Chapter Text
It’s one thing to know Jedha City was decimated by the Death Star, Din thinks, and another thing entirely to see the ruins with his own eyes.
Raising a hand to shield his visor from the vicious glare of the midday sun, Din surveys the crater below. “Ruins” is a generous description; there’s not so much as a crumbling wall left standing. A wasteland, stripped bare—like everything the Empire touched. Like Alderaan.
Like Mandalore.
The wind picks up, the sound of it crackling though his helmet’s speakers as it whips past him in a frenzy, and the sand stirs with it. The instincts he’s honed from years spent traversing Tatooine tell him a sandstorm is brewing—a real nasty one, at that. Better to find this tunnel before it hits, Din thinks, and not just because a sandstorm means lower visibility.
On Tatooine, the Tuskens believe sandstorms are ghosts, physical manifestations of the fury of those wrongfully killed. And Din isn’t usually a superstitious man, but…
The darksaber sits heavy in its sheath; the absence of a hover pram follows him like a shadow. How can he deny the existence of Jedha’s ghosts when he’s haunted by his own?
As if in answer, a sandcloud rises up to engulf him. It spits him out a moment later, the wind not yet strong enough to hold the form, but that’s enough to spur Din into motion.
He finds the tunnel entrance in a cave just off the border of Clandsenna. By the time he slips inside, the storm’s wrath has all but devoured his immediate surroundings. The howl of the wind fades as he moves deeper underground, replaced by the grating grinding of his sand-encrusted joints, but the rumble of its rage follows him still, shaking through the ground in irregular intervals.
With Skywalker’s map projected in the corner of his HUD, he makes quick work of navigating the tunnels. Or so he thinks, until he runs up against a dead end. Gritting his teeth, he doubles back, tries to reorient. He picks another path, but this, too, leads him to a dead end.
From there, it only gets worse. The tunnels twist and turn and wind themselves into knots, and eventually, he’s forced to concede he’s well and truly lost.
He tells himself it’s Skywalker’s map that’s led him astray. The Jedi did say he’d sketched it up off of feeling more than anything—whatever that meant.
The lie is almost convincing.
Frustrated, Din dismisses the map’s image from his HUD with a sharp shake of his head. Clearly the zealots who dug these tunnels out hadn’t wanted just anyone waltzing into their reconstructed temple.
Though, he supposes he can’t blame them, not after how the Imperials treated it.
Another shudder shakes through the floor, this one much more violent than the others. It knocks Din’s feet out from under him, and he catches himself on the wall, looking up at the grit that rains down from the ceiling. The storm's getting worse, he thinks. And these caverns—well. They weren't exactly carved out by professionals.
Maybe this was a bad idea. But then, it's too late to turn back; Jedha may be forgiving of pilgrims, but he'd be a fool to assume the same of trespassers.
As he drags his hand away from the wall, his attention catches on the ribbed texture beneath his glove, rougher than sandstone ought to be. He turns, and for the first time since he set foot in these tunnels, he looks.
An intricate, repeating pattern of symbols, no taller than his finger, is inlaid in the wall. Din follows the line of it with his eyes; it continues along the wall, eventually vanishing beyond the edge of his helmet's illumination.
“I wouldn't worry too much about getting lost,” he suddenly remembers Skywalker saying. “The path will reveal itself in time to those who seek it.”
A shiver runs up Din's spine, and he snatches his hand away from the wall as if he's been stung. The stubborn non-believer in him rears its ugly head then, tries to convince him those symbols have been there the entire time. And it could almost be true; he hadn't been paying enough attention to know, one way or another.
But he's not entirely a non-believer anymore. He's spent too much time around the kid and Tano and Skywalker to not recognize their specific brand of strange.
This “Force,” as they call it, is here, and it's telling him: this is the way.
It feels almost taunting, Din thinks ruefully, and that makes the choice to follow it that much harder. It feels like wading through tar, like sinking, like drowning in the living waters.
But despite that—or maybe in spite of it—he follows the way. He keeps one eye on the symbols as he walks, one ear out for unlikely danger, but mostly, he uses the time to mull over what he knows about the Church of the Force.
It's not much; the Empire fought hard to bury anything and everything even remotely related to the Jedi. It was Skywalker who'd introduced the Temple of the Kyber to Din, and only because Din had inquired about the tome he'd happened to be carrying around at the time. It shouldn't have been anything more than polite conversation, but…
The concept of regular people, people like Din, choosing to put their faith in something that had not and could never choose them back–
It had hooked its claws in Din and dragged—dragged him all the way out here to Jedha's ruins. And there's only ever been whispers of survivors still faithful and the shrine they rebuilt beneath the temple's crater, but then, there's only ever been whispers of Mandalore, too.
The ground slopes downward, suddenly and severely—following the curve of the crater, no doubt. Din slides the length of the slope, then lands with a heavy thud that echoes. He registers the change immediately: no sand to muffle his landing or pad the resonance.
Instantly, the tightly-coiled anticipation he’d shoved aside resurfaces. He slows, hand drifting toward the blaster at his hip, and eyes the archway that appears out of the gloom just ahead. Here, the sandstone has given way to muted, steel grey tile—floor, walls, and ceiling alike. The symbols he’d been following continue along the right wall, but unlike in the tunnels, these ones stand stark against the tile in deep cerulean blue.
They follow the curve of the archway, stopping short in the center, and Din doesn’t need faith to know their meaning.
What he seeks lies just beyond that threshold. And yet…
His feet draw to a stop, something like dread seeping through his bones, rooting him in place. All of a sudden, the faith he'd placed in this pilgrimage feels flimsy, delicate, like it might tear with the slightest shift in the wind.
What if he crosses that threshold and finds nothing? What if he's left only with more questions, more doubts, more fears?
His hands shake, and he squeezes them into tight fists, begs them to still. They don't comply. His breath rattles, too loud in the confines of his helmet. Gritting his teeth, he tries to force his feet to move, but it's no use.
He's wavering. He's hesitating. And he hates himself for it.
He’s come so far in search of faith, and still, this close, he hesitates. Just like he did on Mandalore.
Something like guilt and grief twists. With a guttural growl, he turns from the archway, hooks his fingers beneath his helmet, and wrenches.
The smell hits him first—overwhelmingly metallic, like the oozing lifeblood of the planet itself. Then, there’s the screaming. He hadn’t realized just how loud the raging winds above could be, not with his helmet filtering most of the white noise.
He doubles over, bracing his elbows against his thighs and squeezing his eyes shut. It’s all too much. And Din’s removed his helmet plenty of times in private, is no stranger to the sensations that are often muted by its accommodations, but ever since Grogu, it feels so profoundly different. Vulnerable, even when alone.
But especially here, in the company of Jedha’s ghosts.
With effort, he forces himself to breathe through the grit in his lungs. Slowly, he lowers his helmet to the ground, then straightens.
“I can’t do it,” he tells the ghosts, raw.
The confession is different this time—more akin to admitting defeat. Here on Jedha, he’s not seeking atonement, not like he was on Mandalore. He knows now that revealing his face wasn’t wrong, no matter what the creed says. But…
“There’s still this hole.”
He looks over at the empty space beside him, and for the first time since Gideon’s cruiser, he lets himself feel.
“And it hurts.” He shudders, squeezing his eyes shut and pressing a palm against his chestplate as if that might relieve the ache pulsing beneath his sternum. “Like everything inside me’s been torn out.”
He feels it all, feels the ragged edges of his organs, the gaping sinkhole carving through him. His ribs cave with it, dig their sharp points into his spine and pierce right through his backplate. His chest constricts, every breath a knife, and suddenly, it’s too much—this pain, this grief.
He staggers, drops to a knee and braces his other hand against the floor. A ragged sound escapes him—something that could almost be a plea, if he could find the strength to form words.
He came to Jedha because he thought if he could find faith again, he wouldn’t feel so empty.
“But it can’t be filled,” he whispers, a damning truth for only the ghosts’ ears. “Not with faith. Not with anything.”
Agonizingly, he raises his head and looks back toward the archway.
“So tell me,” he begs, “how am I supposed to live with this? How am I supposed to live without–?” His voice splinters, face twisting in a desperate attempt to hold the tears at bay. For all the good it does.
He thought, maybe, if he could understand the Force, he could understand why Grogu chose it over him.
But none of this is about the Force, not really. It never was.
Still, it's been a witness in all this, if nothing else; Din can acknowledge that much. It's the only one that's seen him as he is now: at his lowest, most vulnerable point.
For a few moments, he does nothing but breathe and feel. It's hard, and it's painful, but it's surprisingly cathartic, too. Slowly but surely, the weight that had coalesced in his limbs dissipates; he straightens, feeling lighter than he has in years.
Drying his eyes, Din carefully plucks his helmet from the ground and climbs to his feet, placing it over his face once again. Then, he approaches the archway. He doesn't pass through, just places a gloved hand on the nearest symbol and lets it rest there.
“Thank you,” he says sincerely. “For listening.”
And it's not peace, far from it, but maybe it's exactly what he came here for. Even if he’s still lost.
He lingers a moment longer, tracing the curves of the symbols with his thumb, before finally letting his hand fall away.
As it drops, the scream of the wind—what little he could still hear of it, anyway—abruptly cuts out. Crushing silence descends, and Din looks up warily. The storm must've broken.
A suspiciously auspicious turn, he thinks, and it sets him on edge as he begins to make his way back to the cave he entered through. The rational part of himself tries to convince him his caution is unfounded; after all, only a few believers even know of these tunnels’ existence. But he knows better than to listen to reason, especially in a place like this.
Sure enough, his helmet begins to pick up an inkling of heavy footsteps, distant voices, the clatter of sweeping blasters. Tensing, Din extinguishes his light and presses himself as flat against the wall as he can manage. There's nowhere to hide down here, but that doesn't mean he can't still weaponize the element of surprise.
He waits. The footsteps draw closer, and after a few moments, Din manages to catch the tail-end of what the trespassers are saying:
“What do you think the Empire wants with it?”
“Who cares? It's not our job to know.”
Imperial Remnants, Din thinks with a flash of annoyance. He slips a few feet back the way he came, away from the troopers. Just what I need right now.
Why they would be on Jedha, of all places, he hasn't the faintest idea. But then, those womp rats are always lurking in the most unlikely of places.
He slides a hand over his blaster, thinking. His ship isn't too near the tunnel entrance to be suspicious, but he didn’t bother to hide it. They may already know he's here, which would rob him the element of surprise. And he trusts his skill, knows he can take a whole squad of stormtroopers with nothing but his beskar staff, but then, there might be more down here than he expects.
A fight's too risky, even though he's itching for one. He’s itching for answers, too, his curiosity piqued by the troopers’ cryptic conversation, but he shoves both instincts down. It won’t do to get involved in a fight he has no stake in.
Instead, he pulls up Skywalker's map and prays it's more accurate now that the city knows he's leaving.
He follows the crude sketch through the tunnels’ convoluted twists and turns, heading for the south exit instead. A few times, he has to double back, change course once he catches wind of more troopers ahead, but eventually, the sounds of footsteps fade.
If anything, that only heightens Din’s guardedness. He expects the south exit to be less heavily guarded, purely because of its spatial limitations, but completely deserted?
Coming to a stop, he lets his eyes slip closed, tilting his head ever so slightly, and listens. Silence. It lasts for a beat, two beats, and then–
Din yanks his blaster from its holster and whirls around. The figure is much closer than he expects—practically on top of him, actually—and Din barely has time to register his own surprise before a blaster’s jammed up under his chin, its barrel pressing against the vulnerable spot just between his helmet and his bodysuit.
“Don’t even think about it,” the stranger warns, low and dangerous.