civilizations, still stand tall, and intricate doors and statues are carved into the cliff walls along the canyon floor. Already, Korriban’s red sun is setting, and the lengthening shadows give the valley a dreamlike quality.
“We should have enough time to look around a little before it gets too dark,” Ahsoka says, setting out towards one of the doors carved into the cliff wall. Ezra follows behind her, and Luke follows Ezra.
Despite the potential dangers around him, Luke can still only think about Ezra. Over the last week, their relationship had improved—at least, instead of Ezra openly hating Luke, now Ezra usually just ignores Luke’s existence. Luke has no idea what to do. During the past week, when Luke had tried talking to him during training with Ahsoka, Ezra would just glare in response. But when Luke ignored him… Ezra still just glared at him. Luke had even reached such a level of desperation that he had talked to Han about the matter; after Han laughed at him for what felt like an hour at hearing about their disastrous meeting (“Seriously, kid? You were going to tell him you ‘never go back to strangers’ ships?’”), Han hadn’t been able to offer much advice.
“You really don’t know why he was so upset about you using the Force?”
“No! And I don’t know how I’m ever going to ask him when he avoids speaking to me for more than a sentence at a time.”
“You know,” Han said, leaning back in his chair, “when it seemed like Leia hated me, she actually was in love with me.”
Luke scoffed. “I really don’t think that’s what’s going on here.”
“Luke,” Han said, crossing his arms. “It seems like whatever his problem is, it’s not really about you.” At Luke’s surprised look, Han sighed. “Think about it. Most likely, he was just surprised that you used the Force. Llorn Minor would be a weird place to meet a Jedi. He overreacted there, but that’s it. So it’s not you he hates.”
“You haven’t seen how he is around me, Han. I’m pretty sure he just hates me.”
“You said he didn’t want to go to—what’s the name of the system again?”
“Korriban,” Luke supplied.
Han counted on his fingers. “He doesn’t want to go to Korriban, he doesn’t want to find Jedi things, he seems to really hate the idea of finding Sith things—you see? There’s something else going on, and you just happen to be who he’s taking it out on.”
Though Luke trusted Han’s read of the situation, Han hadn’t been able to offer any advice. Ideally, Luke thinks, I would just talk it through with Ezra… but I’d rather pull the ears off a gundark than try to get Ezra to open up about his feelings.
“There are inscriptions here in the stone,” Ahsoka says, drawing Luke back into the present. “The writing has faded, but I think this is a tomb.”
The doorway is blocked by a huge slab of rock with carvings of humanoid figures. To Luke’s left, Ezra shivers again. “I think that’s all this is—a tomb. I don’t sense anything other than darkness on the other side.”
“I think we should still check what’s in there,” Luke offers. “Even if it is just a tomb, there may be something that could point us in the right direction.”
“Don’t you feel how strong the dark side of the Force is in there?” Ezra asks, turning to Luke.
“We’re Jedi. We don’t need to be afraid,” Luke responds reflexively, thinking of Yoda’s lessons on Dagobah.
“I’m not afraid,” Ezra snaps. “I’m just smart enough to avoid places that are useless and dangerous.”
Luke wants to stop talking, but suddenly all his frustration comes pouring out. “You don’t know there isn’t anything in there. You just want to avoid anything that has to do with the dark side of the Force. But we have to be willing to face the dark side and the Sith if we’re going to rebuild the Order!”
“And you seriously think that just because you killed Darth Vader you know anything about the Sith?” Ezra retorts.
“Stop!” Ahsoka shouts. Luke snaps his mouth shut, and can’t help but wither under her glare. Some part of Luke delights in how Ezra shrinks, too, at her anger. “It was clearly a mistake to come here.” She turns, and heads back towards the ship.
Ezra and Luke look at each other in surprise for a moment before hurrying after her.
“Wait, Ahsoka!” Ezra calls. “It’s fine. We can work together.”
Ahead of them, Ahsoka stops, and then turns around. “Really?” she asks, crossing her arms.
Luke nods, and Ezra stutters, “Yeah, we—we can find this Jedi outpost or whatever together.” She frowns as Ezra continues, “We don’t have to be friends. We just need to be able to work together, right? And we can do that.”
Ahsoka sighs. “That sounds like you’ve been talking to Sabine.” Ezra blinks in surprise, but nods. “Ezra, Sabine is involved in politics. She’s certainly one of a kind, but there are literally thousands of other people who share her goals of seeing Mandalore and the Republic restored. She can just ‘work’ with those other people because it doesn’t matter whether she alienates them—no matter what, there will be others that share her visions for the future, whether or not they would pursue the same path forward. We—” Ahsoka says, gesturing to the three of them “—don’t have that luxury. We are all that’s left of the Jedi.”
Ezra looks at his feet, and Luke fights the urge to do the same. “I’m not saying you need to be best friends,” Ahsoka says, more gentle now, “but you do need to be able to work together positively. Even back when there were ten thousand Jedi in the galaxy, most Jedi wouldn’t have fought like you two do. You need to be able to respect one another and listen to each other’s opinions in a way that doesn’t devolve into constant bickering.”
Luke thinks that perhaps Ahsoka will head back to the valley, but instead she turns around and moves towards the ship. “We aren’t staying on Korriban?” Luke asks in surprise.
“I see now that it was a mistake to have all three of us here,” Ahsoka says over her shoulder as she walks up the ramp into the ship. Luke and Ezra share a confused look.
“Are you saying only one of us will stay here on Korriban?” Ezra asks.
“No, I’m saying that you two will stay on Korriban while I go check out its moons.” Ezra makes a choked sound, but Ahsoka flips around on the ramp and cuts him off before he can object. “I’ll be back in exactly one standard week. I’ll pick you up right here. Treat this as an opportunity to listen to each other.”
“Master Tano—” Luke starts, but she raises a hand to stop him.
“You two need to learn to work together. Maybe that will be easier without me around. Just—” she purses her lips. “Try not to kill each other?”
“May the Force be with you,” Luke says, hollowly, and ignores the eyeroll and glare Ezra sends his way.
Ahsoka nods, and the door to the ship whooshes shut.
“This is your fault,” Ezra mutters, turning back to the valley.
It takes literally all of Luke’s self control not to respond. Instead, Luke just sighs. “Come on, we can make a camp over there.”
—
It’s been an hour, and Ezra is about ready to break Ahsoka’s rule and kill Luke.
After walking by each of the doors in the valley and sensing nothing particularly promising behind any of them, they settled back at the small camp for a dinner of military rations over a weak fire. Ezra still thought that a bunch of old tombs of Sith lords weren’t worth risking their lives to look in, and had suggested that they climb up out of the valley to look at the nearby terrain for anything promising. Luke, in reply, shared some annoying Jedi philosophy about fear or whatever, and insisted that every tomb must be searched. Secretly, Ezra thought that Luke didn’t actually want to look in every tomb, but was just trying to ruin Ezra’s life.
The bizarre compromise they reached through their “passionate conversation” (certainly not bickering or arguing) was to go into every other tomb in the Valley of the Dark Lords.
“We can start at first light tomorrow,” Luke says, laying out his bedroll. Ezra just grunts in response and climbs into his roll, too.
Overhead, the stars glitter. Without any settlements on Korriban, the stars are almost as bright as Ezra remembers them being on Atollon. The thought floods Ezra’s mind with memories.
When he thinks of Kanan, it’s never the training or the sparring or the adventures fighting the Empire that spring to mind. Instead, Ezra thinks of the little moments they spent together: meditating in the quiet dusk, or sharing a meal, or just standing together at dawn, feeling the warmth of the rising sun. Ezra blinks away the sudden tears at the memories of that world, and of spending time with Kanan.
Ezra is nearly asleep, his mind wrapped up in memories of the past, when Luke speaks.
“I didn’t kill Darth Vader.” Luke’s voice is hardly more than a whisper.
The non-sequitur makes Ezra start. “What?”
“Earlier, you said that I killed Darth Vader. And I know that’s what people think, but I didn’t kill him.”
For a moment, the only sound is the quiet crackle of the fire. Ezra debates with himself for a moment about what to do, then turns to his side and props himself up with an elbow to look at Luke. “What happened? I mean, is Vader still—”
“No, he’s dead.” Luke is staring up at the night sky, and Ezra takes the opportunity to study his profile in the soft light of the dying fire. “He fought and killed the Emperor, but then died of his injuries.”
Ezra blinks several times, processing this information. “Oh,” is all he can think to say.
Luke doesn’t say anything else, so Ezra lays back down.
They both lay still for a few moments, and Ezra’s mind races. Luke doesn’t seem happy or relieved about Darth Vader’s death—instead, he seems sad. From the other side of the fire, Ezra hears Luke turn in his bedroll, and when Ezra looks over, Luke’s back is to him.
“Goodnight,” Ezra says quietly. Luke doesn’t respond.
—
The next morning dawns far too quickly. Luke had slept in fits and starts, kept awake by shadowy dreams that always returned to the final moments of his father’s life and the cruel sound of the Emperor’s laugh. Ezra, to Luke’s surprise, is already dressed and cooking breakfast over a hearty little fire.
After Luke gets dressed for the day, Ezra hands him some food. “I thought we could start on this side of the canyon,” Ezra says, gesturing to the walls behind Luke. “Until noon, the sun will be sort of angled towards those tombs and should give us a little light. Then, in the afternoon, we can switch to the other side and take advantage of the light in that direction.”
Luke doubts they’ll manage to finish searching through one entire tomb in just the morning, but Ezra is watching him strangely. At least he didn’t complain about searching the tombs, Luke thinks. “That’s a good idea,” Luke says around a mouthful of bland porridge.
“Also, I think we should start with the far tomb,” Ezra says. When Luke looks at him in surprise, Ezra shrugs. “Something about it seems different than the others, so I feel like we should start there.”
“Okay,” Luke says, finishing his breakfast and standing up. “We’ll start there.”
Luke thinks maybe he’s reading too much into it, but Ezra’s sudden willingness to participate in the search of the tombs feels like an attempt at starting this trip over, or like an apology of sorts. Maybe what Ahsoka said got to him, Luke thinks.
The door is a heavy block of stone, but they lift it out of the way together using the Force. Inside is pitch black, and the power of the dark side seems palpable in the heavy air.
The soft green glow from their lightsabers barely cuts through the dark, and each time a shadow seems to move, Ezra jumps a little. Luke can’t judge; his own hand cramps from how tightly he holds his lightsaber.
The narrow hallway eventually opens up to a small chamber. On the ground are ancient and rusted pieces of what must have once been droid sentries. In the center of the room is a giant slab of stone, inscribed with badly faded words.
“Can you read this?” Ezra asks, kneeling by what Luke has decided must be a sarcophagus. Luke notes how Ezra doesn’t touch the stone, and he seems nervous suddenly.
Luke gets closer, and kneels beside Ezra. “No, it’s too faded.” Luke reaches out, touching the stone to brush some of the dirt and dust off the words. When his hand touches the rock, Ezra flinches. “Ezra! What is it?”
“Nothing, I just—” He shakes his head, as if to clear it. “I thought something might happen,” Ezra trails off, and he looks drawn and pale in the green light.
Luke bites his lip and turns back to the inscription. “Well, these carvings are too old to read now. We should look around the rest of the room though, and see if there’s anything else we can find.”
“I was afraid you’d say that,” Ezra mutters, but doesn’t argue; instead, he stands up and moves off to look around.
After half an hour of digging through shards of pottery and rusted droid parts, Ezra sighs loudly. “If there was anything for Jedi here, we would have found it already.”
“Any remaining Jedi outposts or temples have to be well-hidden,” Luke counters. “Anything easy to find was destroyed by the Empire.”
“We’ve looked all around, but this is the only room in this tomb. And, since there aren’t any Jedi artifacts here, that means there isn’t anything for us here. The only artifacts are Sith, so we should leave.”
It feels like the same argument Luke has had with Ezra a dozen times over. His gut reaction is to point out that they can overcome the dark side of the Force, and that Jedi should not fear a place just because a Sith lord was buried there thousands upon thousands of years ago. Luke sighs. Listen to each other, Ahsoka’s voice whispers in Luke’s head.
“I agree that it doesn’t seem like there’s anything here. But I still think we should look around a little more to make sure.”
“Fine, but in the next tomb, we’ll leave when I say so.”
It’s another absurd bargain, somehow even worse than the decision to only go into every other tomb, and Luke shudders at the thought of Ahsoka ever finding out that their time on Korriban was not defined by diligent searching but by random compromises. But Luke still smiles to himself and secretly considers Ezra’s willingness to look more in here a win.
—
Over the next two days, Ezra and Luke fall into a rhythm. Each of the tombs was as disappointing as the first, but their constant efforts to work together and avoid fighting each other paid off—Ezra felt like he and Luke had reached an understanding of sorts, and perhaps even the rocky beginning of a friendship. At night, sitting in their little camp, they shared stories about random things: their childhoods, their quests to build their lightsabers, what they knew of the Jedi order. Sometimes, the conversation turned to family, but only to a surface level of gossip. Ezra never pushed for more information about Luke’s fight against Vader and the Emperor, and in return, Luke never asked about Ezra’s past training with Kanan or time in Wild Space.
During the days, while picking through ruins and debris of a long-gone civilization, Ezra thought about Luke. Ezra felt it was like trying to complete a puzzle with missing pieces. He tried to keep the pieces he did have straight: Luke’s last name is Skywalker, like Ahsoka’s old master; there is certainly a possibility that Anakin was Luke’s father, but what about Leia being raised on Alderaan? Why would twins be separated and raised systems apart? Who was their mother?
Today, looking in the last tomb in the valley, something else haunts Ezra as well—a memory of cryptic words spoken by Ahsoka in the world between worlds. What she had said when Ezra saved her—it didn’t make sense at the time, still doesn’t make sense, and yet Ezra clearly remembers her looking back at the portal where Vader stood a moment before and saying Anakin.
“I found something!” Luke says, somewhere in the dark chamber behind Ezra. They’re in the tomb of Naga Sadow, which is larger than the others in the valley, though just as devoid of Jedi artifacts as the others. Ezra picks his way carefully across the chamber, lightsaber held aloft.
Luke is kneeling in front of one of the corners of the room, pointing to a portion of the wall intricately carved and covered in runes. “See, this is different, somehow.” Luke traces the Sith writing, and Ezra’s eyes widen at how the runes seem to shimmer for a moment at Luke’s touch. “The runes don’t follow the corner, but look like they continue to go straight—maybe this wall was added later? Which could mean there’s another chamber hidden behind this wall.”
As he speaks, Luke drags a finger along under the letters—each one glimmers red for a moment at his touch before fading back to a dull gray. “Luke, I think you should stop touching the words,” Ezra warns, and Luke frowns.
“Why?”
Ezra blinks. He can’t tell that the carvings are lighting up.
Suddenly, it’s not just the words that shimmer. Cracks of red, as fine as spider silk, shatter across the wall in front of Luke, though he apparently remains oblivious to the quickly intensifying red glow.
Ezra jerks backward, almost tripping on some droid parts behind him. Suddenly, all the air in the room seems to disappear, like an airlock open to the vacuum of space. Luke calls Ezra’s name, but it sounds like he’s on the other side of the planet, or like his voice is being drowned out by a terrible laugh—one that’s dark and cruel and always haunting Ezra’s dreams—is it Maul’s laugh taunting Ezra now, or the Emperor’s? Luke stands, one hand reaching out to Ezra, but when Luke takes a step forward everything snaps.
The floor gives out beneath them, not even crumbling like the ground did on Malachor, but dissipating into a sour mist. Now Luke is terrified, but Ezra can only see him for a moment before losing consciousness and falling into endless, empty space.
*****
The fall seemed impossibly long, but the second Luke hits the water he wishes he had fallen for longer. The water is ice cold and slimy, and when Luke accidentally swallows some, it burns in his throat. Luke thrashes to the surface, coughing violently, his head throbbing in pain.
The voices of Ben Kenobi and Yoda come to him—stay calm, Luke. Breathe, you must. Luke forces himself to stop, to take in the stale air in measured breaths… but suddenly he notices the quiet around him. Where’s Ezra?
“Ezra!” Luke calls out, spinning around in the water. It’s too dark to see anything, but Luke strains his eyes all the same. Use the Force, Luke. Ben Kenobi’s voice is as patient as ever, but Luke could almost slap himself for his own stupidity. Some Jedi I am, Luke thinks, then pushes out the Force to the world around him, extending his awareness beyond his usual senses.
At first, Luke panics because everything seems so dead. There’s nothing in the pool, not even fish or insects or smaller organisms, and whatever lies beyond the pool is equally devoid of life. And then—a thread of life. Without even stopping to think, Luke dives down beneath the surface, following what has to be Ezra’s force signature sinking towards the icy black depths. Luke pushes himself further, reaching blindly out in front of himself. Suddenly, he feels cloth brush a fingertip. Luke grabs at the cloth, and pulls Ezra’s unconscious body towards himself. The water seems to pull both men down, and it takes all of Luke’s focus and strength to reach the surface again.
Like this, struggling to keep both himself and Ezra afloat, Luke panics. The water turns colder each second, Luke’s head is pounding, and still, there’s no indication of land nearby. And Ezra is still unconscious, Luke thinks, and it’s too dark to see if Ezra is injured. Luke clenches his teeth, and then sets off in a random direction, awkwardly pulling Ezra along through the dark water.
Luke prepares himself for another indeterminable distance like the fall had been, and sets off with determination. “All I need to do is find some land, and then I’ll be able to make sure you’re okay,” Luke says to Ezra. Ezra doesn’t respond, but Luke thinks he’s breathing.
Then, suddenly, Luke kicks downward and stubs his toe against rock. The shock is worse than the pain, but Luke still curses, almost dropping Ezra. It takes another moment for Luke’s mind to catch up to what rock underfoot means. Luke stands, unsteadily, one arm holding Ezra up and the other groping blindly in front. Luke shuffles forward, the cold water still up to his thighs, now mostly dragging Ezra behind himself, but after a few moments the ground begins to incline.
When Luke finally reaches dry land (not a beach, but a sharp and rocky shore), he collapses and lets Ezra fall on top of him. Luke lets himself take three deep breaths before focusing on Ezra; Luke settles Ezra to the side, laying him on his back before standing up. Somehow, amazingly, Luke’s lightsaber is still attached to his belt; Luke ignites his weapon but has to close his eyes for several seconds to the blinding green light. After his eyes adjust, Luke kneels, holding his saber over Ezra. By its green glow, Luke notes with relief how Ezra’s chest rises and falls with shallow breaths. Luke hadn’t been wearing his pack when the floor gave out, but Ezra still has his—Luke turns off his saber and digs through the waterproof pack until he finds a small lamp, which he turns on to cast a cool white glow in a small circle around them.
“Ezra,” Luke says, shaking the other man’s shoulder gently, “Ezra, are you all right?”
Ezra groans in response, and Luke shakes him harder. “Ezra!”
Suddenly, Ezra shoots up into a sitting position, drawing great, shuddering gasps for air. Luke rubs a hand on Ezra’s back and tries to think of something to say that will make him feel better, though he ultimately ends up just telling him to breathe.
“Where are we?” Ezra grinds out, his teeth chattering.
Luke moves away from Ezra’s side and digs through the pack while he answers. “I don’t know—one second we were in that tomb, the next second we were falling into that pool.” Luke pulls out a ration bar and a canteen of water, as well as a mostly dry wool blanket. “I haven’t looked around yet, so I’m not sure how large this area is.” Luke hands the food, water, and blanket to Ezra, who accepts the items with a frown.
They sit silently for a minute, Ezra, shivering, wrapped in the blanket and eating the ration bar, and Luke studying his face while he eats. Halfway through the bar, Ezra stops and meets Luke’s stare.
“What.” Ezra asks, flatly.
“You knew that would happen.”
Ezra takes a bite of the ration bar but raises an eyebrow in a question, and the expression reminds Luke of Hera Syndulla. “You told me not to touch the words, so I assume you knew the floor would—” Luke makes a little waving motion, “—you know. Disappear.”
Ezra finishes the ration bar and speaks with his mouth full. “I didn’t know.”
“But you knew something.” But Luke remembers Ezra’s haunted expression, the way he kept staring at the words… “Or you saw something.”
Ezra puts the canteen down, but doesn’t look up to meet Luke’s eyes. “A little of both, I guess. I saw the words turn red when you touched them. And I was afraid something might happen because—” Ezra finally looks up and meets Luke’s eyes. “—because last time I saw a Sith temple, I touched some runes and fell through the ground.”
The way Ezra says it is backwards in Luke’s mind. The revelation that Ezra has been to a Sith temple before only confirms Luke’s previous suspicions, but that Ezra could see something in those lifeless, ancient runes makes Luke shiver.
“I guess I should thank you,” Luke says after another moment passes.
“For what?”
“For not saying, ‘I told you so,’” Luke says, smiling crookedly. “You told me not to touch the runes—you didn’t even want to go into that tomb. If I had listened to you—”
“Hey, don’t beat yourself up.” Ezra says, cutting Luke off. Ezra awkwardly stands up, and then offers a hand down to Luke to help him stand. “Besides, who knows? I might still say, ‘I told you so.’” Luke pulls himself up with Ezra’s help and is surprised when Ezra holds his hand a second longer than strictly necessary. “We aren’t out of here yet.”
—
It takes maybe two minutes before Ezra begins to despair. The small shore is enclosed on three sides by tall and jagged black rocks, their sharp and pointed silhouettes reminding Ezra of teeth. The fourth side, obviously, leads back into the oily water—and as terrible as the prospect of tearing up his hands trying to climb over the rocks might be, the idea of getting back into the violently cold water is even less appealing. Ezra walks around the perimeter of the alcove, his lightsaber ignited and held aloft as a torch, as Luke inventories everything Ezra had in his pack when they fell. Even though the water was cold, wherever Luke and Ezra are now is hot, and the strange heat emanating from the rocks puts him on edge; walking around in circles in the warm darkness makes Ezra feel like a caged animal.
“Is my communicator damaged?” Ezra asks, trying to peer between the narrow cracks in the black stones. “Maybe Ahsoka can help.”
“Well,” Luke starts, sighing. “There’s good news and bad news.”
“Let’s try the good news for once.”
Luke huffs out a laugh. “Okay, then the good news is that your short-range communicator is here and functioning—”
“Let me guess,” Ezra says. “The bad news is that the long-range communicator is broken.”
“Not just broken, it’s not even here. I think you left it by our camp, because the signal was stronger outside.”
Ezra blinks. Oops. “So no way to call Ahsoka?”
“No,” Luke sighs again. “And even if she came back to Korriban, she’d have to figure out where we are, because we’re too far underground to get a signal.”
“Great,” Ezra groans. “So that means we need to find our own way out.”
“If we ration, we’ll have enough food to last us three days,” Luke says. “And Ahsoka will be back on Korriban in four. She might be able to retrace our steps: we just need to survive until then.”
“But I only have that one canteen of water,” Ezra says, coming to squat next to where Luke has set out their supplies. “Even if we’re careful, that won’t last four days.”
Luke looks out at the pool of water and Ezra scoffs. “There’s no way I’m drinking that.”
“We may not have to,” Luke says slowly. “There’s a chance that there’s some sort of source, some fresh water, close by.”
It’s not a terrible point, and searching for the source of the pool’s water would at least give them something to do. Luke turns his attention back to the small pile of Ezra’s belongings. “You also have two changes of clothes—well, I mean you have a jumpsuit, and a set of pajamas. If you don’t mind letting me borrow, I think we should both change into dry clothes.”
Ezra nods. “That’s fine with me.” The water from the pool smells weird, and Ezra’s clothes have turned scratchy where the water has dried. The other set of clothes is practically identical to what Ezra is wearing now, only grey instead of orange, and honestly, the pajamas aren’t that different either, only softer and newer and blue.
“Other than that, the only other things in your pack were a couple bacta patches.”
That isn’t true: there’s also a holoprojector that Ezra knows has a picture of his family, taken by Rex sometime back when Kanan was still alive. Luke hadn’t turned it on, but set it aside carefully as if he somehow knew how much that holo meant to Ezra.
Ezra is glad Luke doesn’t ask about it. “So the first thing we’ll do is change clothes, and then we can try to find some fresh water.” Ezra stands back up. “Should we play Loth-cat, Loth-wolf, Loth-rat to decide who has to wear the pajamas?”
Luke laughs. “What?”
Ezra flushes in embarrassment at Luke’s grin, but smiles all the same. “You know, the game kids play to decide things.” He makes the hand gestures as he explains, “Loth-cat beats Loth-rat, Loth-rat beats Loth-wolf, and Loth-wolf beats Loth-cat.”
“On Tatooine we had lizard-toad-snake. Different animals, but the same game.”
“We go on ‘shoot,’” Ezra says and Luke stands up. “Ready? Loth-cat, Loth-wolf, Loth-rat, shoot.”
Ezra’s fist (Loth-cat) beats Luke’s two-finger sign for Loth-rat (or “snake,” Ezra thinks, almost rolling his eyes at how strange Tatooine is), and each man takes a pile of clothes—Ezra, the grey jumpsuit, and Luke the softer sleeping clothes.
Ezra steps away from Luke towards the rocks. In the dim light, without his lightsaber for additional light, Ezra can almost see a red sheen to the black rocks. It’s noticeably warmer here, so close to the stone, and the combination of stale air and stifling heat makes Ezra feel sick. Everything about this place is unsettling—the absolute silence, the strange darkness, and something else… the foul, evil, and intoxicating pull of the dark side. It’s worse here than it was in any of the tombs on Korriban’s surface. So why am I not freaking out? Ezra thinks, pulling on his trousers. It’s a silly question though, because Ezra knows the answer. Luke. For a moment, Ezra tells himself that it’s Luke’s strength in the Force that brings him peace. But then Ezra shakes his head and tries to be honest with himself. It’s not his strength, it’s just… Ezra frowns. It’s just him.
“Ezra!” Luke calls from somewhere on the other side of the clearing. Ezra startles and flips around. “Is this what you meant? When you said you saw words change colors?”
Ezra quickly pulls on his boots and jogs to the other side of the camp where Luke is staring at the black rock. “What words?” Ezra asks, narrowing his eyes at the stones.
“The words up above, in the tomb,” Luke says, his voice sounding far away.
“No, I mean why are you asking? What words are you talking about?”
Luke blinks and turns to Ezra. “These ones,” he says, gesturing towards the blank rockface. He doesn’t touch the rock this time. “You said the words turned red, but these ones are yellow.”
Ezra looks at the rock again. The only light source comes from the weak lamp maybe four meters behind him—even a pale yellow glow should be visible on the stone, Ezra thinks. “You said the words above changed when I touched them, but these seem to respond to sound,” Luke continues, peering closer at the rock. “Just the rustling of clothes made them start to glow, and now, when I talk…” Luke trails off, too enthralled with whatever he sees to notice Ezra’s confusion.
He hit his head, Ezra decides. He got injured in the fall, and now he’s seeing things. “Why don’t you come back over to where our stuff is,” Ezra says lightly, putting a hand on Luke’s shoulder. “Maybe we can eat something, and sit for a little bit—”
“You don’t see it, do you?” Luke asks, turning to look Ezra in the eye.
“No, I don’t.”
“There’s something here,” Luke says defensively, and then takes a breath. “You aren’t going to like this, but it gives me an idea.”
“What kind of idea?” Ezra asks warily.
“Let’s pack up first, then I’ll tell you.”
Ezra had been serious about eating something—the flavorless ration bar from earlier hadn’t been much of a meal. And sleeping would be good, too. Above, on Korriban’s surface, it’s probably night, though Ezra has no way of gauging the time. But Luke apparently doesn’t agree that a meal and some rest would be good—the second everything’s back in the pack, Luke swings it over a shoulder and walks back to the wall of jagged stones without even waiting for Ezra. Luke doesn’t draw his lightsaber, as if whatever light he sees is enough to guide his steps. Ezra, meanwhile, walks behind Luke, the lamp held aloft in one hand, unlit lightsaber in the other.
When Ezra catches up to Luke in front of the stone, Luke bites his lip and faces Ezra. “We got to this place when I touched the runes above, right?” Ezra nods mutely, his stomach sinking. “Well, maybe if I touch these words, then something else will happen.”
It’s exactly what Ezra feared Luke would say. “You want the ground to give out so that we fall into an even deeper pit?”
“Can you think of anything else we can try?” Luke asks.
“Yeah, we can wait here for four days and hope that Ahsoka follows our trail.”
Luke shakes his head. “We don’t have enough water for that.”
“Okay, then we can try swimming around the pool to look for other clearings, or climbing over the rocks.”
“My feelings are telling me this is what we should do,” Luke says. “It’s the Force telling us to go this way.”
Ezra tries not to sound bitter. “Yeah, well, maybe the Force is telling you, but it definitely isn’t telling me. I don’t even see anything.”
“We don’t have to do this,” Luke says, quietly. “We can try something else.” It’s so different from where they were a few days ago, fighting over searching the Korriban tombs, that Ezra feels something shift in himself.
Ezra closes his eyes, and centers himself in the Force. I am one with the Force, and the Force is with me. “Okay. Do it.”
Luke nods and puts his hand out; Ezra notes how his hand trembles as it nears the inky stone. A centimeter from the rock Luke pauses, then exhales and closes the distance—and nothing happens. Ezra looks from Luke’s fingertips to Luke’s face, where his lips are pursed in frustration. Luke spreads his hand on the stone, pokes at the stone, and then knocks like it’s a door.
Ezra can’t help but let out a snort. “Kind of anticlimactic.”
Luke huffs in annoyance and raises his other hand to push on the rock. “I really thought something was going to happen.”
Ezra leans against the wall with a laugh. “Well, I guess no one is perf—” he’s cut off when the rocks begin to shake. Luke pulls Ezra back away from the wall, and Ezra looks at the stone in open shock. There, in the middle of the expanse of black stone, is a golden blur from where Ezra’s hand had brushed the wall.
Luke and Ezra stand together and watch the jagged stones sink into the ground. The scrape of stone against stone sets Ezra’s teeth on edge, but his discomfort is forgotten when the final stone drops and reveals the path forward.
On the other side of the long and narrow rock corridor a terrible shape looms in the far distance. From here, only a sliver is visible, but the black and red slanted edge of a pyramid makes Ezra’s heart pound in his chest.
“Is that…” Luke breathes.
“A Sith temple,” Ezra finishes, and his voice sounds distant to his own ears.
*****
They agree to sleep in the clearing next to the pool, with the plan of leaving in the “morning” (though they have no way to measure the time) for the temple. Luke knows he should sleep, but he can’t—the knowledge that a Sith temple is so close by has frayed his nerves.
“Maybe it’s good the words were yellow,” Luke says to the blackness above his head from where he lays on his back. He doesn’t turn his head, but he knows Ezra is still awake, too.
It takes a moment for Ezra to reply. “What do you mean?”
“The runes you saw were red, but these ones were yellow. Red is the color of Sith lightsabers, but yellow was a traditional color for Jedi lightsabers.” It sounds silly out loud, but Luke hopes the rationalization will make both him and Ezra more comfortable. “Maybe the floor giving out was a Sith trap, but this is a path for Jedi.”
Ezra snorts. Luke pauses and then says with more conviction,”I think we’ll find Jedi artifacts at the temple.”
“What do you know about the Sith?” Ezra asks after a moment.
“About their beliefs? Not much,” Luke sighs. “They use the Force like it’s a tool, and they draw upon emotion, especially anger and hate, for strength. They’re obsessed with apprentices…”
“The Rule of Two,” Ezra says. “One master, one apprentice; no more, no less.”
Luke blinks into the dark. Luke thinks Ezra won’t say anything else, but then Ezra speaks at a whisper. “It took two of us to find the temple. I saw the runes upstairs, and you touched them. Then, you saw runes and I touched them.”
“Always two there are,” Luke says, and it feels like those words have been said before, and not by him.
“The falling, the pool, the darkness: all of that creates fear—and it’s fear that the dark side draws upon.” Luke hears a rustling, and knows that Ezra has turned on his side, looking away from Luke and towards the corridor to the temple. “This isn’t a path Jedi are meant to walk.”
Luke never quite falls asleep, instead drifting in and out of fitful dreams. It’s a relief when, only a couple hours later, Ezra asks him if he wants to leave the clearing and start exploring. Though they’re ostensibly only going to look for water, Luke somehow knows they’ll end up in the temple before leaving Korriban.
They pack quickly and then eat ration bars in silence, and Luke is struck by how hollow Ezra’s face looks in the pale glow from the lamp. Once Luke finishes his bar, he wishes he had eaten more slowly—talking about going to the temple is one thing, but starting down the narrow path is another.
Luke and Ezra stand, shoulder to shoulder, at the entrance of the corridor and look out to the pyramid in the distance. The rocks had parted to make a narrow hallway; massive black rocks tower on each side of the unnaturally smooth and straight path. Luke takes a deep breath, and before he can stop himself, steps between the rocks. The path is too narrow for Ezra and Luke to walk side-by-side, and a second later Luke hears Ezra sigh and step onto the path after him. Luke holds the lamp aloft, but the red and black temple ahead seems to give off a glow that reaches Luke and Ezra even this far away.
They walk in silence for a few minutes before Ezra asks, “You aren’t going to say anything like, ‘Jedi shouldn’t be afraid?’”
Luke huffs out a laugh, then stops and turns to face Ezra. “I thought you didn’t appreciate my ‘Jedi lessons.’”
Ezra shrugs; it’s probably supposed to seem casual, but Luke can see how forced it is. “I guess I wouldn’t mind hearing more about what you’ve learned from those Jedi temples you and Ahsoka have found throughout the galaxy.” Luke nods, and turns back around and begins walking towards the temple again.
“Honestly, we haven’t found much. No temples or anything—just some Jedi hideaways with holocrons and records of Jedi teachings.”
“And those holocrons taught you about not being afraid?”
“Well, my lessons about fear didn’t come from travelling with Ahsoka,” Luke says. “They came from when I trained with a Jedi master on Dagobah.”
“Dagobah? That swamp planet?” Ezra asks. “I didn’t think anyone lived there.”
“I don’t think anyone does anymore—just the Jedi master. His name was Yoda.”
Behind Luke, Ezra laughs. “Yoda? You trained with Yoda?”
“You’ve heard of him?”
“I’ve met him—or, I kind of met him. When I found my kyber crystal on Lothal, Yoda appeared as a guide.” Luke digests this information, and then Ezra continues, bitterly, “Yoda was the one that told us to go to Malachor.”
The name sounds vaguely familiar, but Luke can’t place it. Malachor—that must have been where Ezra found the other Sith temple. To Luke’s surprise, Ezra speaks again, his voice soft. “I blamed him for a while for— for what happened. Back when I was—” Ezra heaves a sigh. “Well, it doesn’t matter when. But eventually I realized it wasn’t his fault, that he couldn’t have known about what we would find.”
Luke doesn’t know what Ezra is talking about, but Luke stays quiet. For a few minutes, the only sound comes from the echo of their footsteps on the stone underfoot.
Luke realizes with some trepidation that they’re already almost halfway through the corridor, the temple looming larger with each step. “You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to,” Luke starts, “but what can we expect to find in the temple?
“Nothing good,” Ezra says, and he says it with such finality that Luke doesn’t even think to argue. They don’t speak for the rest of the walk.
—
When they reach the other side of the corridor, Ezra first notices how much smaller this temple is than the one on Malachor. It’s the same pyramid shape, the same general construction, with terraces at different levels, but perhaps half the size. The ground around the temple, instead of being littered with the petrified corpses of fallen Jedi and Sith, is completely barren. Smooth black stone extends beyond the temple as far as Ezra can see in the darkness.
They had been walking along the narrow path for perhaps only twenty minutes, but Ezra feels exhausted. The pull of the dark side is worse here, and the temptation of the dark side of the Force seems to drain his last reserves of energy. Ezra takes no comfort in the fact that Luke looks similarly beaten down, and when Ezra suggests pausing for a small break, Luke quickly agrees.
“I don’t see any water anywhere,” Ezra says. “Maybe we should go back to the clearing and…” He doesn’t know how to finish the sentence, and trails off into silence.
“I know you don’t think we should get closer to the temple, but while we’re here, we may as well look,” Luke says.
Ezra grits his teeth, but tries to stay calm. “I don’t see anything that makes me think there would be any Jedi artifacts, and I seriously doubt there will be fresh water inside either.”
“We’ve come this far,” Luke says, placidly meeting Ezra’s glare. “If nothing else, maybe we can learn something about the Sith.”
Luke deserves to know about Malachor, Ezra thinks. The thought is surprising, and terrifying, too—Ezra has never talked about what happened at Malachor with anyone who didn’t already know.
Ezra sits on the ground and a moment later Luke joins him.
“Luke, you have to understand… The last time I went to a Sith temple, on Malachor, I thought—I mean, we thought we’d find information—we thought we’d discover the key to destroying the Sith,” Ezra shakes his head. “That’s what Yoda said we’d find, but we didn’t. If even Yoda was wrong about Sith temples having tools for Jedi, then there’s no way we’ll find anything here.”
“Was it empty? That temple on Malachor?”
“No, it wasn’t empty.” Ezra pauses and meets Luke’s curious gaze. “There was a… a Sith holocron.”
“And Jedi can’t use Sith holocrons,” Luke says, sighing.
“No, they can’t. But I, um, you know…” Ezra twists his hand in a vague gesture, but Luke just looks confused. Ezra sighs. “I opened it. And it taught me a lot, but nothing good.”
Luke blinks a couple times but his expression remains calm. Ezra hugs his knees to his chest and looks out to the temple. “That’s why I didn’t want to come to Korriban: I almost fell to the dark side once, and I didn’t want to fail again.”
“Ezra,” Luke says. Ezra looks at him. “You didn’t fail before. If you had, you wouldn’t be here now. I’ve seen how the dark side can call to people, how it can twist even the best of the Jedi. It takes tremendous strength to turn back to the light.”
For whatever reason, that’s when it clicks. Luke’s last name, his sadness at Vader’s death, the way Ahsoka speaks of her fight against Vader on Malachor—
“Anakin Skywalker—Darth Vader—was your father,” Ezra whispers.
“Yes,” Luke says, simply.
Both men sit in silence for some time. This close to the temple, there’s enough of a glow that Ezra turns off the lamp. Strangely, Ezra feels calm. He reaches out with the Force and feels Luke’s peace, as well, with his parentage.
He understands why the temple scares you, Ezra thinks, but the voice is Kanan’s. I know sometimes you feel alone, but you’ve always had people who understand you. He’s as afraid of falling as you are.
He doesn’t show it, Ezra thinks.
In his mind, Ezra can picture Kanan shrugging. Maybe he isn’t afraid because he has you. You used to trust people, Ezra. I know something changed, when you were in Wild Space, but Luke isn’t Thrawn. He understands you, and trusts you completely. Trust him as he trusts you.
“Luke,” Ezra says, but when he turns to look at him, Luke is asleep, sitting cross legged but leaning up against the stone wall. Ezra can’t help but smile a little before mirroring Luke’s position and closing his own eyes. Might as well sleep now—I guess tomorrow we’re going into the temple.
—
The first thing Luke thinks when he wakes up is that it must still be night—it’s too dark still. It’s also hot, and the warmth reminds Luke of Tatooine; for a moment, he imagines himself in his bedroom at the Lars Homestead, dreading getting out of bed at dawn to begin his work on the farm. The sound of snoring, to Luke’s right, breaks the illusion, and when Luke turns his head, he sees Ezra curled up, hugging the pack of supplies to his chest.
All at once, Luke remembers where he is—and what he told Ezra the night before. Luke had never felt ashamed of who his father was. That Anakin Skywalker had fallen simply was, as was his eventual and brief return to the light. But not everyone would be so understanding. On Leia’s recommendation, Luke did not share information about Anakin’s life lightly; by Luke’s estimate, only a handful of people knew the truth.
But here, now, Luke is glad Ezra knows. It’s comforting to think that Ezra shares Luke’s fears of falling, and that Ezra knows some of the basis for that fear.
Now firmly awake, Luke sits up and looks at the temple. It’s constructed of the same black rock that was around the pool and made up the corridor—it has the same bloody sheen and knife’s-edge smoothness.
He stands and stretches, looking out at the wide expanse of stone. The lowest part of the temple seems to have recesses that may contain doors; the uppermost level glows with a promising, if foreboding, red light, but Luke can’t see any stairs or lifts leading to the upper terraces.
Ezra wakes then, with a wide yawn and groan. They pack up the small camp in silence, and Luke keeps finding his eyes drifting toward the temple.
Ezra leads the way to the entrance. “There’s this test we have to pass,” he says, frowning. “Follow my lead.”
He closes his eyes and raises a hand; the plinth before them raises smoothly, revealing another plinth in the corridor behind it. Ezra walks forward, hand still raised above his head, and even though Luke remembers how hard it was to lift that X-Wing on Dagobah, he trusts Ezra enough to walk under the stone.
Like grits his teeth and raises the next stone. He remembers Yoda insisting that the size didn’t matter, but still struggles with the weight—as well as an unnatural drain on his strength, as if the stones in the dark and claustrophobic hallway themselves were leaching out his strength.
One stone after another, Ezra and Luke work their way past the first of the temple’s tests. There are five—six?—stones in total, each one somehow heavier than the last. When Luke lifts the final stone and cold, sour air rushes into the corridor from the open atrium ahead, he and Ezra half-sprint half-stumble into the open space.
The last plinth slams down behind them.
Luke looks around and finds the room strangely empty. There are little recesses in the walls with finely carved pedestals, as if there should be artifacts of some sort on display. But there’s nothing on the stands—just the mirrored surface of the overwrought obsidian stone.
“That’s weird,” Luke says, turning to Ezra. “It looks like—“ Luke blinks. “Ezra?” He turns, but finds himself alone in the atrium. “Ezra!”
—
The last plinth falls behind Ezra with a definitive bang, and, somehow, he’s not surprised that Luke is gone. Of course the temple would split them up—even Jedi temples had a tendency to do that.
He remembers Kanan talking about how padawans used to search for their lightsaber crystals, and remembers how he himself had to wander through the labyrinth of the Lothal Jedi temple on his own to find his own bit of kyber.
“This is just like that,” Ezra mutters to himself, wandering further into the room. “Just like Lothal.”
The room is filled with stuff. Some of it he has seen before—those strange ancient lightsabers with the cross hilts, and what appear to be real beskar Mandalorian helmets. But some of it looks totally foreign. Weird headdresses and bits of ships and a dusty chest filled with a bunch of what Ezra guesses are stimpacks, like the old fashioned version of the drugs bounty hunters use to improve their fighting.
There are credits, too, some pretty recent and some interminably ancient, some even from empires and governments that hadn’t existed for thousands of years. The jewels, though, are the strangest: despite the low light, they glitter red and purple atop the piles of junk.
Ezra decides not to touch any of it. Or, rather, he tells himself it would be a really bad idea to touch any of it.
There’s no obvious exit, only the plinth/corridor that led into the room. Ezra sighs, and turns back to the giant stone. He’s already exhausted, both from the first time through the corridor and from lack of sleep since getting to Korriban, but he clears his mind from its distractions and raises the plinth again. Sure enough, this time there is a new room on the other side—he can’t make it out in the darkness, but it’s certainly not another wall of stone for which he would need Luke’s help.
Ezra stumbles under the stone, and lets it drop unceremoniously once he’s on the other side.
Ezra.
The whisper is so soft, he almost tells himself he was imagining it.
Ezra, the voice says again, a little louder.
He knows. Before even looking up, he knows what he will see—it’s the same voice he remembers from his last escapade in a Sith temple, beguiling and venomous.
This room is the same size as the other, but devoid of treasure. Or devoid but for a single pedestal on the far side of the room, where a holocron glitters red.
Ezra clenches his teeth. “You can’t help me,” he says.
“Can’t I?”
“I need to find my friend.” He pretends that he’s saying it to himself, and not to the holocron, but still shivers as he looks around the room, avoiding even glancing at the small pyramidal object floating gently less than ten meters away.
There is a door, and Ezra walks over to it confidently, but his heart sinks when he sees the small empty space next to the door. The exact right size for a holocron.
He doesn’t look at the holocron as he approaches the pedestal. Instead, he keeps his eyes trained up, at the seam where the perfectly smooth black wall meets the vaulted ceiling. When he reaches out and takes the holocron in his hand, he feels a bright spark, like static, and swiftly stuffs it in the pocket of his jumpsuit on the way back to the alcove in the wall.
The holocron remains silent; it’s almost worse than if it were talking to him. He remembers opening the holocron the first time—what feels like a lifetime ago—and in his muted panic at being separated from Luke, misses the feelings of strength and surety the holocron from Malachor had brought him.
Ezra places the holocron into the space in the wall. Sure enough, the door slides open, impossibly silent considering it should grate being stone on stone. The chamber on the other side of the threshold glows a soft red.
—
Ezra definitely isn’t in the chamber, and Luke is definitely pretending not to be freaked out. A strange mist seems to hang in his peripheral, and the air seems to vacillate between hot and cold with alarming frequency.
The chamber remains empty of Ezra, despite Luke’s careful search. The only feature of interest is in the alcove furthest from where Luke entered the atrium, where a strange little triangle sits on top of one of the pedestals. As if whoever looted the chamber of its other treasures deemed the silver and red pyramid not worth stealing.
Or, Luke thinks, whoever looted the chamber was scared to take it.
It’s hard to believe anyone would be scared of something so small and dull-looking. Maybe the intricate carvings in the metal would look nice if held up to a light source, but Luke isn’t about to touch the—whatever it is.
The rest of the chamber is just little alcoves and empty pedestals. There’s a stone that appears to have a lintel, like it could be a door, but no discernable way to get it open, just a strange spot on the wall, the size of—
—A holocron? Luke thinks. He remembers a holocron Ahsoka found, months ago on Dantooine, that kept insisting it be placed in the walls of the Jedi enclave. Neither he nor Ahsoka knew what the Jedi enclave was, but Ahsoka did say that sometimes holocrons could be used like keys.
Luke turns and looks back at the unassuming triangle across the way from where he stands. It’s the right size, and he’s desperate enough to go over and grab it before he can talk himself out of it.
The object—a holocron, Luke decides—sits in the little space in the wall for only a second. Then, with a great heaving sound, the stone in the wall slides upward and reveals the passage beyond. Luke thinks about leaving the holocron in the wall for a second, then grabs it out of an abundance of caution and ventures forward into a narrow hallway. The hallway seems endless—perfectly straight and empty, though Luke gets the strange feeling that he is slowly descending deeper into the temple.
He walks and walks, and keeps doing the breathing exercises Ahsoka taught him to center himself. He thinks about Ezra—wonders if he’s doing something similar, and hopeful that wherever this hallway leads will meet up with him.
Slowly, the hallway becomes less and less polished. The walls become rougher and less shiny, and the ceiling drops lower and lower, until Luke almost has to hunch his shoulders to fit. Before, the temple seemed to simply glow with some sort of unnatural power, but as the stone becomes less worked, the glow is replaced with threads of red material, maybe crystal or ore, snaking along the walls. The ceiling drops lower, and Luke puts out a hand to steady himself on the wall, now dripping with condensation. Condensation. Luke stops and blinks. Condensation on the walls, and ahead he hears the incessant gurgle of—
“Water!” Luke exclaims. The hallway abruptly ends in a cavern, and there, before him, is what might be the best sight in his life—a healthy little stream, rushing over black rocks. He runs forward, and fills up his canteen with a grin. It smells normal, not like the sour water in that cavern he and Ezra fell into, and in the low light, he sees that it’s mostly clear and free of sediment.
Luke hadn’t thought he was thirsty, but the first cautious sip tastes as good as any revaporated water back on Tatooine and he finds himself drinking a third of his canteen without thinking. Remembering that the water hasn’t been filtered makes him stop before just finishing the rest of the canteen off, but he fills up his canteen and the backup, just in case. For some reason, getting a little sick from bad water sounds less bad than slowly dying of thirst.
Then he hears it—faint and weak, but familiar all the same. Ezra’s voice, from somewhere in the dark. The little cavern Luke stands in has veins of that incandescent red stone running through the walls, but the narrow pathway leading off to wherever Ezra’s voice is echoing is pitch black.
Luke doesn’t even pause. He hitches his pack up on his back, and then jogs into the dark.
Luke stumbles three times before igniting his lightsaber as a guide. In the green light, he can more easily avoid the sharp rocks underfoot, though having the lightsaber right next to his face means he can’t run as fast—lest he trip, skewering himself and ending his attempt at rescuing Ezra in pretty much the most embarrassing way possible.
Whatever Ezra is yelling is garbled beyond recognition. A couple times he thinks he hears his own name, and once or twice it just sounds like screaming. The screaming makes Luke pick up his pace. Whenever the path forks, Luke picks the one where Ezra’s voice is louder—once or twice he goes fifteen meters down a route, finds himself at a dead end, and turns around. For a moment, Ezra’s voice stops and Luke realizes that he probably couldn’t retrace his way back to the cavern with the water if he tried.
That thought makes his heart pound; then, Ezra’s voice calls out again, definitely louder, and Luke rushes out in that direction without a pause.
—
Ezra wanders through the temple. He goes through chamber after chamber, each one filled with piles of riches. Ezra thinks Hondo would love it.
Eventually, he comes to a set of stairs. Some lead upward, toward where Ezra can imagine there’s some kind of terrace like where he briefly fought Darth Vader—Anakin Skywalker—on Malachor. There are stairs, too, leading down—and although Ezra knows he’ll probably regret it, he chooses to go down.
The stairwell is narrow and steep, and Ezra thinks more than once about turning around. He keeps heading deeper into the temple, and, when he pauses to think, the stairs are deeper probably than should be possible, considering the fact the whole temple was already below Korriban’s surface. But the stairs keep going, and Ezra keeps descending.
—
He loses track of time. There’s no logic to when Ezra’s voice will be louder or softer, and it seems as though Luke is never any closer, when suddenly he squeezes through a small passage and finds himself in an ornately carved chamber.
It’s silent. Luke tries to catch his breath, while simultaneously listening as carefully as possible for any sound whatsoever. All he hears, however, is his own heart pounding in his ears.
The chamber is small—octagonally shaped, and maybe only three meters across from wall to wall. Luke spins around a couple times, and is about to go back through the crevice he used to get into this dead end, when he hears it.
“Luke,” Ezra says. He sounds closer than before, but muffled. “Please.”
“Where are you?” Luke yells. “Ezra! I’m right here!”
It’s only a flash, but Luke sees it. A fleeting handprint, on the black stone before him—almost as if Ezra is on the other side of the chamber’s wall.
Luke tries to stab his lightsaber through, but the blade dies and sputters out.
—
Ezra reaches the bottom of the stairs abruptly. The chamber—or cave, more accurately—the stairs ended in has what appears to be hundreds of holocrons. Piles and piles of them, some in mounds nearly reaching the ceiling of the room, in all different shapes and in various stages of decay. Ezra, painfully aware of the object still tucked in his pocket, briefly extends his awareness through the piles of holocrons and is only half-surprised at the lack of response.
Failed holocrons, he thinks. Someone put a lot of effort into making the one I found.
He walks slowly into the center of the room, and avoids touching any of the holocrons, even though he knows logically they’re nothing more than hunks of twisted metal. But amongst the cubes and spheres and more-familiar pyramids, he sees something else—a lightsaber hilt, now almost as familiar to him as his own.
It’s Luke’s, unmistakably, and so mangled it no longer lights. Ezra holds it for a moment, the sick rush of blood in his ears so deafening that he almost doesn’t hear the holocron.
He’s dead, the holocron whispers. Maybe Ezra only hears it because it’s the same litany repeating within his own mind.
He’s dead, and there’s only one way to escape this place before you’re killed, too.
Alone again—lost and broken, like so many times before.
—
You must use the holocron.
For a second, Luke thinks it’s a voice speaking to him through the Force. But this voice isn’t the familiar cadence of Ben Kenobi or Yoda. Luke blinks, then drops his pack on the floor and unzips it, pulling out the holocron.
Open the holocron, the voice says again, certainly emanating from within the holocron’s depths.
Ezra’s voice, which had been begging Luke for help, cuts off suddenly, filling Luke with a deeper dread than either the yelling or pleading before.
He’s opened holocrons before, and Luke expects that this will be like those—he closes his eyes and holds the holocron in his open palm. Usually, holocrons open with a sort of gentle nudge, like poking a finger in well-risen dough. But the holocron remains lifeless in his hand.
Your friend is dying, the voice says. You must use me.
“I—I can’t,” Luke says. It’s a Sith holocron—that much seems obvious, given its provenance—and Luke knows that he can’t.
The holocron doesn’t say anything, but Luke sees another red blur on the stone before him. Jedi aren’t supposed to be able to open Sith holocrons, he thinks.
But Ezra could. And so could Luke’s father.
The holocron keeps its silence as Luke closes his eyes again. And, for the first time in a long time, Luke opens himself up—not just to the Force, but to a torrent of emotion.
—
It’s almost easy. Maybe because it’s familiar. But Ezra doesn’t even have to try that hard to sink back to that place he had been when he first opened a Sith holocron.
The panic, fear, exhaustion, frustration, guilt, pain—all of it was simply simmering beneath the surface, and all Ezra had to do was not repress it.
The corners twist smoothly, and lift away from the body. The holocron raises out of Ezra’s hand, and unspools further, its component parts swirling away. But they don’t stop swirling. They arc further out, and Ezra tries to pull them back together, but when he reaches out to grab the body of the holocron, he’s pushed back with a sudden boom.
He’s no longer in the holocron room. Or maybe he is, but his surroundings are impossible to discern. A red light, so thick it may be smoke, envelopes him—and in the twisting light, he sees half-formed images.
Just like when he and Maul opened holocrons together.
Ezra pushes through the light, but the light has unnatural substance, like a viscous liquid. The holocron is speaking to him, and he almost listens—until he sees before him Luke, standing in the same light.
“Luke!” Ezra says.
But Luke doesn’t even look at Ezra.
“It says I can learn anything—any secret.” Luke sounds awed, his voice quiet under the roar of coruscating energy.
“I know!” Ezra says, grabbing Luke’s arm. “It’s lying—it will only show you what it wants.”
The voice reverberates from around both of them. “Ezra Bridger,” it says, haughty. “You once asked the holocrons how to destroy the Sith,” and a swirling image appears of Maul and Ezra enveloped in energy. “Perhaps you are right: perhaps it is time for the Sith to end. But don’t you see? With the power the dark side of the Force offers you, you could build a new order, neither Jedi nor Sith. You need not limit yourself to one.”
“I want to build a new order,” Luke says, as if in a trance. “And maybe the Jedi made mistakes—”
“It’s lying to you! You know who the Jedi were. You’re a Jedi.” Ezra digs his fingers into Luke’s forearm. It barely makes him turn. “You can build a new order, but that doesn’t mean that you need the Dark side. Luke,” Ezra says. Luke turns then, and actually looks at him. “Trust me. We’re going to rebuild the Order, together.”
“But we don’t know what to do—”
“Who cares?” Ezra smiles. “We’ll figure something out.”
—
The light disappears as abruptly as it began. There’s a loud clang as one of the holocrons drops to the floor—the other, still in Luke’s hand, gets tossed as well a second later. They’re outside the temple, right where they had been before lifting the plinths to get inside.
This time, to the left of the huge stones, there’s a circular door made of a glowing white light. It appears to head straight into the side of the pyramid, but Ezra steps toward it confidently.
“Come on,” Ezra says. “I think this is the way out.”
—
They walk through the door, together, and when Ezra’s eyes adjust to the bright light, he gasps. Before him, Korriban’s vast and barren fields glow red and orange in the light from the rising sun.
“Careful,” Luke says, pulling Ezra back. Ezra glances down to see what Luke is referring to, and quickly takes another two steps back from the sheer drop at the edge of the outcropping he and Luke stand on.
Ezra realizes he’s standing, somehow, on the side of a mountain, far above the shattered and dusty plains that make up the planet’s surface.
“Luke? Ezra?”
They stare at each other in confusion for a moment, and then Luke laughs and shrugs the pack off his back, fishing inside for the communicator.
“Luke! Ezra! Can you hear me?”
“Master Tano!” Luke exclaims after fumbling with the communicator for a second. “Are we glad to hear from you!”
“Where are you?” Ahsoka asks, the panicked tone from a moment before replaced by sheer relief. “I’m at your camp in the Valley of the Dark Lords, but it looks like you haven’t been here for a few days.”
“Where are we?” Luke repeats, looking down the sheer drop of the mountain’s side. “I— We’re—” Luke looks to Ezra for help, who shrugs.
“You better just trace our location,” Ezra says.
A second later, Ahsoka grunts in surprise. “You’re… on a mountain?”
“We’re a little confused, too,” Ezra says sheepishly, and Luke laughs.
“We fell,” Luke adds. “We thought we were underground, but I guess we climbed up somewhere.”
Ahsoka hums. “Not just up—you’re a hundred kilometers from me.”
Luke and Ezra look at each other in shock.
“How did you know to come back for us?” Ezra asks suddenly.
“What do you mean?” Ahsoka asks, the humming in the background signaling the lifting off of the ship.
“You said you wouldn’t come back for a week.”
Ahsoka’s pause speaks volumes. “It’s been a week,” she says slowly. “What happened to you two?”
“We’ll tell you when you get here,” Luke says, and Ezra notices for the first time how Luke’s eyes keep flicking to the outcropping’s edge. He’s the Jedi who destroyed a Death Star, fought the Emperor, returned Vader to the light, helped bring balance to the Force... and he’s scared of heights.
“I’ll see you in a few minutes,” Ahsoka says, and Luke turns off the communicator.
“Well?” Luke prompts, tucking the communicator in the bag.
“Well what?”
“If you’re going to say it, you should say it before Ahsoka gets here. She probably won’t find it funny.”
“Say what?”
“I told you so.”
“Huh,” Ezra says. “I guess I did say it wasn’t a good idea to come to Korriban, and I said we wouldn’t find any Jedi temples or outposts or whatever, and I said looking in those tombs was dumb.”
“Yeah,” Luke laughs, “Ahsoka probably wouldn’t like to hear any of that.”
They stand in silence for a moment, smiling at each other.
“I guess this whole thing was a wasted trip,” Luke says.
Everything still feels unreal, but Ezra takes Luke’s flesh-and-blood hand in his own and thinks it feels like a lifeline. Ezra looks at Luke. The dawn light haloes his head, and even though he’s pale and his face looks drawn, Ezra thinks it might be the most beautiful sight he’s ever seen. Luke’s smile is small, and he blushes in a way that makes Ezra’s heart stutter.
“I don’t know,” Ezra says slowly, memories of sharing a drink with a handsome stranger on Llorn Minor coming to mind. To not wasted trips, Ezra had toasted, all those months ago. “It wasn’t all bad.”
Luke kisses him, and when Ezra closes his eyes, the rising sun fills his mind with gold.
Really, Ezra decides, it wasn’t bad at all.