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Chapter Text

The new boy. Chirrut hears the whispers among the Guardians. Why would the elders bring in a boy like that?

A street rat and a thief. He’s come skulking around here before.

He’d be better off somewhere else. He’s too old for the orphanage, not cut out to be an initiate. What is Master Dhava thinking?

The other acolytes, young teens like Chirrut, are harsher. How dare they put that boy on our level? He’s like an animal – doesn’t speak, goes hiding away from people. They call them street rats for a reason.

Not everyone is so cruel outright, of course, but for each of the meanest words there is a sea of silence. Complacency, acceptance of the callous way they speak of him. Those who don’t have anything bad to say don’t seem to have anything good to say, either, and it all feels deeply unfair to Chirrut. Many of them were abandoned children, himself included. They’d been left on the steps of the temple, only surviving thanks to their elders. Why did that place them above a boy who hadn’t even had that luxury?

Master Dhava lets him in on some of the details, because Chirrut knows how to ingratiate himself even as an acolyte. And Dhava knows he’s soft at heart underneath his sharp tongue and quick temper. He’d heard him standing up for the boy he doesn’t even know, shouting at a trainee twice his size that no one deserves to be thrown away, that he could have just as easily been in that boy’s place. He’d gotten in a more vicious fight with another initiate – Gaal, the son of some ambassador who thought himself royalty – who’d insinuated that Chirrut’s care for this strange boy was a weakness, that it came from knowing he himself was lucky, merely lucky, to be in the place he was with his useless eyes. Dhava had, Chirrut suspected after the fact, let Chirrut get in a few blows before dragging him away. But, as usual, Chirrut avoids punishment, instead simply given a weary warning – then a pat on the shoulder and some information mingled with a request.

The boy’s name is Baze. Just a year older than Chirrut, Dhava explains, but it would likely take him a long time to catch up to his level if he ever does. Chirrut nodded in half-understanding. If it weren’t for Master Dhava’s soft spot for the outcasts of Jedha, he may have ended up at some offworld orphanage instead of here. Instead of his home.

“He’s hurt,” Dhava tells Chirrut, doing his best to ignore the insistent press of Chirrut’s mind against his own, the boy’s searching curiosity. “You’re not so different. He lost his family. He lost everything, and he has to learn to live without all of that now, you understand?”

Chirrut blinks thoughtfully. “Sort of.”

“Sometimes he doesn’t speak, or doesn’t want to be around others.”

“Not so different from me.” He tilts his head. “He might not want a friend.”

“Maybe not right away. But I think he could use some company.” Master Dhava sighs, a sound that concerns Chirrut immensely. His elder doesn’t know what to do. How then is he meant to proceed? “It’s not entirely fair of me to place such duties on you, Chirrut, but – i believe that he needs someone to try to reach him.”

“And you think I can do that? It’s one thing to defend him against the others being cruel. I can’t heal someone.”

“No, no, you can’t. But perhaps you can help him find a path.” Dhava rubs his head affectionately, so like a father though the order would force him away from such attachments. “You have a heart of kyber, Chirrut. Like a bright star. I hope Baze might follow you to find his way.”

It’s an opaque statement, and more so to Chirrut’s young ears, but it fills him with a sense of duty nonetheless. “I’ll try, Master. I can be friends with anybody.” A cheeky grin punctuates the statement. “You know, except for Gaal.”

Master Dhava sighs again before sending him on his way.

It’s apparent that Baze hasn’t been eating with the other initiates, so Chirrut figures that’s a place to start. He gathers a container of different things from the kitchen, even charming a treat or two out of the Guardian on duty, and sets out to find him. Rumors spread out from the boy like ripples in water, so he’s not terribly hard to find, even when he avoids so much as crossing the eyeline of others. Chirrut follows a trail of comments from confused to derisive up to one of the high towers along the south side of the temple. The boy isn’t all the way at the top as expected, but pressed into an alcove designed for prayer some two-thirds of the way up the winding steps. He smells like sweat and incense – he’s been in town today – and he nearly jumps out of his skin when Chirrut approaches.

“Oh – hello,” he greets cheerfully, though he suspects his usual charm is going to be more perplexing than disarming for this lonely boy. The sadness comes off him in rolling waves, the way moisture lifts from the stone of his windowsill in the morning sun. “I thought I might find you up here.”

The boy is quiet except for breathing so shaky that Chirrut is worried he may have to forcibly haul him off to the med bay. He hear his clothes rustle as he fidgets or shivers or indulges some nervous habit, Chirrut isn’t sure.

“I’m Chirrut Imwe.” The long silence doesn’t appear to faze him, though going without a look at him or a word from him feels a little impersonal. “You’re Baze, right?”

“I’m Baze,” he finally says after another beat of quiet. His voice is lower than Chirrut expected, rich and resonant despite his reticence. If Chirrut weren’t already determined to hear more from him, that voice would have convinced him. Instead, though, Chirrut just hears his stomach growl.

It brings a faint smile to Chirrut’s face though he can sense the other’s embarrassment. “It can be intimidating eating with everyone when you first get here,” he says, though so few arrive at the temple beyond age four or five that it’s a bit of a fabrication for Baze’s benefit. “So I brought you something.”

The mental shield that slams down around Baze is so strong and so sudden that it makes Chirrut take a step back. “I don’t want any trouble,” Baze says gruffly, and Chirrut senses him reach for something – a staff, maybe, similar to his own. He hears metal scraping flagstones.

“No trouble,” he says quickly, torn between wanting to comfort him and knock him back a step. What was this guy thinking, going on the defense at being offered a meal? “I just thought you might be hungry. And from the sound of it, I’m right.”

Baze takes a step toward him and Chirrut feels the sureness of that footfall. He might avoid conflict, but when he does feel threatened, Baze steps up, literally. “I don’t have anything,” he says flatly, leaning closer. Probably, Chirrut thinks, noticing his eyes.

“I’m not looking for anything from you,” Chirrut says with a tilt of his head. “I’m not looking at all.” He smiles a little, gesturing vaguely to his face. If Baze is amused at all, it doesn’t register with any of Chirrut’s senses. “Listen – this is for you.” He presses the container toward Baze, trying to lean a little closer too, to get a feel for the other’s size should he decide he’s looking for a fight after all. “I just thought you might be hungry.”

Another intractably long silence, then Baze takes the box, fingers just barely ghosting over Chirrut’s hand. “Thank you.”

“If you decide you want somebody to show you around, come find me. I know it doesn’t seem like I’d be much of a tour guide, but –” Something about the way the other’s eyes feel on him makes him stumble over his words. His gaze is heavy, like a physical touch, but through all the pain in him he feels a spark of familiarity. The others had said they’d seen him around the temple before, and the city where he’d grown up was only a short walk away. Still – a passing run-in does not usually leave such a strong impression. “But I can if – if you want.”

Chirrut does not expect an answer, nor does he receive one, but as he makes his way back down to the main hall for his lessons, he’s oddly relieved by the quiet.

Chirrut doesn’t see him for a solid week and a half. Then that strange new boy – Baze, whose name feels peaceful in his thoughts – does something no one else in the Temple has ever been able to do.

He sneaks up on him.

It’s just the light touch of a finger against his shoulder while his back is turned, but it makes Chirrut whirl around like he’s been struck. The boy approached silently, invisibly, not a sound, no telling motion in the air or feeling of his gaze on him. Yesterday those eyes had felt like they were boring into him, and now he hadn’t known they were approaching until he was close enough to strike. When he turns to him, clutching his staff defensively, he feels a wave of guilt wash over him, heavy and smothering, nearly taking his breath away. It takes him a beat to gather himself again, and he can’t help think that if Baze had wanted to kill him, he’d be dead already.

“I didn’t mean to scare you,” he murmurs, his voice, ironically, taking Chirrut by surprise all over again.

“You –” You didn’t? He wouldn’t possibly believe that. “You approach so quietly. Usually I can hear everyone.”

“I try to walk softly through the sacred places.”

This Baze seems a world away from the heavy-footed, defensive boy he’d taken a meal to just days before. It fills Chirrut with absolute wonder, which, he supposes, is why Master Dhava assigned him the task in the first place. “Well, you – you certainly do walk softly.” It’s not only that he didn’t hear him; that could be a fluke. But he didn’t feel him, either, and as he stands before him now his senses still feel hazy – all but that feeling of familiarity that had struck him so oddly in the tower. He smooths his robes self-consciously and shifts to a less aggressive stance, head tilted in silent determination to get a read on the other.

The other boy lets out a hum of acknowledgement that rings in Chirrut’s ears like the resonance of kyber. A strange boy, indeed. “I want you to know you don’t have to feed me,” he mutters, though there’s something deeply insincere about the annoyance he tries to put forth. “Here.” He reaches out and bumps something against Chirrut’s arm lightly, prompting him to take it. It’s the container he’d brought Baze’s food in, but Chirrut is slightly puzzled as to why he’d give it back, and more so by his words. “It’s red,” he says, and Chirrut can tell from the pitch that he’s staring at his feet as he speaks. “Matches your robes.” The briefest pause, then: “I have lessons now. But we’re even.”

Baze is gone just as uncannily as he’d appeared, and it’s only once he’s deep into the temple that Chirrut’s mind clears enough to notice the heft of the box in his hands. He sits on the steps and curiously lifts the lid, catching the eye of one of his fellow acolytes as she passes. Aruna, a Twi’lek acolyte a year older than Chirrut – a friend, generally, though Chirrut has a tendency to gain and lose those at a breakneck pace. He can feel her glance over and break away from her group to see what he’s up to, and he can hardly blame her; he must be quite the picture, sitting on the steps alone, frowning into a box and looking as though he’s just gone blind instead of having been without his eyes his entire life.

Her voice is lilting and pleasant even if Chirrut would just as soon be left alone. “What’s that?”

Chirrut is only just figuring that out himself. He lifts the lid of the box to find something folded inside as he suspected – woven fibers, soft and warm. “I – I don’t know,” he says, and he can tell that Aruna is leaning back trying to get a look inside the archway of the temple, maybe to catch a glimpse of the mysterious gift-giver. “Someone gave me something.”

“A scarf?” Aruna’s hands join his in unfurling the knitted band, and Chirrut’s heart is suddenly pounding. “That’s nice. It is getting cold. Did your aunt send it?”

“No.” He doesn’t elaborate, unsure of what to make of – of very nearly anything. “No, it’s from a…friend.”

“It looks handmade,” Aruna supplies, leading Chirrut’s hand to the knotted edge of the weaving. “How thoughtful.”

“I think he was paying me back for something,” Chirrut says curiously, head tilting again. “But I wasn’t expecting anything.”

“Perhaps he’s just grateful,” she wonders thoughtfully, fingers running over the knotted yarn. “Unless of course you got this from someone who’s particularly fond of you. That’s a different story.”

Chirrut cocks his head toward her, feeling a surge of – well, of something he can’t quite name yet, at the insinuation. “And what story would that be?”

He can practically feel her sharp-toothed grin as she pats his shoulder. “That he wants to keep you warm.”

“In fact,” he says,  visibly annoyed at the doubling down of the implication. “I think he wants to be rid of me.”

“Then you’re probably going to go off searching for him, aren’t you?” Resignation if not outright pity tinges the words.

But Chirrut just smiles.

But tracking Baze down proves harder this time, with his thoughts scattered, without a real goal in mind. He has no delivery this time, and no particular idea of what he intends to say to the boy. He’s worried; there’s that, at least. But all these things he can’t take mind off – knowing that he still never notices Baze around with anyone else, never runs into him eating in the dining hall even by himself, never hears that low, echoing voice when he trains – are working against him now, clouding his perception rather than spurring him on. Words don’t seem to do much for the other, and he doesn’t know what he would say, anyway.

So, he gives up. And the next time they meet, Baze finds him instead. 

No one ever approaches Chirrut in this place – pressed into the corner of a parapet high on the east side of the temple, wind whipping harshly. It dulls his senses, forces him inward. And it’s obvious that it is, or so Chirrut has always thought, a private place. He feels Baze’s approach this time, but only in the absence of sensation; a slim wedge cut out of the wind. He opens his eyes though they don’t add anything to the perception.

“Baze?” He guesses, only because no one else was strange enough to wander up here just to stand silently, wavering in the harsh wind.

“Oh –” It’s his voice, certainly, but there’s a softness to it. Chirrut has only heard the crash of waves in holos, but that’s what the sound recalls: a swell and break against the shore. Rough but serene. It raises up again, gentle and vast as the oceans he can only hear and read about and dream of. “You’re wearing it.”

It takes Chirrut some time to realize what he means. “Oh, the scarf…” Not only wearing it, but all bundled in it, wrapped around his head as a hood to block the wind. He’s been wearing it so often as the sandstorms kick up ever more frequently that he’d forgotten. “I never even thanked you for it, I’m sorry.”

Baze takes a seat some distance from him. Chirrut struggles to feel his outline against the wind, but realizes after a moment that he’s sitting precariously on the stone parapet itself. “I told you, we’re even.”

“Yeah. You said.” He frowns a bit. “Where have you been, anyway? I never see you training, or taking duties around the temple. The others are starting to say you don’t do anything at all, you know.”

“They say all kinds of things about me, why should I care?” There is nothing but care in his voice, though, a deep ache dragging him down into dark water. “I train alone. Sometimes with Master Dhava, until I catch up.”

“Master Dhava –”

“–Told me he assigned me to you. Like a pet.” So he has been avoiding him. And when put in such terms, Chirrut can’t really blame him. There’s a tint of amusement to his words, though. “He means well.”

“I wish you wouldn’t speak of him like that,” Chirrut grumbles, hands twisting in the scarf unconsciously. “He’s kind, not clueless.”

“You’re attached to him. I thought that wasn’t allowed.”

“I’ve known him since I was a child. He’s always taken care of me.” Chirrut can feel his voice rising, harsh and unstoppable, as if observing himself making all his usual mistakes from some distance. “And he saved you too, so show some respect.”

“One little word gets you all wound up,” he murmurs derisively, snorting when Chirrut pulls himself to his feet to face him directly. “Must have hit a nerve.”

“You finally decide to talk to me just to be like this?” He raps his staff noisily against the flagstones, satisfied when he feels Baze jolt, startled. “What do you want from me?”

“I don’t want anything from you.”

“Then what did you come up here for?”

This seems to give him pause, but not for long enough. “To see that we have an understanding. You’ve been looking for me all day, knowing I don’t want to be found. And for what? Huh?” He hops to his feet and takes a threatening step towards him. Chirrut’s hands tighten around his staff but he receives nothing but that disconcerting, buzzing feedback from the place in the Force that usually whispers to him calmly and clearly. The only real impression he gets is that he’s tall, towering over Chirrut who’s only barely hit his growth spurt, and that he’s starved for just about everything good in the world. He feels hollow in a way that lights a rare spark of fear in Chirrut – he’s thin as death, no surprise given the state he’d been in when Master Dhava took him in, but it’s far more than that. There is a void there where Chirrut should be able to feel, in his way, but he only receives echoes of nothingness. Static all around and then a depth of emptiness Chirrut can barely comprehend.

“I was looking for you because Master Dhava felt that some companionship might ease your adjustment, as you know.” Chirrut is reckless, quick to fight, but in the face of this he’s putting on a facade of bravery he does not feel at all. “He said you were hurting. He didn’t mention you were such a prick. Do you think you’ll earn kindness from anyone like that?”

“I never asked you for kindness. How many times can I say it? I didn’t ask for anything from you. I didn’t even ask to come here.”

“No one’s forcing you to stay.” Chirrut spits the words like venom before he can think better of it – which he does almost instantly, because that void in Baze floods with anguish so quickly he fears he’ll be washed away in it, swept right over the balcony edge. He’s still reeling from it when Baze takes a swing at him.

His senses are useless, suddenly. Even if his ears had been doing anything for him before, now they’re ringing worthlessly after a clobbering blow. Despite the meager frame Chirrut is still trying to feel out, Baze is strong, wiry, and has a long reach. He’s faster than Chirrut expected, too, and as soon as he has his wits about him he’s ducking another vicious strike. He’s already progressing in terms of form, it seems, or he was just a better fighter than expected upon arrival. Either way he has Chirrut dodging and swinging his staff around in a startled fit of movement. He should, and does, feel guilty for striking Baze back harshly and swiftly. He hears the breath knocked out of him as he hits the ground. Chirrut has sparred with everyone in his age group and half of those a year above him, and he’s even helped to fight off looters a handful of times, but he has never fought like this before. With fear for his life – followed so swiftly by regret for having lashed out.

Baze laughs, somehow, dryly, still lying in a winded heap from the blow. Coughs. Wheezes a little. “How the hell are you so fast?”

Chirrut is still trembling, ears ringing, adrenaline rushing, horrified to find tears pricking his eyes. The only thing he can feel suddenly is too much, wind whipping and head throbbing and Baze – who went from a scared, gentle boy to an angry force of nature that he feared might actually try to kill him – is just lying there, still catching his breath.

“I didn’t hit you that hard,” he objects gruffly, though the worry in his voice can’t be missed, even over the sound of wind and blood in Chirrut’s ears.

Chirrut feels it coming on but can’t make a retreat in time with Baze still slumped across his escape route. He crumples, head cradled in both hands as his staff clangs loudly to the floor. This – he has to get this under control or it will kill him some day. But shouting it at himself as it happens is the opposite of what he needs right now. He buries his face in his scarf and tries to breathe. If Baze decides to hit him again now, so be it. It’s as if the world is too loud and he’s gone deaf at the same time, like he can’t parse a single thought though the entirety of the universe echoes in his mind. Adrenaline is powering neither a fight nor a flight response, instead just sitting, burning in his veins until his fingers shake violently. And through it all he can feel, too strongly, Baze getting up.

“Hey.” Baze’s voice is still choppy from the strike – solar plexus, throat, sweep behind the knee, like breathing, like instinct – but it washes over Chirrut in another crashing wave, dulling the burn of the world. “Hey. Get up, come on.”

He has no idea how long it is before Baze reaches for him but it’s too soon regardless. Still hanging onto the scarf, he curls in more tightly on himself, forehead pressed to his knees. It will pass. I am one with the Force and the Force is with me. I am one with the Force and the Force is with me. At some point the words slip out, aloud. And at some point after that Baze sits next to him, all awkward angles and shaky breaths, and waits.

He’s still right there when Chirrut lifts his head.

“Why are you still here?”

“I thought you might have a concussion,” he says, and it’s the first time he’s sure Baze is being honest. “I just wanted to shake you up for being a jerk to me, I didn’t want to kill you.” There’s a pause, then, heavy with guilt: “You okay?”

“Yes,” he says simply, curt but, he thinks, more politely than Baze really deserves. “Don’t get cocky. It’s not because you hit me.”

“No. I know. I mean – kind of.” His voice is muffled again, and not only by the ringing that persists in Chirrut’s ear. Staring at his feet again, probably, or at least not looking at Chirrut. “My sister used to do that sometimes.”

“Oh.” Chirrut hadn’t been expecting much of anything, but least of all a peek into Baze’s life, his family. Nor…sympathy. “It – it passes.”

“I’m sure getting clocked didn’t help.”

“Don’t give yourself so much credit,” he huffs. “It’s not any one thing, you should know that if you’re so familiar.” Chirrut has no real reason to keep needling him now. Baze is humbled, at least for the moment, and despite his fear just minutes ago, Chirrut is sure the other means him no harm now.

*He only murmurs, “Yeah,” as he pulls himself to his feet. “Are you staying up here?”

“I suppose it’s getting late,” Chirrut answers warily, uncertain about this truce. He’s used to making and losing friends rapidly, but strangers to enemies to whatever they are right now, in a span of weeks, is a bit much even for his pace.

“It is.”

He’s turning to leave as Chirrut reaches for him in the Force, still facing not a barrier but an absence of anything there to feel. He has to think that swinging from frightened to violent to neutral is easier if there’s nothing behind it; or perhaps it’s easier to maintain such a void inside by pushing everything outward. Either way, it feels deeply unsettling. For the first time in his life Chirrut isn’t sure if there is a person standing next to him. As long as Baze walked quietly he was invisible – potentially dangerous, but also terribly intriguing.

“Listen, Imwe.” The voice echoes from partway down the staircase, at last giving him a field of perception to work with. “We’re really even now, aren’t we? So don’t come looking for me again.”

Chirrut doesn’t answer, but he does stop to feel the lingering ripples of Baze’s voice; he can track him down the steps with it. The other boy must not care to remain hidden now, though, either – his steps are heavy again as he rushes away from him, liquid sensation flooding him with a pleasant familiarity after the static fades. Blindness is no obstacle for Chirrut, but having his other senses muffled is enough to send him reeling, and he’d already proved both to Baze in the span of their brief encounter. He thinks he should be more disconcerted by the implications. As it is though he just feels slightly empty himself, as if that black hole had drawn away part of himself, too.

“Are you still following me?” Baze’s voice. A swell and break.

Chirrut blinks. Is he? His feet had carried him along a familiar path as they often did – at this hour especially, it was safe enough to let his mind wander, to let muscle memory carry him down the steps, through the temple, back towards his quarters. But all at once he realizes that that is not where he’s been heading, and that if it is memory that’s driving him, it’s not the same one that usually guides his feet. It’s the memory, or the non-memory, that keeps making him tilt his head to listen to Baze’s voice, desperately trying to figure out what is so familiar about him. That drives him to still want to befriend this boy who had him in mortal fear fifteen minutes ago.

“What is it with you?” Baze asks incredulously, and Chirrut desperately wishes he had an answer.

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.”

Chapter Text

Chirrut trusts no one above his own senses, no matter how they occasionally betray him. This has just about always been the case; it's something Master Dhava and others have always encouraged, always seemed pleased to see that Chirrut came by so naturally. Fostering a sense of mistrust may have seemed cruel, but ultimately it was for the benefit of all, including Chirrut himself. Attachments are not forbidden among Guardians in the strict manner of the Jedi Code, but an understanding of the Force as the only source of the truth, and of one's own contact with the Force as the means of uncovering that truth, requires a certain detachment, a point of view forever skeptical of other beings. It makes it that much more frustratingly mysterious that Chirrut finds himself implicitly trusting Baze, and that that confidence in him seems only to deepen the more intractably uncommunicative the other boy becomes.

They want me back, or they want me dead. Baze did not elaborate, nor did Chirrut feel there was much room to ask for further information. Seemingly intentionally cryptic but delivered in Baze’s flat, affectless way, the words chill Chirrut to the bone. He can hear how the words hit the floor heavily between them as Baze stares at their feet, but he can’t read meaning into the way he hangs his head.

Chirrut simply waits, quiet and motionless, the same as Baze had done for him after their fight, and after a long silence, is rewarded for his patience. “You’re not going to ask?”

“Asking you things doesn’t seem to do me any good,” he answers honestly. “You only say exactly what you want to say anyway.”

Chirrut is certain his senses are failing him now, as he feels Baze’s eyes on him. Part of him wants to blame missing his staff, and with it the kyber crystal that amplifies his sense of his surroundings, but in truth the stronger influence is Baze himself. The boy demands his attention, pulls his focus even when Chirrut would just as soon steer clear of him, and then gives him nothing at all on which to focus. He is like trying to look into the center of a black hole – impossible, inexplicable, but no less intriguing for it. But Chirrut is willing to wait if it means a single point of light might escape from all that darkness, even if every time he catches a glimpse there is only pain there to be illuminated.

Baze finally speaks again after wordlessly studying Chirrut for what feels like an eternity. Chirrut lets him press lightly at his mind with uncertain, faint tendrils in the Force, but even that is unfocused, as if Baze doesn’t quite know he is even reaching out. “You’ve been here your whole life, haven’t you?”

Chirrut should be neither so surprised nor so deeply annoyed at receiving a question after all that silence instead of any answers. It burns behind his eyes, sets his jaw in an irritated scowl. Surely his masters would say that defensiveness only reveals a hidden truth, but he’s too quick to answer to pause for so rational a thought. “What does it matter?” He snaps at him. “You drag me away before I can get my staff, you say these mysterious things, then you ask me where I come from?”

“I dragged you away before they could see you and kill you, or worse. And I did that after saving you from a fight you picked in the first place.” Fear tinges every word, the faintest hint of emotion in his void in the Force. “I don’t care if you want to run around getting yourself killed, but if they see you, it’s trouble for all of us.”

“All of us? At the temple?” He snorts derisively. “You count yourself among us only when it suits you.”

Chirrut is surprised to feel a twinge of hurt, and he’s fully prepared for Baze to take a swing at him again, but he’s instead only met with cold silence. “The temple elders have always been your family,” he finally mutters, just as Chirrut is ready to turn and leave. “You’re lucky.”

Chirrut blinks in surprise. Few if any had ever thought as much about him – a blind boy, abandoned too young to even remember, then nearly rejected a second time if not for Dhava’s insistence about his gift with the Force. If Baze wasn’t still dodging the subject – and Chirrut is certain that that is what is happening – he might be moved at the other’s lack of pity for him. “None of us have had it easy,” he says carefully. “But we have all been carried here by the will of the Force.”

“Do you really believe that?” It’s not an antagonizing question, this time, but a genuine curiosity, and that seems to make it more difficult for Chirrut to respond. “Completely?”

“I do,” he says, albeit with notable slowness. “Sometimes things get in the way of the flow, but it never stops, so we all end up where we’re meant to be.”

This gives Baze pause, and Chirrut worries he’s revealed too much – that Baze now knows what he knows about his past, and that he’ll draw away further to make up for it. Instead he hums thoughtfully. “Master Dhava says the same. But I don’t think he believes the way you do.”

Chirrut sighs in frustration. He’s fairly certain that this is progress, though it feels like anything but, and the contrast makes his head hurt. “Baze,” he finally says plainly, rubbing his eyes. “You helped me today. Let me help you.”

“They’re dangerous,” he whispers, softly enough that Chirrut has to take a step closer to hear him. It is worth straining his senses, though, for a chance to feel those dark waters parting slightly. He realizes with something split between dread and pride that Baze is trying, even if in his fearful way, to establish some trust between them.

“I can handle dangerous,” he insists, though this attempt to lighten the mood does not seem to go over particularly well. “I mean it,” he adds, taking the bravado out of his tone. “I’m not scared.”

Baze hesitates, but he doesn’t have to complete his thought anyway; he is afraid, terribly, and every fiber of his being echoes with it. “Those gangsters kept me alive,” he continues, starting to walk again, reaching out to brush his fingers to Chirrut’s wrist, not going as far as taking his hand but urging him to follow. “But they’re bad people.”

“Are they...your family?” He stays close, though Baze’s long strides require some rushing to keep up.

“No,” he answers quickly, welling with sadness again in Chirrut’s sightless impression. “I thought they were, for a while.”

Chirrut realizes at last where they’re headed – back to the armory, surely to stash the pilfered lightbow. He has the passing thought that he may have become something of a human shield for Baze; the elders would be less likely to notice, much less to question, his comings and goings with Chirrut at his side. It’s not a role he really minds, and he’s not convinced Baze has set him up on purpose anyway – and most importantly, he’s too intrigued by the seemingly reticent boy’s brazen borrowing of the weapon to worry about it. Baze is an absolute mystery, and Chirrut takes seriously the responsibility implicit in the other allowing him to pull this deeply personal thread. He follows at Baze’s side and doesn’t push for more, waiting instead for the next revelation.

“They took us in after my mother died. I hardly remember.” He draws a sharp breath that Chirrut can’t quite interpret. “I was six or seven, maybe. My sister was just a baby, and I didn’t know where else to go.”

“Why not the Temple?” Chirrut blurts before he can stop himself. “We would have taken you in. We could have--” He cuts himself off abruptly, startled by his own train of thought. They would have met sooner, could have grown up together, maybe they’d have been friends instead of whatever they are now. But what did any of that matter?

Baze does his best not to notice. “I was a child, no money, no transport. We lived at the far side of the city, and even when Mama was alive we never really had a stable place to live. They were there, and they offered help. They ran that part of the city in those days.”

They’ve reached the armory, and Chirrut is struck suddenly by how the day has drawn them together. Before just a few hours ago, he would have been wary of even being alone with Baze, much less with him surrounded by weapons. When he reaches out to Baze now, though, there is nothing to fear in him; that unsettling void has been replaced by vulnerability, still too shrouded to fully comprehend, but undoubtedly there, open to him. And Chirrut feels something pushing back for the first time – he feels when Baze turns his gaze to him, feels him starting to treat him as something other than a potential threat. Chirrut had thought that this sort of openness is what he wanted, but presented with the force of it, one which is truly only the shadow of something looming much larger, he has a guilty sort of dread beginning to solidify within him.

“They do it a lot, from what I can tell,” Baze goes on, hooking the lightbow back into its place on the wall. “Jedha has many orphans. They don’t all end up here.”

“I guess I am lucky,” Chirrut whispers before realizing the words are escaping him aloud. And there, he feels the pressure of Baze’s eyes on him, the weight of all the hurt he can’t hold up alone. “Did they send you to the temple when you were a kid?”

Baze hesitates. “Master Dhava told you about that?”

“Not many details. Just that you came and tried to get some help, and that those pricks turned you away.” The scathing heat he’d turned on his master earlier wastes no time creeping back into his voice. “Because of what those gangsters did. It’s not like you had a choice. I can’t believe I tried to tell you they were good--”

Chirrut breaks off abruptly when Baze laughs. It’s bittersweet, but there’s a warmth to it that stuns Chirrut silent. “You don’t even take a side really, do you?” Baze mutters, breezing past him back into the hallway without warning, leaving Chirrut to scramble after him, embarrassed at his own eagerness. “You just flutter off in whatever direction works up the most righteous anger for you in the moment.”

“Are you making fun of me for defending you? I am taking a side here,” he doesn’t really think Baze is trying to run away from him, not consciously anyway, but he nearly has to jog to keep up with him. “Your side. You didn’t deserve all that--”

“You’re doing it again,” he grumbles, though he sounds undeniably amused. “I’m not making fun of you. You just bristle up as soon as you think you have a good excuse to get mad. In fact, I was thinking I liked that about you.”

Chirrut sputters for words a moment. “I’m not going to be flattered that you think I have no principles--”

“Force, Imwe. I’m saying the opposite.” He stops short so Chirrut nearly crashes into him the second time that day. “I haven’t given you any reason to even believe what I’m telling you, have I?”

Chirrut cocks his head as if it might shake loose the correct response. “You’re not lying. I’d sense it.”

“You trust me because you think I need you to.” It is not a question, and he lets the weight of the sentiment hang between them heavily. “I don’t really understand you. But at least you have a sense of justice.”

“You make me so tired,” Chirrut complains, feeling his ears burning in spite of not being completely sure the words are intended as a compliment. “I want to help you, Baze. I know you don’t want it, but I still do.”

Baze fidgets quietly a long moment, leaning against the door that Chirrut presumes leads into his room – he’d been so quick to follow that he hadn’t, again, bothered to ask nor figure out for himself where they were headed. “I’m sorry about your staff,” he says again, as if the words have been nagging him to be let out whether the time is right or not.

“I’m going to get it back.” Fear instantly ripples out from Baze, powerful, almost choking. Chirrut feels it strike him in the center of his forehead as if it were a physical blow, and he takes a shaky step away. “I can’t know what I’m up against if you won’t tell me, Baze. I know they were bad to you. A person like you isn’t afraid for no reason. But you’re safe here now, whether you believe it or not.”

“I’ve told you what you need to know – that you shouldn’t mess with them.”

“I won’t go tonight,” Chirrut says, drawing each word out carefully, considering whether he’s telling the truth with each syllable. “All right? I promise. But after that, I don’t know. So you better tell me something tomorrow.”

“If you go to them without me, I’ll never forgive you,” he warns, startling Chirrut first with his soft tone, then again by reaching out to touch the scarf still wound around his neck. Goosebumps prickle across his skin, and that warm feeling of familiarity washes over him once more.

He wants to lean closer, maybe even does, just a fraction of an inch, but as soon as he realizes what he’s doing, Chirrut recoils away. “Tomorrow,” he stammers, suddenly struck with the same overwhelmed feeling that had sent him reeling after their fight. “Tomorrow I want to – figure all of this out. I owe you some help. You owe me a staff. Let’s call it even.”

“I’m not calling it anything,” Baze says, just as cautious as Chirrut. For the first time, Chirrut considers that the other is far more lost than he is himself. “But we’ll talk tomorrow.”

Chirrut fully intends to put the other out of his mind, huffing and grumbling his way back to his quarters. He’s sympathetic and furious all at once; Baze is still so frustrating, even with the sparse insight into what has brought him to this point. Even as he lies in bed, rubbing his tired eyes, he can’t stop himself from wondering, though. Wondering what it was that sets this gang apart from the many others that roam Jedha, wondering what Baze and his sister had gone through. Wondering why he was so deeply familiar when there is no possible way for them to have met before. Chirrut closes his eyes and breathes deeply, and though it’s been years since shutting them has made any difference to his vision, there is something soothing in it. Impressions of the other boy instantly cloud his consciousness – the furious tidal wave of his anger, summoned by the barest, offhand implication of being turned away from the Temple again; the crushing pressure of mingled fear and sorrow that radiated from him at the sight of his once-family.

He dreams of him. It’s almost inevitable; Chirrut has always dreamed vividly, seemingly amplified by his connection with the Force. Whether they are truly prophetic or merely keenly insightful in a way Chirrut’s busy mind can’t be during waking hours remains unclear, a point Chirrut often discusses with Master Dhava and others. The only thing he is certain of is that the presence he senses is Baze, alongside himself, but in another universe, or a distant future. They are intertwined in a way he cannot define because it is as if they have always been that way, primal natural forces pushing and pulling each other endlessly. It should be terrifying, the vastness of it, seeing himself as something ethereal he cannot understand, and paired with, of all people, the strange boy who has his waking emotions jumbled just as badly as dreams. But even when he wakes with a start, he feels oddly peaceful. With a deep breath, he tries to grasp at the wisps of the dream, to hang on to the impression as long as possible in hopes of decoding it.

But there is nothing to hold on to. There’s hardly a thought there to process, just impressions, feelings, lingering too long, at once unsettling and soothing. He sits up and curls his knees to his chest, reaching as far as his senses will allow, trying to fill the dull ache in his heart with some new perception now that the dream presence has been stripped away. The Temple feels as it always does, for better or worse, a simmering cauldron of the Force with wisps of steam drifting toward him. He doesn’t dare to dip beneath the surface of it; when he tries, it drags him down. One day, he thinks, he’ll learn to control it, to learn to feel without becoming overwhelmed. Now, though, he just breathes in the barest vapors of the teeming power of the Force, the gleaming veins of kyber beneath the Temple, the abilities of his peers and masters, the sensation of home that he can feel even if he can’t name it. And, though dim, he thinks he can feel Baze.

Rather, he can feel that ghostly blank space where he should be, somehow disguised into seeming not to exist. Straightening, he risks reaching toward him, extending a hand out in front of himself unthinkingly as he lets the Force carry his consciousness down the hall, through stone walls and past other sleeping initiates. There’s life in all of them, in everything – he can feel moss between stones but he can’t feel Baze, not the same way. The void frightens him, but he nudges it – the only way to begin to describe the out-of-body action – and he stirs, just slightly. Chirrut wonders if Baze is awake, if he can feel him reaching out.

Chirrut thinks Baze has to be locking himself away on purpose, to somehow be concealing himself in the Force so he cannot be reached. It’s too complete to be an accident, too stark a missing piece in Chirrut’s perception. But he is untrained, too, perhaps not totally aware of his own abilities. Another mystery to add to the list, Chirrut supposes. There’s a faint light then, in that empty place, and Chirrut at first thinks Baze is waking. His breath catches in his throat, though, when he begins to sense just the opposite – Baze’s consciousness sinking, relaxing into sleep, and the light of his presence sneaking through as he relinquishes control of that shield. Chirrut struggles to steady his thoughts, to hold on to that perception of Baze, to feel him growing warm and peaceful without doing something to disturb him. Was it even possible to disturb him this way? Could he feel him there at all?

It is a bit voyeuristic, Chirrut realizes, biting down on his lower lip. But perhaps he can gain some small sliver of insight here, in the depths of night, sensing the other at peace even if briefly. Calm where he is usually turbulent, Baze comes in to sharp relief for Chirrut now, a soft, restful presence like those of the other acolytes. There’s still something different in the sensation, though, but whether the residual impression of his dream is influencing him unduly he cannot say – in any case, the warmth there recalls the soft feeling that washed over him the day before, as Baze brushed gentle fingers over the scarf he’d given him. It makes him ponder, for the thousandth time since meeting him, why Baze feels as much like an old friend as a mysterious stranger. Chirrut isn’t sure how long he lingers that way, reaching out toward Baze, before he drifts back to sleep, but when he does it is dreamless and peaceful.

Chapter Text

Morning drags Chirrut away from the perfect peace of a restful sleep slowly, his mind still refreshingly clear as he dresses and makes his way to the courtyard for morning exercises. Baze is there today, finally having caught up, presumably, thanks to private lessons with Master Dhava. He’s a fast learner, Chirrut thinks, though he’s not sure exactly what gives him that impression. Perhaps his skill with the lightbow, or the way wisdom seems to hide just past the edges of his spare, blunt words. He’s taken by not just the swiftness with which he dispatches his sparring partner, but the confident precision, the way he doesn’t turn inward and vanish at the murmurs of onlookers. Aruna nudges Chirrut, managing the rare feat of catching him off guard.

“Your new friend is really something,” she comments.

Chirrut laughs a little, hands wringing around his temporary staff – a poor substitute, cold metal, missing the guiding light of his kyber crystal. “I wish I knew what that something was.”

“A skilled fighter,” she offers, and Chirrut can hear the smile in her tone. “Tall. Broad shoulders. Now that he doesn’t look like someone just hauled him out of the gutter anymore he’s rather handsome.”

Chirrut just hums noncommittally. For someone with no idea who Baze really is, he feels oddly defensive of him at this shallow assessment. “Do you sense anything in him?”

“What kind of anything?”

“Anything,” Chirrut mutters, voice raising a little in his annoyance. He feels Baze’s eyes hit him and mutters a faint, “Forget it.” Aruna, of course, notices this exchange (if it can be called that) and falls into a knowing silence that Chirrut does not at all appreciate.

As soon as they have some time to themselves, late into the afternoon, he seeks Baze out again, discomfited at the sense that they have instead found each other. Chirrut has learned to feel for him, the emptiness in the Force but also that faint light he’d felt the night before. His ears go red at the thought of it now that Baze is right in front of him, though he isn’t sure why – perhaps there is a sort of intimacy to having felt him drift to sleep that he doesn’t want to admit to having listened in on, in a sense. Baze seems to find him just as easily, though, both pulled toward each other by some invisible force (perhaps that one, though Chirrut doesn’t know what to make of the implications).

Chirrut speaks first, out of necessity, as Baze falters and fidgets until Chirrut is too impatient to let him sort it out. “You’ll tell me, then?” He half-asks, half-demands, though there’s no authority to his voice either way. “Like you said?”

“Come up to the prayer room with me,” he whispers, confidential. Chirrut shivers at the trust implied in the words, and can only hope Baze doesn’t notice – he’s not shy, exactly, but he’d rather figure out his own feelings before presenting them to others. When they sneak out before he can help it, though, there’s not much he can do. “Up in the tower, where you brought me food that time.”

Chirrut tilts his head. “We don’t have to meet in secret,” he points out. “We can walk there together.”

Baze seems to consider this a moment, as if it had not occurred to him in the slightest. “If you’re not concerned, I guess.”

“Concerned? What is there to be concerned over?”

“Your reputation, maybe,” he answers, lightly amused. “The others don’t think much of me, still. Nor should they.”

“I don’t know about that,” Chirrut muses as they head toward the tower, spurred on by that same light touch against his wrist. “Aruna is impressed with your progress. Plus,” he grins, remembering he finally has something to lighten the mood with the stoic boy. “She says you’re looking handsome lately. Not that I would know.”

Baze glowers, displeasure so palpable Chirrut needs no sight to know. “The point is – if you don’t want to be seen with me, I won’t hold it against you.”

It’s Chirrut’s turn to frown now, and he makes a point of sticking close to his side as they head up the long staircase to the prayer alcove. “Don’t sulk,” he complains. “I don’t care about that kind of thing. If I wanted to keep up a stellar reputation, do you think you would have found me out in the city yesterday? Either I wouldn’t have gone or I would have prepared better.”

Baze looks over at him with unconcealed curiosity, a flickering light that brightens all the more once they’re alone in the relative privacy of the narrow stairwell. “Your masters still speak highly of you. Even as you do such reckless things.” A soft laugh escapes him, and Chirrut can perceive a quick shake of his head. “Maybe because of it.”

“Why are we going up here?” He mutters, genuinely wondering though the question is mostly deflection. “You can’t talk to me in the courtyard?”

“This is more private,” he says with a shrug. “And it’s comfortable.”

Chirrut does not want to dissuade Baze from comfort, something he seems to desperately lack, so he just nods and continues following, tapping his way up the steps with his replacement staff. He ducks into the alcove after Baze, instantly feeling the pleasant buzzing song of kyber on the tiny altar within. Baze curls into himself as usual, seated on the floor with his knees pulled to his chest, and Chirrut kneels beside him, taking a moment to silently absorb the feeling of holiness in the tight space.

“I never prayed before I came here,” Baze admits, his voice quiet but steadier than Chirrut had expected. “I didn’t even know how.”

“They don’t have much respect the for the Force,” Chirrut murmurs, though it’s less a question than a confirmation of what he’d already thought. “Or for this place. They – the gang – tried to loot the temple before. That’s really the only thing I know about them.”

He can feel Baze centering himself, giving himself over to the Force, and he feels embarrassed at having interrupted until the other boy chimes in again. “Tried and succeeded at least once. Then failed so many times that they tried to send children to do their dirty work instead.”

“That’s why you came, back then?”

“Sort of.”

“Sort of?”

“Imwe,” he sighs, leaving Chirrut to wonder once more if the familiarity of his tone was just a trick of his mind. “Pray with me.”

“Oh – uh, all right,” Chirrut responds, not bothering to hide the confusion in his tone. “If it means you’re going to finish telling me where you came from.”

“The Force is with me,” Baze breathes without answering Chirrut directly. “I am one with the Force.”

Chirrut is quiet for a long moment. It was the first simple mantra he’d learned as a child, but one he retreated to these days mostly as a last resort, when the deeply familiar, soothing words were the only ones that would come to him. There is elegance in the plain-spoken truth of it, though, he realizes as he listens for the first time in years to the words coming from a voice not his own. Baze’s voice, rough but calming, not couched in flowery language or esoteric references. Just the Force, and the believer. “I am one with the Force,” he chimes in, in opposite time to Baze’s incantation so they fit together like puzzle pieces – or perhaps just create a cacophony, Chirrut isn’t yet sure. “The Force is with me.”

As they repeat it together, though, Chirrut feels a chill wash over him. It isn’t the same as the disconcerting feeling of nothing, but it’s still unpleasant, too strong of a feeling. It feels like hunger, gnawing at him, and it remains even when Baze breathes a long sigh and turns his eyes to Chirrut again, prayers fading away. “They take in orphans, but they aren’t looking for family. They could be cruel – are cruel. The just need bodies. Soldiers.”

The abruptness is nothing new, but it still takes Chirrut a moment to sort out what Baze is saying, to shake off one focus and redirect at the other’s pace. “And children are less likely to be noticed picking pockets, stealing things from stalls,” Chirrut guesses. “There’s a lot of that in the city.”

“Yeah.” Baze’s voice grows more muffled as he puts his forehead tiredly to his knees. Chirrut doesn’t comment, just leans slightly closer to hear. “Of course poor families do it. I can understand that. You have to survive. We had to survive, too. But the leaders – they aren’t interested in sharing the wealth. Most of them are like Erhat – the one that took us in. In debt to someone offworld. Black Sun, or something else worse than small-timers on a moon in the middle of nowhere. So they use people. Do whatever they have to to scrape together enough to save their skins.”

“You say it rather...sympathetically,” Chirrut observes.

Baze hums the vocal equivalent of a shrug. “I don’t know if I’m sympathetic or just brainwashed, but I understand why they did what they did, anyway. What they do.” He goes quiet a long moment before Chirrut feels the weight of his gaze again. “I’ve done bad things, too.”

Chirrut can feel him testing the waters with the careful words, and maybe it’s that offer of vulnerability that moves him to rest a hand on Baze’s shoulder. He doesn’t answer though, finding any possible words lacking all he needs to convey, and only waits again. Baze brushes his fingers lightly over Chirrut’s hand as if to confirm it’s really there before he goes on.

“I was supposed to steal for them – mainly Erhat, sometimes one of the others, on his orders. That’s all I was for. In return, I knew my sister was safe and fed.” He speaks plainly, whatever storm of emotions is hiding within him kept carefully at bay. “I think I wanted them to be my family. It felt good, being a part of something. And I wasn’t bad at stealing, so I was useful. Until I wasn’t anymore. Erhat needed more than I could steal – trying to get offworld suddenly, to escape whatever crime lord had finally had enough of his payment plan, I guess. He couldn’t pay his debt in time and neither could I,” he laughs bitterly, the first show of feeling much of anything since he began spilling out this long-restrained story. “I thought if I could steal something from the Temple I might be able to save him – save myself.”

Chirrut swallows, unsure whether this afterthought is a correction or merely an addendum. He moves his hand away when Baze fidgets uncomfortably, shifts to give him space. “You were just a child,” he murmurs, as much wondering aloud as trying to offer reassurance.

“Of course, I had no idea what I was getting into,” he says, sounding almost bored. It isn’t hard to detect, though, that this façade masks the worst of his pain, at least not for Chirrut. The more Baze struggles to remain even-tempered, the more apparent it becomes that he is slowly falling apart through this confession. “I hardly got inside before they caught me. I panicked. Told them everything, begged for help. Asked them to give me anything I could sell, or a few credits, anything at all.” He takes a long, ragged breath, and Chirrut clutches his own robes in a white-knuckle grip to resist reaching out for him again. “They turned me away, of course. Why shouldn’t they? It must have looked like a trap. If I’d had any sense I would have gone for the mines instead.”

Another dragging breath rattles him, and Chirrut can hear the rustling of robes as he moves, pulling himself properly to his knees though he hasn’t bothered while they prayed. “Maybe part of me thought they’d rescue us somehow,” he laughs faintly. “By then I’d heard all the stories. Warriors, Jedi, people with incredible power. The Force.” Chirrut shivers at the sound of the word in Baze’s deep voice, with the soft edges of his faint accent. “I was afraid to go back with nothing, but I had to make sure my sister was all right. By the time I got back Erhat had already left. It wouldn’t have mattered even if I’d brought all the treasure I could have carried.” This is not the first time Baze has fallen silent, his story punctuated with long pauses and searches for words. Chirrut gets the impression he’s never talked so much in his life as he has with Chirrut lately – that it’s an honor, and a responsibility, to listen well to his rare words. But this quiet is different; it has a presence, and in it Chirrut feels that sinking, cold feeling again. This quiet is the hole in Baze’s heart, the void in the Force.

Chirrut doesn’t want to push too hard against the silence, no matter how heavy. That Baze has been willing to share this much is surprising enough, and pressing him for more feels greedy. He can hardly find words anyway, as if that black hole in his perception has sucked them all away, crushed them out of existence since they could not possibly be enough anyway. It sets him on edge, leaving him twisting his sleeves around his fingers, thankful for the calming influence of the kyber altar for keeping his more frenzied thoughts at bay, fighting off the most debilitating sensation of being overloaded. They are at a stalemate that way for some time, until Baze reaches out with shaking hands to stop his fidgeting, enveloping Chirrut’s busy fingers in his own.

“You’re making me nervous,” he mutters, though his annoyance only thinly conceals the concern in his gesture.

Chirrut shakes his head as if to ward off the intrusive feeling of wanting to return that comfort. “Sorry,” he stammers, pulling his hands away with the distinct feeling that none of this was new. “You just – stopped talking, and I was worried.”

“Don’t worry,” Baze says, as if he is not the one in desperate need of comforting. “Please.”

Chirrut feels his ears burning. “You didn’t finish your story,” he points out, turning away as if to deflect some of this concern. “I still don’t know what they want with you now.”

Baze eyes on him feel painfully intense. “Half the initiates here already think I’m a violent degenerate. I don’t want you to see me like that, too.”

Chirrut is too blindsided by the sentiment to focus on its seemingly non-sequitur nature. “I don’t see you at all,” he reminds him, and it’s no joke this time. “I can only sense you, Baze, and even if we haven’t known each other long, my senses don’t lie to me. I’ll know who you are no matter what.”

The words are too heavy, too much, and Chirrut regrets them the moment they escape, but Baze’s eyes on him don’t falter. “They’re after me because before I came here, I found out Erhat had come back to Jedha. And I killed him.” His eyes finally fall away from Chirrut again. “So the rest want me back to either take his place and keep paying his debts, or die. Probably for a bounty.”

Chirrut’s blood runs ice cold, and he can only hope it doesn’t show. He knew – some part of him knew instantly that that darkness in Baze could be nothing else. But every time that void shrinks away he feels gentleness, warmth, Baze’s soul trying to climb out from under the weight of what he’s done. Chirrut doesn’t know how to rectify the two; he isn’t even sure if it’s possible. He stutters out the only word he can think of. “Why?”

The shell breaks at last as Baze’s breath is shaken with a sob. “When I returned from the Temple that day he had already gone. Everything I did to try to keep him from ending up with his head in a jar in some Hutt’s collection… I had convinced myself he was like my father. But as soon as his debt outweighed our worth, he was gone. I couldn’t even figure out how he’d gotten away until they—” His voice breaks again. “Slavers came and took her, and I couldn’t save her.”

“He sold her,” Chirrut breathes, voice trembling. “Your sister?”

A gasping sob rips through another long silence, and Chirrut does not ask any more questions. “I took all kinds of jobs trying to get enough money for transport to track her but I was only a child. She just kept getting further and further away and I could never–” He swallows and Chirrut feels him trying to put that shield back together to no avail. “I hated him so much that I thought it would feel good. I knew it wouldn’t bring her back but...”

“Did it?” Chirrut asks. “Feel good, I mean.”

Baze takes a long look at him, searching for something, as if he doesn’t trust the simplicity of the question. “No,” he says after a while. “It makes everything worse.”

“I don’t think you were wrong,” Chirrut offers, if only to keep the silence from stretching longer, and he regrets it instantly. He has no idea if he believes what he’s saying, and it bleeds through every word. “He’d do it again. Taking children from Jedha.”

“He would,” Baze agrees. “But it was still wrong.” Another brutal silence follows, until Baze finally speaks again, voice hushed and hoarse. “The Masters don’t know,” he whispers. “Please don’t tell them.”

Chirrut presses the heels of his hands to his eyes, fighting the overwhelming onslaught of unfathomable information as much as he is tears. He’d been so afraid of Baze and he couldn’t be sure he wasn’t still afraid of him – but he trusts him, this frightful-yet-gentle boy, even if it’s with a horrifying secret. And there is that pain again, seeping from the cracked shell of Baze’s there-but-not-there space in his perception, discomfiting, intrusive as clammy hands at his throat. “I can’t,” he chokes out. “I can’t do this.”

“I’m not asking you to,” Baze replies, more quickly than Chirrut expected, though the words come out halting and wavering. “I just knew I could tell you.”

Chirrut shakes his head violently. How could be possibly explain to Baze that that makes it worse, so much worse? He tries to focus on the altar, on his breathing, on anything other than Baze’s overwhelming presence.

“I’m sorry,” he offers, voice still catching in his throat with emotion. “I shouldn’t have – I don’t know why you feel so–”

He’ll regret it, surely, but Chirrut lets his overstimulated mind latch on to the phrase. “What did you say?”

“I said I’m sorry, Imwe, I–”

“No.” He waves a slightly frantic hand, a gesture that is not meant to be as dismissive as it probably looks, though in any case Baze seems to take it in stride. “I feel so what?”

Baze takes an eternity to steady his breath and find the word. Chirrut thinks he’ll burn alive from the inside out before he speaks again. “Familiar.” When it’s clear Chirrut isn’t answering, perhaps can’t answer, as he hides his face behind his hands again and crumples until his forehead hits his knees, Baze merely falls silent. He doesn’t speak again until Chirrut lifts his head once more, however slowly. “I’m sorry, Chirrut.” It’s the first time he’s spoken to him informally, Chirrut realizes, through the haze of his own senses clamping down on him. “I’m sorry we’re...pulled together like this.”

Chirrut twists his fingers in the ends of his sleeves, wishing he could bind his thoughts so easily. Words keep slipping away from him in the fog of trying to reconcile everything that is Baze, in the thick, choking mist of his presence, which wavers in his perception between the familiar though frightening cavernous nothing, and something even more difficult to grasp. That something – that was what he’d seen as Baze fell asleep, as he let himself linger where he wasn’t invited. “I don’t understand you,” he finally wheezes out, the bravado he’d had in mind swapped for weak and tired-sounding syllables just barely making it out of his throat.

“I know.” Baze reaches for Chirrut’s hands again, but they’re jerked away swiftly this time, and Chirrut feels the jolt of sorrow as strongly as he would have the touch. “I’m sorry,” he says again, standing in a rush of clumsy limbs. It is easy to forget he’s barely older than himself, Chirrut realizes, when he speaks with such battered, world-weary bitterness. He almost wishes they’d just get in another fight; at least then he’d know how to react, where to plant his feet. As it is Baze just walks away – Chirrut can hear his steps falter and hesitate more than once, linger at the door and halfway down the stairs. Something in his heart threatens to hoist Chirrut to his feet and drag him out after him, but he resists, forcing his focus back to the thrumming stillness of the kyber. At least that is constant, familiar, soothing. The strongest stars have hearts of kyber. It’s a maxim so oft-repeated among the temple’s denizens that it feels meaningless sometimes, sounds without significance. Chirrut has been raised not to believe in coincidence, though, and that the words come to mind as he grapples with what to make of the dim, warm light he still feels beneath all that is volatile and frightening about Baze is no accident. While this realization gives him the peace of a brief moment of clarity, understanding his present does little to guide him toward the future.

He will keep Baze’s secret. He’s sure of that much, that no matter how it stokes his quiet fear of the other, he will keep that broken part of Baze close, guard it, and try to stare it down, if to do so means seeing the rest of him. When Chirrut returns to his quarters, long after he’s sure Baze isn’t lingering, he unfolds his scarf and sits with it to meditate, fingers tracing each stitch until his mind is clear and quiet.

Chapter Text

It is after this confession that something in Baze begins to truly change, in fine, barely-detectable increments, Chirrut thinks. His heavy shield seems to have been lifted, or dented, and even without his beloved kyber close at hand, he no longer sneaks up on Chirrut like a hollow phantom. It comes in small things, in the way Baze’s faint presence shimmers with something besides pain, the way he wordlessly joins Chirrut for prayer. He’s as reticent as ever though, quiet and gruff and incredibly unforthcoming for someone who has shared his darkest secrets with another. Chirrut tells him as much and receives in return only another of those anguished flashes in the Force, a wild arc of lightning briefly illuminating the shape of him.

“I’ve burdened you with more than enough,” he says finally, when Chirrut has asked one too many questions. They’re walking together in weighty silence – a daily occurrence in these handful of days following their confessional meeting – toward their respective assignments, Chirrut headed for kitchen duty and Baze off to train, still working to catch up though he’s more adept each day, a speed Chirrut can hardly fathom. There is deep conflict when he looks at Chirrut, even if neither is sure what either side of that mental bout is fighting for.

Quiet awe at his progress still can’t compete with the prickly way Baze makes him feel, and Chirrut scowls deeply. Gentleness comes uncertainly; annoyance is far more confident. “Complete nonsense,” he scoffs. “That’s just what you say when you want to avoid saying anything more.”

“If you’re wise enough to know that, shouldn't you know to just accept it?”

“Haven’t we been through this? I still owe you at least one. So I’m going to keep trying to help.” The way the words pull Baze the tiniest bit closer each time makes them oddly addictive, even if Chirrut doesn’t believe in their various debts to each other. “Besides, this thing is no good.” He taps Baze’s shoulder lightly with his temporary staff, dimly wondering if it might set off another fight – maybe even hoping for it. “I want mine back.”

Baze flares up in anger but only shoves the staff away with a precision amount of force. Chirrut doesn’t have to step back to avoid stumbling. “You want to know my life story but all I know about that damned thing is that you want it back.”

Chirrut’s eyebrows shoot upwards at this, and he finds himself unusually at a loss for words. “About my staff?”

“About your staff – about anything.” He’s less gruff than usual, and even if it’s mainly replaced with audible aggravation, Chirrut is strangely pleased with things evolving in a more readable direction. Baze barrels on, only stumbling when another acolyte drifts within earshot. “If you want me to talk to you so much, why is it that I only ever hear you pray or ask me personal questions?”

“Small talk seems inappropriate for–” He gestures between them with the staff again and this time Baze grabs for it more forcefully, but Chirrut snatches it back in time, finishing his thought in a clipped, hissing tone. “For whatever is happening here.” He almost swallows the words back; they haven’t really been spoken aloud besides oblique references to feeling familiar. But this , this unnameable energy, is something more than deja vu, and acknowledging it feels dangerous.

“Is that what Master Dhava is after, do you suppose?”

It takes Chirrut a beat to realize that Baze is genuinely wondering and not trying to rile him up, and that’s enough time to get his hackles up. “He’s not trying to use us. I’m sure of that.”

“So you’re back to his side,” he murmurs, an amused sing-song in his tone that Chirrut finds equally charming and infuriating. “Lead by justice once again.” Before Chirrut can snap back at him, he feels a light tap on his arm. “Justice also seems to have led you away from your post, so maybe you should head to your left instead of following me like a stray.”

He’s not sure if he’s more embarrassed at the insinuation that he followed him again on purpose or at the fact that he had not. “Tonight,” he says stiffly, leaning heavily on his temporary staff. “Meet me to make a plan.”

Baze hums an affirmative, and Chirrut has already turned and taken three steps when he adds, “I’ll find you.”

—

Baze’s footfalls ahead are softer than expected for his broad frame, and Chirrut prefers to follow and listen, memorizing the steady sound, than to announce himself as they turn up the long staircase. He’s sure the other acolyte is aware of his presence anyway; the Force flows so peculiarly between the two of them that it would be impossible to miss even with Baze’s relative lack of training. Never one to miss a chance to push his luck – not that he believes in such a thing – Chirrut reaches out towards him again, hoping the feeling of his presence will begin to illuminate some of the odd pall cast over them. The even footfalls stop and he hears the rustle of robes as Baze turns to look at him.

“What are you doing?”

“Sensing.”

“It’s…disorienting.” He doesn’t say more though, no words harsh or encouraging, and vanishes into the prayer room, his faint outline subsumed by the glow of kyber on the altar within.

Chirrut finds himself following yet again, vaguely wondering if this even counts as Baze finding him. “Your training is coming along, then, if you can feel it to be disoriented.”

“You sound like Master Dhava.” With his burden lifted, everything about Baze seems softer, down to the way he flops down comfortably at the altar, open to the energy radiating from it. Chirrut meanwhile twists into a tense knot as he joins him, feeling that low buzz of static at the edges of his perception rise to a droning tone that threatens to overtake him when Baze’s eyes turn to him again. “I don’t know why I told you those things.”

“I’m glad you did.”

And then a different sort of silence, like the one between the high, clear rings of the temple bells. They fall into prayer, each thinking they are following the other, until Chirrut breaks the still surface between them again, gently.

“It helps me get around,” he begins without preamble. “To perceive the world. Much more than this one.” He drums his fingers on the cool metal staff. “The kyber heightens my senses. The wood reads in the Force in a way metal doesn’t. Besides, I’ve been using it for years and it has marks from my fingers in the right places. You can’t just replace a thing like that.”

“Can you see, when you have it?”

“No,” Chirrut laughs a little, and he can feel Baze’s relief that he’s not offended. “Not that that would be of any great value to me now, anyway.”

“Have you been like that your whole life?”

“If you mean my eyes, almost. The rest of it – yes, my whole life.” This earns the faintest snort of a laugh from Baze and Chirrut feels like he’s found a treasure worth a fortune. “I don’t really remember what happened. The healers think I must have gotten blasted by some sort of explosion.” He makes a kaboom gesture with both hands, and shrugs. “An accident. The will of the Force, impossible to understand.”

“Not well-off enough for proper medical treatment, then. Maybe we do have a bit in common.”

“Not well-off. Not well-located.”

“Is that why you were brought here?”

“Not exactly.” It’s Chirrut’s turn to push back slightly now, as those light tendrils of Baze’s questioning mind flow to him with more focus, directed and pointed with some weeks of training. Back and forth, Chirrut notes with a feeling of airsickness. Like turbulence, a strange wind tunnel between them. He pulls his knees to his chest defensively. “But soon after, from what they tell me.”

“I’m making you tired again,” Baze observes matter-of-factly, and Chirrut doesn’t correct him. It’s true, but he knows it’s not intentional. “It seems like we…” He makes some gesture – Chirrut can hear his sleeve rustle – then thinks better of it and gives his robe a little tug at his knee instead. “We pull at each other.”

“Is this what I’ve been doing to you too?”

“Sort of. But you also…you’ve lifted a great deal from me.” He clears his throat and with it the creep of emotion in his voice. “If your staff is still in town, I’ll get it for you. But that’s a big if, you know. Between the wood and the kyber, it’s worth plenty. There’s a good chance it’s been torn to bits already.”

This pessimistic option had not fully occurred to Chirrut. "I can sense the kyber," he says carefully, no longer sure if that faint data point is even meaningful.

"You can sense that one piece?"

"I can." Drumming his fingers on the metal staff, he considers again that he truly hasn't been as open with Baze as he'd demanded the other be for him. "It was given to me a long time ago and I was trained to harmonize with it. Back when the masters thought I would have another use for it one day."

Baze reaches to tap on the staff too, absently. “You were to train as a Jedi?”

“The Masters assumed I’d be selected.” He shrugs, finding it oddly difficult to keep the hurt out of his voice at the memory. “They were mistaken.”

“Never thought I’d meet a Jedi reject.”

Chirrut pauses, tilting his head toward Baze with blooming amusement. “Are you…teasing me?”

“If you want to make it sound friendly,” he grumbles, all false gruffness since now that he’s been caught committing the crime of mild playfulness. “Why didn’t they take you?”

“They tested me. Not like I expected, not in zama-shiwo or even in my studies.” He wiggles a finger a little closer to Baze’s face than he would have dared the day before. “They pricked this finger, and took some blood, and they asked how old I was, and they all stared at me for a while then said they simply could not take me. I believe the word they used was inadequate. ” He smiles, suddenly finding the whole thing very sincerely funny for reasons he can’t explain. “Like a puzzle missing a piece.”

“Wise Jedi, huh,” he muses, batting Chirrut’s hand away with startling gentleness. “I bet they stuck around a really long time after that too. Visited pilgrims, saw the sights of the city…?”

Chirrut chuckles. “Oh yes. I’m sure they got quite the view of NiJedha as they were blasting off. In my memory they yelled the whole exchange at me from across the docking bay, walking backwards, but–” Baze laughs, really laughs, and Chirrut can’t help but join in. “--that may be a slight exaggeration.” He risks nudging him. “It’s good to hear you laugh.”

“You can’t let a moment go quietly, can you, Imwe?” Baze still sounds more amused than anything, though, fingertips still drumming on his metal staff, tapping out a rhythm. “I thought you would be afraid of me. I thought you already were afraid of me.”

“I was,” he admits, feeling the vibration of the soft metallic taps at the other end of his staff where he rested his hand. “Even though you – you did what you did, to survive, I don’t think you’re a dangerous person. I don’t know what you are.”

“Is that any better?”

“I thought you were hollow, when we first met. I tried to feel for you in the Force and I couldn’t.” Tilting his head, he taps a pattern back to Baze, a mirror of the rhythm he was tapping out, just to see if the other will notice. “But I don’t think that’s true.”

Maybe he notices, or maybe it hits just close enough to the edges of his half-trained perception that he responds anyway, a harmony of soft fingertips on metal. “I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me that you aren’t afraid of the unknown.”

“I’m not sure it is unknown. You’re not empty , it’s just the opposite…” He’s embarrassed to hear the slight thrill in his voice as he comes to the realization in the moment, moreso when Baze turns to look at him with surprise. “A black hole isn’t empty, it’s so dense that it pulls everything in around it.”

“Am I pulling you in?”

“It’s like you said, isn’t it?” He reaches to tug Baze’s robe at his shoulder, feeling oddly off-balance as he leans over. “We’re pulling each other.”

“Towards what?”

“I – I don’t know. Each other, maybe. It was the will of the Force for us to meet, or we wouldn’t be here like this right now. Maybe it is a…particularly strong will. Like flowing wind or water…” He doesn’t realize he’s been leaning in closer to Baze until the other shifts away uncomfortably. He shakes his head but it only accentuates the dull throb sneaking up on him at his temples. “Perhaps one of the Masters could explain the phenomena,” he posits, trying to refocus, reaching to touch the kyber crystal in the altar to wash away the odd electricity zapping across his senses.

Baze says nothing for a moment – or maybe that’s just the aural equivalent of tunnel vision starting to narrow Chirrut’s focus – then asks softly, “Are you all right? You’re shaking.”

Chirrut presses his palms to his eyes. Why now ? “It’s too much,” he attempts to explain, voice trembling.

“What’s happening…? Imwe?” Baze’s voice pitches up just slightly, fear audibly gripping his throat. 

There was no blow this time, not even a screaming match to set him off – just overload , all at once, like being knocked down by a wave, and he’s already been pulled out too far by the tide to explain that to Baze. So instead he reaches for him in the Force, the best he can, even if his senses feel entirely unreliable, goes toward that fearful black hole instead of trying to swim away.

“Chirrut?” He feels Baze’s hand heavily on his shoulder, steadying him, and he braces himself mentally as much as physically. He’s on even ground again, but not for long. Something isn’t right – he can hear Baze’s footsteps but that doesn’t match his presence by his side. He reaches up to touch the hand at his shoulder to try to orient himself but it’s not there, and suddenly he feels dizzy and alone .

I am one with the Force, and the Force is with me. I am one with the Force, and the Force is with me. I am one with the Force, and the Force is with me…

–-

When Chirrut gets his senses back about him, he recognizes Master Dhava’s hands at his shoulders, giving him a gentle shake. “Chirrut? Chirrut, can you hear me?”

“Yes…yes, I think so.” He blinks as if awaking from a nap that had run on a bit too long. “Where’s Baze?”

“Here.” Gruff, plain, unmistakable, but at a careful distance in the doorway. “I thought something was really wrong, so I dashed to get Master Dhava, and he was already coming up the stairs.”

“I sensed…” Chirrut can almost hear the monk’s frown. “Something. A burst of energy. What happened, Chirrut?”

“Master…” He sighs shakily, wondering what he can say that won’t leave Baze feeling like he’s telling all their secrets. But Baze beats him to it.

“Forgive me but – we can both sense something strange happening, and I am sure you can too, Master.” The words are too formal for Baze’s rough voice, and they sound oddly shaped coming from his mouth. “Perhaps this assignment is not good for Imwe’s health.”

“No,” Chirrut objects instantly. “It’s not that, I’m sure of it.”

Dhava is silent for a long time, and Chirrut can feel his eyes on him, concerned of course, with a shadow of guilt that permeates Chirrut’s perception. “The will of the Force is complicated,” he says at long last. “And we cannot presume to understand it. We can only become one with its flow. Like the tides…” He lets out a low breath, looking between the two of them. “Like the tides to a moon, on some worlds.”

Baze hums, and Chirrut can only wonder what that means. Dhava’s words are just as intractable.

"Will it keep happening when we're close to each other?" Baze asks plainly, and Chirrut’s heart sinks further at the implications.

"I don't think separation is the answer here," Dhava says with more certainty than any of the three of them have voiced in what feels like an eternity. "In fact I think that may be more disorienting at this stage." The next pause is thicker, still certain but in a way that suddenly puts Chirrut ill at ease as quickly as it had brought comfort.

"This stage of what?" Chirut wonders why his voice sounds so deep for a moment before realizing it was Baze who had spoken in a perfect echo to his own thoughts. He may have teased Chirrut for his quickness to righteousness, but now his own strained voice seeks justice. "You can't hide what's happening from us, and I can't stay here if it's going to hurt him!"

"I don't know what's happening here either," Dhava barks back with startling harshness, desperation that reminds Chirrut somberly that these Masters, elders, have all the same limitations along with the benefits of a life spent primarily in the Temple that he has himself. "There are legends, rumors of things like this. But I have no desire to draw undue attention to you two and to this sanctuary by connecting too many stars in this constellation." He sighs and Chirrut hears him step toward the altar to replace a candle that had burned down. "There may be an answer in the galaxy, in the universe somewhere. But if it's with the Jedi, it's a useless treasure hunt at best ."

Chirrut pulls the words apart in his mind and tries to piece them back together more clearly, tries to look down into the cracks between them. Plenty of difficult truth resides there, he knows, but impatience gets the best of him as usual. "What do we do now?" He asks, more tiredly than he realizes he is in the moment, even as he feels Baze trying to sort out the implications too. THe other takes a meditative seat at his side again.

"I…I will spend more time in the archives here," Dhava answers with equal exhaustion. Chirrut can feel the weight of his guilt, but it seems rather like a fair burden to leave him with for now. "Perhaps reach out to a few trustworthy keepers of legends of the Whills. You two…You'll train as usual. Stay together when you can. Be cautious around the kyber sources – they enhance your abilities. And remain on the Temple grounds until I've created a new training plan for you."

Baze's hand brushes Chirrut’s wrist then, as it had while they sprinted through the city streets. It could have been an accident but, Chirrut senses, the flair of determined rebelliousness that comes with it does not feel coincidental. Their master must have felt it too, but whatever wisdom he does have would identify the feeling of an unstoppable force. Dhava is hardly out of earshot down the stairs when Baze boldly speaks again.

"We'll have to be creative about getting your staff, then." Chirrut turns to face him, mouth open but struck wordless – a rare occasion. "Or the crystal, or whatever is left."

“That–that’s all you have to say?”

Baze pauses a moment and Chirrut barely resists a smile at his soft hmmph of thought, and the way he can feel the other young man lean back casually next to him. “Yes, I think it is.”

“At least you thought about it,” Chirrut muses, daring to allow his amusement to slip into his voice. “I suppose that if trouble is going to find us anyway, a little streetfighting is a lateral move.”

“Maybe even an improvement,” Baze jokes – jokes! – and though the risk to Baze is no laughing matter, Chirrut finds something oddly comforting in the pure recklessness. “You have to avenge me if I die helping you, though. After all this nonsense, it’s fair, isn’t it?”

Chirrut smacks his arm without thinking. “Don’t say things like that,” he chuckles. “You have to go out in a blaze of glory so I don’t have to bother.”

“I do worry about you,” Baze adds after a long pause, through which Chirrut feels his gaze on him heavily. The words feel too weighty, too tired, like they’ve traveled too far from some other life where they’ve been earned. Chirrut’s stomach lurches a little even without the justification. “If this…pulling you to me keeps turning into dragging you down, I won’t stay.”

“Pulling each other,” he reminds him gently, reaching over to tug his sleeve. Further argument feels too tiring, and fruitless besides. “Both ways.”

Chirrut feels something in the intractable silence that he can’t quite place, but perhaps it’s just the way Baze is looking at him. “Then we’ll go together,” he says finally. “Wherever that is.”