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Published:
2017-02-22
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2023-03-30
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19,348
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5/?
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87
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Spring Tide

Chapter Text

Chirrut takes the scarf and a world of questions to Master Dhava, at last. It’s been a month now, those sparse few interactions still standing out so strongly in his mind. Sure, he doesn’t want to disappoint his master -- but this goes deeper than an assignment. He’s known Baze so briefly -- in fact, doesn’t know him at all, but has been even aware of him only weeks -- but the boy occupies his every thought. The emotional whiplash the other gives him is like nothing else; he takes him from intrigued to fearful to sorrow and back around again before Chirrut can make sense of any one of those things, and on top of it all he’s shown more of himself to Baze than he ever intended.

Dhava is, as expected, less than forthcoming. “Chirrut, I can’t tell you everything about him. It’s not my place to spread around an acolyte’s personal life.”

“Then can’t you at least tell me what I’m supposed to be doing? He doesn’t even want to talk to me. He’s furious that you assigned me to him.”

“You fought,” Dhava says with a sigh. It is most certainly not a question, but a simple statement of the facts. “I know. And I hope you’re feeling all right. If you feel unsafe--”

“It’s not a matter of safety,” Chirrut interrupts. “He’s still untrained, it’s not as though it was even a fair fight.” He pauses, debating how much he wants to reveal. If he realizes he’s twisting his scarf around his fingers, he doesn’t bother slowing down. “But I was afraid of what I sensed in him.”

Master Dhava takes a seat on the floor, facing the altar, and pats the spot next to him for Chirrut to do the same. “What is it you sensed?”

Chirrut folds his legs under himself, face toward the kyber crystal upon the altar rather than to his master. “Nothing.” He closes his eyes. “Nothing, and then just -- pain. Like when that cavern flooded two rainy seasons ago.” Taking a deep breath, he tries to recall the image that had left him so frightened. “It all rushed in then back out. Dragged everything else along with it. When I try to reach out for him I just feel static, like a bad comm connection.”

“Perhaps not bad,” Master Dhava suggests. “But distant.”

Chirrut hums, thinking it over. “But I could feel when he was hurting.”

“What do you think brought that on?”

He bows his head guiltily. “We -- uh -- got in an argument. And I said nothing was keeping him here.”

“Ah...” Chirrut feels he’s about to be scolded, but Master Dhava just pats his shoulder instead. “You didn’t mean it.”

“No...not really.” He fidgets with the scarf, realizing he hasn’t mentioned it yet. “I think he thinks I want something from him. I brought him a meal to try to...break ground. He gave me this, and said we’re even.”

“Your scarf?” Dhava reaches over to have a look at it. “It’s a caring sort of gift.”

“But it wasn’t really a gift. He thinks he owes me.”

“That might take a while to overcome.” A long pause, and Chirrut can feel his master weighing his words cautiously -- a habit Chirrut picked up from him over the years. “Baze has had a difficult upbringing, I’m sure you know that.”

“He said he had a sister.” Chirrut breathes the words as if he’s only just realized their weight. “I think -- I sensed -- I don’t think she’s around anymore.” He swallows. The mere thought of Baze’s loss has tears prickling his eyes. “I can feel that he’s been through a lot. It seems to...affect me. More than I would expect.”

Chirrut feels his master giving him an appraising look, feels the press of the Force on his mind. If it were anyone else he’d object to being so blatantly searched. “You feel a connection.” Again, frustratingly, not a question.

“I can’t explain it.” He squeezes the scarf in both hands, soothing the rush of confused feeling that rushes over him with the rhythmic clenching and opening of his fists around the soft fabric. “Have I met him before?” He tilts his head toward Master Dhava, helpless bewilderment written on his face. “Is that why you sent me to him?”

“Not exactly.” Dhava’s tone sounds suddenly awed, softer, full of concern and amazement at once. It makes Chirrut’s stomach churn. “Surely you’ve heard some of the older acolytes say that Baze has been here before.”

“I have, but I don’t remember--”

“No, you wouldn’t. It would have been...six or seven years ago, and you two never crossed paths.”

“Some of the others say he tried to steal from us.” He bites his lower lip at the implication. “But he would have been just a child.”

“He came looking for help,” Dhava says simply. “And the elders did not feel particularly compelled to help him.”

“But why?”

“Politics?” He offers with a smile audible in his voice, hoping Chirrut will accept such a vague reply while knowing full well that he will not. “The temple has been looted before, as you know. Ravaged, in a few cases.”

“Not by any child,” Chirrut answers pointedly, already feeling his anger rise at the implication.

“Be calm,” Dhava scolds, his voice going stern again. “Not by a child but by his people. I’ve always said it was wrong. That’s why I took him in the first chance I could.”

“But it wasn’t your first chance.” He’s bristling with resentment now, stumbling to his feet. “You were already a master when he came to you the first time. You could have--”

“Chirrut, do not speak to me in that tone. I did not have--”

“You’re going to say it wasn’t your choice, but they didn’t want to take me either.” Suddenly his anger at Baze seems unthinkable. He isn’t completely sure what Baze needed saving from, then or now, but the thought of a room full of elders -- Chirrut’s elders, whom he respected so much, who he spoke so highly of -- looking at Baze and deciding to turn him away is unbearable. “I defended you to him,” he barrels on, emotions rising too fast, just as they had with Baze. This time, at least, he begins storming away before things can escalate further -- almost. “You just want me to fix your mistakes,” he growls, unsure if Master Dhava has even attempted to respond over the clatter of his staff against flagstones as he stomps noisily out of the sanctuary. If he has any sense at all -- and in the back of his mind Chirrut still thinks he does -- he will give Chirrut some space to cool down.

He takes that space out in the city, duty be damned for a few hours. If he were going to stomp around looking for a fight, better to do it out here where it would blend in with the background noise of the city than within the temple grounds. NiJedha is a busy, bustling place, and sometimes that’s far too much to handle, but now, steaming with barely-suppressed anger, he doesn’t want peace nor quiet. He wants to melt into the roar of the city, breathe in the stinging scent of spices from food stalls mixed with pungent, oily, mechanical smells from ships and repair yards and scrap sellers. And maybe, unconsciously, he wants to fight.

He would say he doesn’t want any trouble. In fact, that’s exactly what he says -- after casually approaching a pair of gangsters attempting to shake down a textile vendor for protection money, after accidentally knocking one clean off his feet with his staff as he strolls by.

“You -- monk!” Their leader shouts and Chirrut can feel his blood boil in response, lips pulling back into a wicked grin. Perhaps this was the sort of mission he should have been sent on instead of the sentimental cleanup of someone else’s mess. “What do you think you’re doing? Are you blind?”

“How kind of you to notice,” he taunts in response, casually tilting his staff from hand to hand as he smiles at the man, who has already pulled a noisy vibroblade from his sleeve. Amateur, Chirrut thinks. If he’d sparred with this man before, he would know better. “I can still see what you’re up to here.”

Chirrut feels a hand on his ankle suddenly -- the man he’d knocked down before. But it’s nothing to swing his staff around and clock him in the temple before the others can even respond. It’s so starkly different from sparring at the temple with trained acolytes; there’s no challenge, there’s hardly push back. He’s just fifteen standard years, but he’s trained from nearly as soon as he could walk, and the motions come to him just as instinctively. Maybe that’s why sometimes, just sometimes, he gets complacent.

“Trying to rob this nice lady? What’s wrong with you?” The remaining man’s thoughts are scattered, as expected for one facing down a blind child monk who seems to be in the mood for a brawl for no real reason. Maybe he’ll attribute it later to the happenstance of passing close by, or that he has family in the same line of work offworld, or just to a sense of justice -- but the fact remains that this is not a fight that needs to be his, right now. The man lunges at Chirrut with the blade. Chirrut dodges easily, laughing a little when he hears the gangster stumble. He whirls his staff around and barely nudges him to send him to the ground. “Incompetence in all things. No wonder you’re a thief. Nothing better to do.”

Chirrut jabs his staff into the man’s chest again once he’s fallen, threatening, then swings for his hand to knock away his knife. He revels in it. Master Dhava would be ashamed, and for now that feels like reason enough to carry on. Caught up in his own bravado, he only barely hears the vendor’s shaky voice -- “Oh, little monk--”

Shots ring out all around him, so sudden and ubiquitous he can only dive for the ground first and hope to sort out their provenance in time to get to cover. He hadn’t been focusing. He curses himself. Of course it wasn’t just the two of them, how could he be so stupid? And he hadn’t bothered to figure out what their affiliation was, either -- there could be one thug with a repeater shooting at him or a whole army, and he’d be lucky to figure it out just in time to get gunned down. He can smell the singe of bolts, vaguely gauge the direction, but he wasn’t ready, he can’t feel enough when everything is so busy and loud and bearing down on him --

He doesn’t even have time to lose himself before someone is dragging him out of his hiding spot by the collar of his robes, feeling a spike of irrational anger to know that those fingers were digging into his scarf, too. He wills himself not to shake as he feels a blaster barrel in his side. “This him?” A phlegmy voice, nonhuman but otherwise unidentifiable, asks, too close to his ear.

“How many other child monks do you think are down there? Of course that’s him.”

The two continue bickering but Chirrut’s mind is in overdrive for an escape plan, no longer focused. He’s slightly disoriented, which makes a mad dash unlikely to get him far. It’s only when he hears the word ransom in their back and forth that he snaps back to the present. Warding off panic to sharpen his focus in the face of this threat, he zeroes in on the voices. The one holding on to him and his complaining partner are likely to be his biggest obstacles; they’re the ones making plans. Secondarily, he’s still not sure how many gunmen are with them, nor what kind of firepower they’re packing. And still, his greatest worry is for the bystanders, the vendor, the innocent people his recklessness pulled into whatever mess this is about to become. He whispers a prayer and goes limp, hoping his dead weight will be enough to pull his attacker off balance.

He half-succeeds, wrenching out of his grasp but quickly realizes there’s nowhere to run, and his staff is still somewhere behind a vendor’s stall. He can fight hand-to-hand, but getting close to anyone amid a flurry of blaster bolts is risky. There’s not much choice now, though, with no other option, no cover, so he lunges at the nearest gangster, hoping the proximity will keep the others from firing right away. Shouting wordlessly, he throws his full weight into the motion -- slight as it may be -- and grabs for the barrel of the weapon to keep it aimed away from himself. It’s a last ditch effort, but it buys him enough time to launch himself down an alleyway, which would be slightly more promising were there not at least three more men with guns directly behind him, and, sure, if he could see where he might be headed.

When he hears another shot come from ahead of him, he is briefly certain of his own death again. Then he realizes it’s no blaster, least of all the sort of jury-rigged things the gang had been firing at him; the shot, aimed with frighteningly close precision over his shoulder, came from a lightbow. A Guardian, come to save him from his own stupidity -- that might actually be worse than death. But it’s all he has, so he keeps running, hearing his pursuers falling in a heap behind him. He pauses just a beat when he hits open air again, still struggling to get his bearings, then -- kriff -- he’s grabbed again.

But instantly, the feeling of safety washes over him, even if the hand around his forearm is squeezing painfully, pulling him along roughly. “Come on, there are still more of them.”

That voice.

“Baze?!”

“I wasn’t looking for you,” he manages to huff out as they run. “But you have a way of being found.”

Chirrut can’t force down a burst of laughter at the entire scenario, and as soon as the sound escapes him Baze’s grip grows tighter around his wrist. It does not feel like a threat, though, or even annoyance. Somehow it feels like his unlikely rescuer is just as amused, even if it’s not his first priority at the moment. “Well,” Chirrut wheezes, feet beating the stone mercilessly as they run at full tilt. “You have good timing.”

“Or the worst possible timing,” Baze muses, yanking Chirrut’s arm hard to pull him into a narrow alleyway. Then, quickly -- “Quiet,” -- as footsteps thunder past. Baze puts a hand to his chest, silently telling him to stay put. Chirrut’s breath catches in his throat and he nods, pressing his back to the wall. He can feel Baze lean over to check that the coast is clear. “Looks safe. They’re not going to waste the day hunting you down.” He reports back, still speaking softly. “What sort of idiot decides to start a fight with Nivix’s gang?”

“Is that who that was?” He groans. “Maybe I am an idiot.”

“Maybe you are.”

“Though you can’t go making accusations about impulse control yourself,” Chirrut points out, leaning back tiredly, still trying to keep his breathing even.

“I didn’t say anything about your impulse control,” Baze counters, and Chirrut hears a soft rattle that must be the holstering the lightbow. “You’re just an idiot.”

Chirrut laughs again in spite of himself. “Says the guy with a stolen lightbow.”

“I saved you with this stolen lightbow,” Baze huffs. “Besides, I’m going to put it back. It’s borrowed, if anything.”

“Is it clear?”

“I think so. Better to give it a few minutes though.”

Chirrut takes a long breath. “Why are you being nice to me?”

“Not wanting you to die is hardly being nice.” He laughs faintly, and the sound sends Chirrut’s heart racing. “The rest you can blame on adrenaline.”

“Oh...” Chirrut realizes suddenly. “My staff. It’s still back behind those carts. I have to go get it--”

“You can’t go back! Even if those guys are gone, there’s probably someone waiting to grab you and turn you in. Besides,” he nudges him lightly, urging him to move toward the opposite end of the alley. “Somebody’s probably snapped it up to sell by now.”

“No--” He bursts out too loudly, and he can feel Baze whip around to scowl at him. “No,” he says again, more softly. “I have to get it back. I have to.”

Baze looks at him a long moment and Chirrut feels that pressure again, the odd heaviness of his gaze that he’d noticed when they first met. “You’re going to go no matter what, right?”

“I am.”

“All right. Let’s go find it, then.”

Chirrut is surprised at the willingness, to say the least. He’s still trying to connect all the dots to make an image of the other, like stars in a constellation. There’s still so much pain in him, in that void that his senses still can’t wrap around. There’s the animalistic fury he’d witnessed firsthand, followed with confusing swiftness by compassion -- an oddly soft band in the strata of him, that Chirrut had first witnessed when he quietly thanked him at their first meeting. And now -- something in between, and something completely different. The amusement in Baze’s voice throws him more than anything; it’s humanizing in a way that forces Chirrut to guiltily reflect on how he’s been trying to picture Baze. He is no one thing he can pin down and try to fix, and why should he be? If there were a simple solution to whatever left Baze with those deep wounds, trenches alternately filled with nothing and with suffering, then Master Dhava would have dealt with it himself. Instead he passed off this problem to Chirrut, who now isn’t sure if he considers him a problem at all. Perhaps that was the point, in some backwards way.

“You’ll help me?” He asks, gently probing for anything else behind his motivations. His fear of Baze has subsided completely, but there’s something unsettling even in that.

“You’re going to go after that stick no matter what.” He laughs softly. “Like a trained kath hound. So I might as well help you as long as I’m here.”

“Not like a hound,” Chirrut retorts, scowling. “It’s one-of-a-kind. I can’t leave it.” He hesitates on the cusp of vulnerability, but holding back from the boy who has already seen him curl into a helpless ball, prisoner to his own senses, seems a little pointless. “It’s special to me.”

Baze hums thoughtfully, and Chirrut realizes with no shortage of wonder than he tends to vocalize all the little physical tics he has such a hard time reading from others. No tilt of the head, no re-calibration of senses goes without a sound, or even a touch, in the case of that hand at his chest -- something Chirrut would have been slightly indignant about had it not been so clearly intended to ensure his safety. “It has kyber in it, doesn’t it?”

Baze never stops taking him by surprise. “It does. A piece I’ve had my whole life.”

“We’ll get it.” His tone is suddenly gentle, in a way Chirrut is entirely unprepared for. “Don’t worry.”

“You,” Chirrut ventures. “Are a very strange person, Baze.”

“So I’ve heard.” Chirrut can’t really be sure, but he thinks he can here a terribly brazen smile in Baze’s voice. “But you’re pretty odd yourself.”

Chirrut chuckles. “You’re the same Baze, right?” He hardly even reacts when Baze takes his hand again; they need to move in tandem, after all, and the touch feels stunningly natural. “The one who clubbed me in the ear a few weeks back?”

“Sometimes I’m not sure,” he shoots back, pulling Chirrut along as he heads back the way they’d run. “Are you the same punk kid who called me a prick and said I didn’t have to stay at the temple?”

“If I say yes, will you still help me?”

“Stranger things have happened today.” Baze keeps them close to the stone walls of the marketplace buildings, and Chirrut can feel with some confusing mix of insult and poignancy that Baze is keeping a careful eye on him even after he lets go of his hand, keeping track of his location as closely as he is each potential threat they pass. “I don’t see anybody.”

“Me neither.”

“We might--” Baze stumbles over the words and looks back at him as if he’d just realized. Chirrut laughs when he grumbles something obscene and annoyed. “We might be able to just grab it -- no. No, kriff.”

“What is it?” Chirrut tilts his head, listening, but the returning bustle of the market is not making it easy. “Nivix’s thugs?”

“Stay back,” Baze whispers, and all at once Chirrut is hit with that feeling of sorrow again, a rush of sensation that fills in the lanky shape of Baze up ahead of him. It’s half-comforting, being able to feel where he is, but the painful ache of it makes in hard to focus on the silhouette. “I mean it. Stay there.”

Chirrut -- who has no patience for orders, who hardly even listens to his own master -- freezes, pressing against the cool stone wall to his right. “What is it? I can’t hear.”

“We have to go.”

“Do they have it?!”

“I don’t know -- but we need to go back the other way.” He can feel him move closer now, inky black with anguish in his mind’s eye. “I’m sorry,” he says, and, for no reason that he can pin down, Chirrut believes it.

Chirrut’s heart thrums when Baze presses closer to nudge him back towards the alley where they’d escaped before. “What is it?” He asks again, doing his best to ignore the surge of something -- the Force? -- that arcs like electricity through every nerve in his body when Baze snatches his arm again to lead him back the way they’d come.

“Gangsters.” His voice is flat, without affect, though Chirrut senses his fear. “Worse ones.”

“We can fight,” he hisses stubbornly, though something in Baze’s urgency is compelling his feet to keep moving alongside the other. “You have your bow, and I’m not bad hand-to-hand, if you gave me signals, maybe--”

“If they see me, I’m in trouble.” His voice cracks. “They know me.”

“But we can deal with them. Kriff, if I could get to my staff I could do it myself.”

Baze shoves him into the alley, roughly, and Chirrut feels that same surge of rage he’d felt when they fought on the balcony as he bangs into the stone. “Do not go after them without me,” he snarls, fury only contained by the need to stay quiet. “Promise me.”

“I promise,” Chirrut stammers before he can think it over. “What do you mean ‘without you’? Are you going to come back?”

“I don’t know.”

Chirrut has to run to catch up when Baze starts storming back toward the temple with long strides, winding through unseen back alleys. “Wait -- tell me what’s going on, Baze.”

He doesn’t answer, not as he rushes through the city, not as they cross into temple grounds and head up the steps toward the large chamber in the entryway.

“Baze -- I can help you.” Baze must have forced away that anger, and all that sadness, into whatever obscure void he maintains within his place in the Force, because Chirrut loses track of him suddenly. Footfalls go silent, and Chirrut only has a moment to wonder if he’s already lost him down the hallway when he collides with him suddenly, cheek bouncing painfully off his shoulder.

“I don’t want your help.”

“I know,” Chirrut grumbles, rubbing at his cheek. “But I owe you.”

This, of all things, seems to hold his attention, at least for a moment. “You don’t owe me.”

“You saved me today, and you offered to get my staff back before those other guys showed up.” He grins, realizing he’s stumbled into at least a temporary solution to Baze’s standoffish nature. “Either I owe you -- maybe even owe you two -- or you saved me out of the goodness of your heart. Which is it?”

Baze heaves a sigh. “You don’t even know what you’re offering to do.”

“Tell me, then.”

Baze goes quiet a long moment, but the swirling sense of his anxiety remains. “They want me dead,” he whispers, voice hoarse. “Or they want me back.”