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”Glaring at the gate won’t make it open any faster.”
”Well, you never know,” Chirrut said airily, resisting the urge to start rattling either the metal bars or the person guarding them. ”The elders - blessed be - keep telling me I’m flushed with the Force, so I might be trying to use a Jedi mind trick on you and have you open it for me.” Guardian Kawak chuckled merrily behind him but made no move towards the control panel on her side, content to stare at the back of Chirrut’s head with amusement. Normally Chirrut might have joined in, but as of late he had found it hard to be amused by most things so one of them laughing would have to be enough.
”It’s all a part of the test. You should have learned a bit of patience by now, don’t you think? How do you expect to fare in marriage, if you can’t even wait for a gate to open?” Kawak said, smugness seeping into her voice. Chirrut turned around with a huff, prepared to let sister Kawak know just how well she was going to fare if she didn’t open the gate in the next five seconds, but the words were lost, as at that moment, the sacred kyber bell rang in the citadel tower. It marked the coming of a new hour, its high clear note drowning out all other sounds on the mesa, even this deep in the rock. Kawak smiled, punching a code into the panel and the old metal gate slid away in front of them with a tired screech.
”You know the drill, I’ll let you know when you’re out of time. Don’t make me come and get you again,” she said, but Chirrut was already past the gate and halfway through the next chamber. Kawak sighed to herself, pressing on the control panel again.
”And have fun!” she called out as the gate rattled shut between them, and Chirrut was alone.
Speeding up as he went along the pathway, Chirrut eyed the entrance chamber with disdain. The first time he’d stepped through that damned gate he immediately stopped dead in his tracks, breathless and awed by the jarring beauty of the space. The temple, despite all of its power and grandeur, was largely ascetic and barren. Built over a millennium, with wings, towers and spires added slowly over time, the Temple of the Whills – while magnificent – was hardly architecturally unified. The guardians put up an impressive effort at appearances, but at their heart, theirs was a brotherhood of faith and tradition, not of credits and glory. Any additions to the temple had usually been out of necessity, not to fulfil any opulent visions. Chirrut had grown up used to the occasional beautiful spot in mostly empty sandstone hallways, inspiring in their size and wealth of history but not much else.
The marital path was different. He had been told as much but hearing something and experiencing it were two different things. Beginning at the metal gate and ending at the small steps on the other side of the room, the walls and ceiling of the waiting chamber were covered in kyber-studded reliefs that glimmered in the candlelight coming from the ever-lit altars in the middle of the room. The scenes on the walls depicted the light side of the Force in all of its positive and negative forms from intimate relationships to cosmic collisions, in balance with the chamber of darkness he knew existed on the other side of the path. Both of the chambers represented the fullness and beauty of light and dark respectively and they lead to the same place in the middle of the mesa, together, balancing each other.
It was beautiful and precious, sacred and secret, only ever seen by the disciples or the guardians journeying through it. Chirrut knew he was incredibly privileged to be able to experience it, he was told as much every day.
Rushing through the blessed path, Chirrut couldn’t find it in himself to be awed anymore. He’d already seen enough of this particular wonder of the Force and guardian engineering for a lifetime, and he would be seeing it daily for at least another half moon. He tried to not let that knowledge despair him as he hurried through the chamber and down the worn steps into the sunlight.
His feet, chilly from the cold seeping through the floor inside the chamber, landed on sun-warmed stone. He could see dust and sand flying into the air as he stepped into the hallway, the desert grit glinting in the slanted sunlight filtering into the space. He stopped and turned around, facing the altar above the archway he had just come through. The code instructed that he was to ‘see where he had come from’ and send a small prayer to the force, thanking the universe for letting him experience what he had wanted and prayed for, for so long. This too had felt special the first time. Chirrut had kneeled before the altar, tears welling in his eyes out of joy for the blessing he would be allowed to receive so soon and for the ones he’d already claimed. To be preparing for a marriage so blessed in the Force under the guidance of the masters truly must make him the luckiest a person could be.
If those prayers seemed slightly more desperate and haggard now, months later, he hoped the force wouldn’t mind. It wasn’t the depth of feeling he was lacking, no, indeed that only seemed to grow fuller and deeper by each day, like the springs down in the kyber caves, or the kisses he’d shared there with his future husband just a few rains prior, laughing in the warm darkness, so full of light and love he hadn’t known what to do with himself but to propose, to promise himself forever
And Baze had said yes, laughing, tears and kyber dust in his eyes.
...That all felt like centuries ago.
No, indeed he did not lack passion for the cause. What he did lack though, what he had always lacked, was patience. His composure was wearing alarmingly thin each passing day, but that too was a part of the test as Kawak would put it. Chirrut kneeled swiftly and thanked the Force, trying to impart as much sincerity as he could, then got up just as fast and turned towards the hallway once more.
As the chamber of light before it, the hallway was beautiful. Unlike the chamber of light, it still always managed to impress him, no matter how many times he saw it or how much it annoyed him. Allegedly the life work of a single stonecutter centuries ago, the hallway of balance – more accurately a balcony – was undoubtedly the most beautiful structure in the whole temple, definitely in all of Jedha city and quite likely the whole solar system.
Located in the side of the mesa, carved into the rock straight under the temple, was a relief that covered the whole stretch of the wall. Chirrut remembered first seeing it with a group of acolytes as a child when they had gone for their desert search. Regular tourists and pilgrims were told that the stone carving was merely decoration. The disciple taking them around the mesa had been delighted to share the secret of the carving to the group of very curious younglings who had never seen it before.
”This carving, it is beautiful isn’t it?” Disciple Kehnan had inquired and the group of acolytes, who had all mumbled something along the lines of ”yes”, ”very” and ”oh wow”.
”Can anyone tell me what it represents?” A small hand went up at the behind of the pack.
”Yes, brother Baze?”
”Is it the light and dark?”
“Yes indeed! The light and the dark side of the Force coming together to make one whole, holding up the temple, acting as our foundation. Very astute of you brother Baze, I’m impressed!” Disciple Kehnan said with a bright smile and at the back of the pack, the small boy flushed with pride. Another small boy next to him huffed.
“It is a representation of our faith, visible to the travellers coming from the desert beyond the other side of the moon. It is a beacon to guide home all who wish to travel the sands and find their way to the temple. However…” She paused, leaning in closer to the group, playing the part of a conspirator with glee.
“It isn’t just that. Much like with the Force, you have to look deeper than the surface to find the meaning.” A murmur of solemn understanding passed the group.
”It holds a secret, beholden only to us, the occupants of the temple. You see, behind that relief, there is a blessed path, sacred and reserved to those willing to bind themselves with another person like the light and dark are bound to each other like the Force binds us all. The path of marriage. Each day the to-be-bound couple are allowed to meet in the path for a few minutes and pray for balance for their upcoming bond. It is only for the guardians and the disciples of the temple and it is both very romantic and very blessed,” she said with twinkles in all of her four eyes. Another murmur of awe, understanding and acceptance passed the class.
“It does sound very romantic doesn’t it Chirrut?” acolyte Baze had said to the boy next to him who only seemed to huff harder.
”It sounds weird! If you loved someone enough to want to be married, would you not want to be with them all the time and not only a few minutes a day inside a stone wall? ” He had said back to Baze, but Baze’s eyes had been glazed over with a particularly dreamy look, and Chirrut had thought better than to try to break him out of it.
Looking back on it, he couldn't have been more right. The reason for this practice, he was to find out when later that day he went to interrogate one of the elders about it, was that to both preserve balance in the Force and have a happy marriage, you had to have your unhappiness before the marriage. This way, the elders had said to him as a child, said to him as Baze has been escorted to his own quarters on the other side of the mesa, kept saying to him every day, you ensured that all of the negative feelings had a chance to happen now and not during the marriage. This, as they all knew, wasn’t how the Force worked exactly, but the tradition was old and people put a lot of faith into it. Baze put a lot of faith into it. Because what harm is a few months of abstaining, rigorous training, ritual fasting, meditation, praying (frustration, sleeplessness, longing, loneliness) for a lifetime of happiness? Besides, as Kawak had said to him on the first night Chirrut had finally had enough of it, he should be grateful. This was a blessed time.
He walked along the balcony with a purpose, cursing its length. Most of the light there was coming from the numerous altars covering the mesa side of the balcony, each of them including candles, lamps and kyber bits in them, each of those representative of a person who’d once successfully walked the path and gotten married. Chirrut ran his hand on the wall, sliding over carvings, wondering how cold the mesa could be even this deep. The only warmth was coming from outside, from the sunlight that managed to filter through the relief. It was a clear day, the sunlight was warm for once and it painted the floor and his feet with patches of light, coming slanted through the gaps in the stone. Chirrut passed behind a stony Jedi knight, their vacant eyes gazing up towards the temple, the sun coming through between his raised hand and the ceiling. Even from the inside, the relief was beautiful but Chirrut couldn’t help but be reminded of the golden birdcages he sometimes saw at the market square in town. The part of his brain that was self-aware tried to interject, but Chirrut ignored it, much more comfortable wallowing in his discomfort for a while longer as he finally came to the centre of the balcony, and to the real source of his frustration.
In front of him, cutting the balcony in half, was a stone carving. It depicted a garden, unlike any Chirrut had ever seen in the flesh, so completely different from the meagre mud filled greenhouse of their temple it was hard to believe they could ever serve the same function. Flowers and trees and fruit of all kinds looked like they were sprouting from the stone itself. Knowing how hard and coarse Jedha stone was, feeling the smoothness of the carving, of the stone and the trees and the leaves and the petals was almost unreal. It was said that the stonecutter had used a third of his life on this small wall alone, pouring out his love and longing for a homeworld he had once come from and no longer knew into each cut of his chisel. It was truly one of the most beautiful things Chirrut had ever seen.
And for the past week, he’d been going through a thought exercise of the best ways he could destroy it completely. Because while the relief on the mesa side wasn’t really a prison bar, this carving was.
At first glance, the carving looked solid, but coming closer it became clear that that wasn’t the case. Like an intricate filigree ring, all of the negative space between the lush greenery were tiny gaps in the stone. There were enough of these spaces that you could just barely make out a figure if one should stand behind the carving. The only sense not dulled or outright blocked by the carving was hearing, as it was possible to talk to whoever was on the other side without trouble. But not touch, not see, not really be with and not for long. There was a silver bell on the wall with a string attached, running the whole side of the mesa and back into the chambers so whoever was in charge of keeping the couple apart could signal when they were running out of time to talk and when that time had ended. Chirrut stood in front of the lacework of stone and thought that the man who carved it must have been the cruellest man to ever walk the temple grounds.
He was then stopped in his thoughts by the sound of steps on the other side, soft but urgent, halting in front of the carving.
”Baze?” He called out, trying to listen. His hand reached out almost involuntarily landing on a carved peony sprouting from the stone.
”Chirrut? Ah, love, I hope you are well,” He heard, a low well-loved voice on the other side, out of breath but relief clear in every note. Tension in him snapped and he lulled forwards, smiling as he felt his knees give out slightly.
”Ai, husband-” he breathed, leaning hard against the stonework, hoping – not for the first time – that it could melt away and he could feel warm skin instead of chilled rock. The answering low rumble of laughter from the other side made him shiver.
”Husband? Ah, I love the sound of that, but that is not the truth, is it now Chirrut? Not yet at least.” Baze’s tone was light, teasing even, but Chirrut could hear the strain at the edges of it. The same frustration that flayed at his nerves and kept him up at night. He drew breath through his nose and pressed his forehead against the stone.
”Can you fault me for hoping this ordeal was already over with? So that I can say that word and have it be true? If I can’t have that, I would at least like to have the word.”
Baze laughed softly. ”Not long and you can have it all.”
”I know.” He traced his finger on an ornate leaf, much finer than any Jedha cloud grow from its sand, the delicate shape only possible in stone filigree. On the other side he knew Baze was leaning against the stonework like him, but Chirrut could only feel the chilled rock, hum of kyber.
Closing his eyes he reached inside him and then out, tentatively feeling the Force around them. His mind was too strained for much but he could feel himself drift, reaching through the wall to Baze’s presence, warm and bright. He heard Baze’s intake of breath and smiled lightly.
”How are you doing?” Chirrut asked, feeling weariness radiate from the other man.
”I’m good. Tired. But that is right. If this was easy I wouldn’t be doing it right.”
Chirrut let out a mock dramatic sigh.
”We could have just eloped and gotten married in the city without all of this nonsense. The temple might be blessed in the Force but they make everything so complicated and terrible.”
”A few months of hardship for a lifetime of marital joy doesn’t sound fair to you? You’re always the one going on about keeping the balance in the Force, but now the ways of the Force don’t please you?” Baze said and Chirrut could hear the smile playing on Baze’s face and he smiled as well, despite himself.
”This has nothing to do with the ways of the Force and everything to do with the ways of the temple. This is the Abbaena and the Elders taking revenge on me, personally.”
”You and me and every generation in the temple before us,” Baze said easily and Chirrut huffed loud and petulant to make sure Baze could hear it. The small silver bell on the wall let out a bright sound, signalling a half of their time over. A wave of real anger rose up at the thought of how little time they were allowed but Chirrut moved through it, merely letting himself feel it, knowing it a part of the exercise as it rose and crashed over him before abating back into the sea of his consciousness.
”At least the Force lets us talk, though not much... I wish I could feel you.”
Chirrut put his hand flat on the stone feeling each groove and bump, trying to remember how it would feel to run his fingers along Baze. The curve of his broken nose, the rough of his palms, the softness of his chest. He couldn’t believe it had been weeks since he’d been able to kiss Baze. It made him dizzy to think that it had been months since they were able to do more.
”Soon, Chirrut,” Baze said, aiming for comforting but arriving somewhere closer to desperate himself.
”Not soon enough,” Chirrut groused to himself, savoring the raspy laugh he could make out through the lace.
”You know, maybe we’re not thinking about this the right way,” Chirrut said after a while, a smile creeping onto his lips again.
”What do you mean?”
”What I mean is that, well, this thing,” he said, tapping at the stone, ”doesn’t have to be as much of an obstacle as we’ve been acting like it is. I think we’re both aware of what I can do to you with just words…” Baze let out a breath at that, and Chirrut counted it as a success.
”This wouldn't even be the first time we’ve ah… connected without being in the same space. Remember the holo I sent you when you were on that envoy trip to Corsucant?” Chirrut definitely remembered. And judging by the noise Baze made he did too.
”Chirrut!” How he managed to sound scandalized after all they’d done as a couple was beyond him, but Chirrut enjoyed it nonetheless.
”That isn’t–that is not allowed and you know it,” Baze whispered hurriedly through the lacing, a drop of longing stealing into his voice despite his best efforts. ”Please tell me you have been following the code!” Chirrut wished Baze could see him roll his eyes.
"Yes, I have been following the code, don’t worry. I haven’t put a hand below my waist in months! I’m so high strung I might come immediately when I see you in the ceremony, but at least it will be holy,” he said and Baze let out a shaky laugh at that. Chirrut shook his head.
”Sometimes I wish I was getting married to a man with better priorities than following every code to its letter,” he said.
”Well, sometimes I wish I was marrying a man with more patience, but then he wouldn’t be you, and then I wouldn’t want him,” Baze said, far too sincere, and Force help him Chirrut felt his knees go weak. He leant against the wall, heavy with all the affection he couldn’t let out.
”I miss you so,” he said to the stone lilies and it was like they swayed a little, just as weak with love as he felt.
”I miss you too… I can’t wait to see you again,” Baze sighed. Chirrut was about to answer, but the bell rang again and a gate opened somewhere far behind him.
”Brother Îmwe, it is time!” Kawak’s voice shouted from afar. Chirrut groaned, but stood straight, hands still glued to the ornament.
”Not long anymore, Chirrut,” Baze said, sounding certain, if not a bit haggard. ”Here,” and suddenly Chirrut felt something coming through the small space between a carnation and the stem, a space too small for a hand or even a finger but big enough for a–
”A flower? Baze, isn’t this against the code?”
The flower was a small green thing, just a shoot really. It smelled faintly sweet and it was warm from being held in Baze’s palm. ”Ah, maybe, but I couldn’t help it. I was tending to the garden and I-”
”You were willing to risk bad luck for our marriage because you wanted to give me a flower? Weren’t you the one who was chastising me for suggesting uncouth things just a moment ago?” Chirrut said with a lilt, pressing the flower to his nose. He could feel Baze’s flush all the way over here.
”Well, yes, but this isn’t… the code doesn’t say anything about flowers and I... how much bad luck can one flower cause?” Baze mumbled breathlessly, sounding urgent but sincere. Someone yelled at him from his side.
”It’s beautiful. Thank you, husband,” Chirrut said, imparting as much sincerity as he could. ”I’ll love and treasure it just like I love and treasure you.” He heard more yelling from Baze’s side and smiled sadly. ”But now you have to go I’m afraid, or H-tne will have your hide, and Kawak mine and neither of us will have a man left to marry.” He pressed his forehead against the stone one more time and breathed with what he hoped was in rhythm with Baze.
”The Force is with me,” he heard the deep warm voice say from the other side.
”And I’m one with the Force,” he echoed. He leaned back from the wall as he heard Baze slowly move away and then turned around, starting his walk back into the mesa.
Now he would just have to find the patience to wait until tomorrow when they could talk again.
”Brother Îmwe!” Kawak’s impatient voice boomed down the hallway and Chirrut huffed.
”Yes, yes, I’m coming,” he muttered as he touched a stone flower for one last time and turned around. He tucked the real thing into the breast of his robe, close to his heart, where it belonged. Not long anymore. And if after this their marriage wasn’t the happiest in the history of the order, he’d have to have some stern words with the Force itself.