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It’s Jyn who finds them the planet. They’re in a ship moving from one Rebel base to another, and Chirrut never does well in ships so he and Baze have been spending the grand majority of their time in their room discussing systems and planets while Baze tries to remember enough to sketch the star charts out on the other’s hand in a desperate attempt to show him where they are located. Chirrut keeps getting impatient and declaring that they are all in Empire space now and that he needs to feel the ground beneath his feet before he can make a decision. Baze isn’t sure whether he means the ground of the planet in question or just any ground anywhere, and asking the other man questions like that can turn into an endless cacophony of sighs when he’s in certain moods so it’s better not to approach it. Bodhi is somewhere, and Baze is trying hard not to get too concerned because Bodhi is a grown man who can do whatever he wants. Despite that knowledge, it can be difficult not to get worried about the big-hearted, frazzled pilot.
They have paused in their planetary talk for the moment, and Chirrut’s fingers tracing across his palm, smoothing away lines and massaging out strange little aches that gather there, are callused but still softer than they have any right to be considering the life they have led. Baze wonders if it’s because of the bacta that held them, suspended, for all that time, healing them from wounds that should have killed them on Scarif. When he has time to wonder about anything at all because Chirrut’s touches scream for him to pay attention to them. It has always been like that. They have known each other longer than a lot of the Rebels on this ship have lived, and Baze still thrills at every brush of skin. Once upon a time, when they were foolish and young and desperate, he worried that it would fade, that this was a temporary longing, a port in a storm and nothing else. That Chirrut would move on, that even his heart, which ached and longed for the other man in a way that he had never known possible, would eventually want to settle somewhere else.
But, no. There is no denying how integrally linked they are. In life and apparently beyond as well. The bacta confirmed that last fact for him, a truth that Baze had been running from ever since the temple crashed down around them, that the Force is a bright tie between them, that it will always bring them back together again. Somehow. He sighs, thinking of nothing, as Chirrut’s thumb moves down and then back up his palm, the pressure just enough.
Something hums in the air, a far off little voice singing, but Baze is not paying attention to it. Instead he is focusing on the liquid fire feeling of those fingers against his flesh, how they make him want to push his husband onto the bed and attack him with kisses, pull moans from his throat, make him forget that they are in a ship for a bit so he will stop being on edge, constantly tapping at the windows with the cane he finally started using because the echobox gets overwhelming when surrounded by so much metal.
“Jyn is coming,” Chirrut says, lifting his fingers from Baze’s hand with one final squeeze. “But I like that idea. Remind me later.”
Baze groans. For several reasons. It is mostly because he does not want to be bothered right now, not when they seem to have sunk into a state that is almost separate from the truth of their reality. A reality which is stark. They are without a home, seemingly without a purpose, trapped between decisions, but flush with hope. The have discussed the proposition that the Rebels presented them with, this inane idea to train Rebel soldiers in the fighting style of the Guardians. It makes no sense to either of them. Baze proclaimed it busy work, and Chirrut, less and more kind in the same breath, said it was an insult to them as it would not allow them to actually influence anything. After that encounter, the Rebels started asking where they could take them, which is why Baze has been drawing star charts on Chirrut’s skin, and his husband has been fussy about not being on ground.
He loves Jyn, and he is glad that she is on the ship with them, but Baze has to admit that she can be a bit much to deal with at times. Cassian is on the ship, too, but he has only seen him twice, fleetingly, a hint of a furred collar and the accented voice disappearing down hallways. Part of him wonders whether the man is avoiding them for some reason. Of all their Rogue One brethren, Bodhi has been the most constant companion. Bodhi who thinks himself irreparably broken, but who has already made such strides. Baze knows that it’s not just the meditation, not just the forms that Chirrut directs the both of them through in that strict master voice that gets a little distracting at times, but it’s also the stories that they tell of Jedha afterward. He and Chirrut will start, though their words overlap because their lives have always entwined, and somewhere along the way Bodhi will add in a detail, a story, a tradition, something he remembers. Sometimes it is just a scene, the way a certain dish filled the air of the marketplace with the scent of cardamom, but it is something. Every little thing is important, and it helps wipe away the abject helplessness that seeps from Bodhi’s pores sometimes.
The Rebels still have not given them weapons, and that grates against Baze’s nerves but less so with every passing day. He thinks it bothers Chirrut more to be without his staff than it concerns him that he no longer has to lug a heavy repeater cannon on his back, and he understands that. He would replace Chirrut’s staff in a heartbeat if he was able to, but it was a very carefully crafted weapon with kyber in it. The materials necessary to recreate it would be not only difficult to locate but expensive to pay for, and credits are not something they have much of either. It is the loss of his physical armor that hits Baze harder. After years of being cocooned in it, letting it define the front he presented to the world, he has to reexamine the man beneath, decide what he shows to the world more carefully now that they might be able to catch a truer glimpse of it. Chirrut prefers him without the armor, but he has always known that. Chirrut always hated not being able to press fingers to his chest and find his heartbeat easily, not being able to feel the warmth of skin under clothing. Even if Chirrut sneers at the quality of the Rebel clothing, the texture and the drape, Baze knows that he still prefers it on Baze to the flight suit and the plates although it took him a little time to learn where all the fastenings were.
Now that he is not distracted by Chirrut’s fingers on him, Baze can more fully appreciate the hum of Jyn’s kyber crystal as she navigates the ship, feel the push of it through the Force as it approaches. He twines his fingers together behind his head and leans against the wall, body stretched across the bed. Chirrut is sitting, almost primly, on the side as though to put up a false front that they were not about ten minutes away from completely disheveling each other. This he finds humorous because when they were initiates, it was always him who cared about them getting caught, and Chirrut who was more open about kisses in public alcoves, lingering touches in the garden, fond gazes everywhere. Baze wonders if the bacta healed them wrong, if their connection in the Force, the constant whisper of Chirrut to him in the blankness, the way he strained to reply, mixed things up a bit. But, no, it is probably just that Chirrut does not feel comfortable here. The temple, Jedha itself, was always home to him, even when it crumbled around his feet, even when it was taken by force. And Baze has always considered home to be Chirrut, has never needed anything but the presence of the other to find a little piece of solace.
Jyn enters the room like a sandstorm, wild hair and wilder eyes, too much energy pressed into such a small person. Even though she did it, got the plans, transmitted them, gave the Rebels a giant piece of the puzzle in defeating the Empire, her anger remains, a bright little flame that swirls around her. Baze wonders if she will ever calm down, if she will ever feel safe. He has offered to let her come and join them when they meditate, when they train with Bodhi, but the look he got spoke volumes. It’s not that Jyn doesn’t trust them, it’s that she doesn’t trust herself. She has no idea what will be left when all the layers of abandonment have been scrapped off so she just stays inside of them. Baze has lived that way, and he knows how protective it can seem, even if it also feels dead and isolated when lingered on for too long.
“They won’t give me a lightbow,” is the first thing out of her mouth as she stomps in, tosses herself into the nearest chair without really even seeming to check that it is still there, trusting that they have not rearranged the room in her absence. “I did manage to find some other clothes that you can go through and discard. Again.” All of this information is directed at Chirrut since he is the one who asks for things.
“The effort is appreciated, Jyn,” Chirrut says, all smiles and light for her and the kyber around her neck. “If they would just take a little more time with the manufacturing of the textiles, I think they would find that it lasts longer. And feels better. There’s an issue with the draping here.” His fingers are picking at the Rebel issued pants, and Jyn’s eyes are already starting to glaze over because everyone on the ship probably has this discourse memorized by now.
Baze considers letting the conversation continue this way just to see how long it takes Jyn to figure out something she can do, something she can say to justify leaving the room in a hurry. The face that she sat when she entered the room means that she came in for a reason other than to deliver clothes and news about light bows. There is something else in her face, but she is being polite to Chirrut by letting him complain. Jyn is always the most polite to Chirrut who uses this to his advantage in every way he can because it amuses him.
“How is your leg?” Baze asks, tipping his head toward Jyn to indicate that this is for her, and to ignore the old man who will prattle on for hours about clothing if allowed, a subject that Baze never even knew meant so much to him until years ago when he brought him that piece of red silk. It was a gift for both of them as much something to please Chirrut as it was a way for Baze to be able to identify him at a glance from far away. A splash of red against all the black. And, yes, it never escaped his notice. Red the color of blood. Red the color of war. Red the color of fires that had burned their city around them. Perhaps that was why he chose it, hoping that in draping Chirrut in it preemptively, he could prevent it from coming to pass.
These days, he does not want Chirrut in red. He is glad that flickering piece of cloth was destroyed and that nothing the Rebels bring to them is any match for it.
Jyn rolls her eyes, a common gesture, and crosses her arms over her chest. She moves as much as Chirrut used to when they were young, a spiraling little tornado that never settled. “Aches in the morning. Aches when it rains. Aches in the cold. Aches. But it works.”
The mention of cold reminds Baze of Hoth, how much the chill would seep into every bit of his body and make the hurts stand out, infernally bright, when he moved. “You should come train with us. It will help your leg,” Chirrut comments, and Baze glances at him fondly. Chirrut’s eyes are trained, unwaveringly, on Jyn. It’s the kyber that draws him. Baze hears it, murmuring low like water over rocks in a stream, but it is just there, a lurking. It does not blaze or demand attention. Not like Chirrut who, even blind, wants to be near everything that shimmers. Like the boy with the Force that they never got to properly talk to on Hoth.
“Can’t. Busy,” Jyn bites out. She whirls through life like Chirrut, reckless and dangerous, but she speaks in clipped taciturn phrases like Baze often does. It makes him smile.
“What are you busy with, little sister?” There are Rebel plans that they are not privy to because they are not officially allied. Right now they are heroes of the Rebellion who just happen to be wasting time on their ships while they try and figure out what to do with them. The other heroes, after all, have jumped in with both feet. It’s only the former Guardians who pose this problem, who are standing too firmly on old ground that does not matter anymore to be of any actual use to these people, who will not play along with it.
Something changes in her posture as she leans forward, hands threaded together, and Jyn is looking at the floor. Jyn Erso who can seemingly face down planets full of Stormtroopers is currently not looking at them. Baze can sense that Chirrut is considering breaking the silence, and places a hand, gently, on his knee. This is something they will let Jyn do because it is good for her in much the same way that they let Bodhi talk in ways that make no sense until the pieces come back together. She shakes the hair back, out of her eyes, and looks at Chirrut rather than Baze. Baze wonders if it is because Chirrut cannot properly return the gaze. “I think I’ve found you a planet.”
That gets both of their attention. Baze moves forward, no longer stretched out in lazy contemplation, but completely focused, while Chirrut just turns his head toward Baze, away from the siren’s call of the kyber in that instant, hand finding his husband’s with no trouble. “What?” The question comes from Baze even if it thrums through both of them to the point that he isn’t sure who does speak until he hears his own voice.
Jyn still doesn’t look at him. “There’s this rock in wild space, and I think it might work.” She twists her hands together, those hands which are as scarred and callused as the hands of any warrior Baze has ever known though so much smaller, and finally looks up at him, askance, almost as if she is worried. About disappointing him. Baze knows that Jyn’s family has been a long line of absences, and that kind of history has an impact on a person. It’s hard to know when footing is firm when you keep expecting it to be pulled out from under you. She does not want to disappoint them, she wants to help them, and in the same breath, conflicting, she does not want to lose them. Not even to this rock she tells them about.
“Wild space is notoriously dangerous, is it not?” Chirrut is not wrong in his question. At least not from what Baze knows, but then he never went there. The jobs that he took were never actually all that far from Jedha, from Chirrut. Even separated he could not seem to make himself go too far from his husband’s orbit, and there was enough work close by that he never needed to.
“What isn’t dangerous?” Jyn asks in a tone that says she is a girl who has never known anything else. Baze wishes there was a way to change that, but every hand they hold out is viewed with suspicion. He will not stop offering the hand, but he cannot force Jyn to decide to take it, either. “Anyway. No one goes to this one. Apparently it’s haunted.” The word is said in the way that Baze talked about the Force in that long, seemingly never-ending span of time when his faith gave out, gutted and raw, wanting so hard to disbelieve that you talk yourself into thinking that you don’t. It makes him wonder what ghosts Jyn has convinced herself she has not seen.
Chirrut is practically radiating from this news, Baze can tell, and he knows why. There were texts in the temple, old stories about the Jedi and the Force, about how energy and life in the Force never really fades away, how it lingers and can impact the world of the physical, especially for those who are sensitive to its workings. Like Chirrut. Like himself, Baze supposes, though he has never wanted the bits and pieces of the larger picture that his husband does, when he has allowed himself to feel, he has always just been content with running his fingers down the connection between them, as lovely to him as any patch of skin on Chirrut’s toned body.
Baze waits for Chirrut to ask questions, but he does not. Instead his eyes, bright behind the film, are focused on him, and Baze sighs, the sound loud in the suddenly quiet room because even Jyn has stopped her almost constant resettling. The only other noise is that Force hum, that lilting singing of the kyber crystal. “What do you know about it?”
Jyn straightens up as though set into motion by the fact that they have not simply brushed off her words, laughed at her and called her a child or something equally as upsetting. Yes, they are old. It would be easy to consider youth foolish simply for their lack of years, but Baze probably remembers more keenly than almost anyone what it was like to be young, full of vigor and a sense of being able to conquer the world. He remembers because that blisteringly infuriating part of Chirrut never ceased to be even if the man did learn some things over the course of years, like patience, even if fine lines did gather like bird’s wings at the corners of his eyes and mouth. Baze can never look at Chirrut and not recall exactly what they were like in their twenties, how they would have taken on the whole wide galaxy.
“Not a lot. Like I said, people won’t go there.” Jyn reaches for the bag she brought with her, pushes through the wadded pieces of fabric scavenged for Chirrut, the sound of which makes him click his tongue at her because even if he is going to reject every single one of them she should still respect them, to pull out an old datapad that Baze is surprised still works. “Details are on there,” she explains, holding it out to him, and dumping the fabric on the floor with the other hand.
Baze takes the datapad and sets it to the side to examine later so that he can read the text aloud to Chirrut. They have a tradition when it comes to reading to each other that stretches back into their initiate days. It is not something that they have been able to indulge in much recently, and Baze is not going to throw it aside just because Chirrut is currently tapping him insistently on the side of his foot with his cane. “Later. You’ll thank me,” he tells his husband who sighs and then turns his attention back to Jyn.
“You’ll tell me what you know, won’t you, Jyn?” And Chirrut turns the smile on, the one that exposes all of his teeth and his gums, the one that makes his eyes shine. The smile that Baze has never seen anyone refuse.
Jyn looks trapped for a moment, eyes darting to the door like she is just waiting for a reason to escape now that she has delivered all of her news. There’s a flicker of a moment when Baze wonders if she has spoken to Cassian on the ship, but he will not ask that. It is not his place to meddle, and fortunately Chirrut is distracted by other things at present. Some of the tension drains off as Jyn scoots forward on the chair and busies herself with closing her pack. “Not a lot. I didn’t read all the information,” she inclines her head toward the datapad instinctively and without thinking about how this will not benefit Chirrut. “There’s a lot on there. I just looked at the recent details. I don’t know how old they are. I don’t know if they’re right. But I thought it was something, a place to start.” She stops fidgeting and looks at them one at a time, though her eyes, as always, linger more on Chirrut. “Since you two don’t seem to be able to agree on somewhere.”
Baze inclines his head incrementally towards Chirrut as though to indicate who the problem has been in the conversation, and the cane raps, less gingerly, against his foot again. The movements bring a smile to Jyn’s face, which is more than enough recompense for the slight sting. “It’s an important decision, and I do not appreciate being rushed. Also I’m not sure how I’m expected to sign off on a place that I have never felt. What if we get there and the Force is all wrong? There is a reason NiJedha was a holy city that had nothing to do with the temple or even with the kyber. It was just a current of the Force that lined up properly with it.” Then he pauses to tilt his head slightly before adding in as serious a voice as the rest, “What if it is terribly humid and Baze’s hair becomes unmanageable?”
Jyn laughs. An actual laugh that is full of unrestrained glee for a handful of seconds, and even though Baze glares at Chirrut, he says nothing because her laughter is worth more than his pride. Then he decides to try and add to the crescendo of humor, keep the energy high. “Then you will have to learn to tame it.” Which works because Jyn continues giggling. It lets Baze see her as young as she is for once despite how heavy her life weighs on her soul. Also it makes the kyber crystal’s song intensify to almost a bellow. It helps cement the fact to him that their life entrenched in war is over. They have lived too long to linger beneath the snapping folds of its flag. The sound of Jyn’s laughter, the way that they have been helping Bodhi slowly come back to himself, all of this is better than any modicum of revenge that he could eke out against the Empire for what they did to the temple.
The best way to counter destruction then is not to wage war against it, but to create something, to plant seeds in the razed land.
“Anyway,” Jyn says, her tone going back to business as usual so quickly, as though she has swallowed all of her mirth, afraid to let it out, to make her seem weak. Baze would like to tell her that there is too much steel in her spirit for her to ever be weak, he would like to fold her into his arms and tell her that it is okay not to hold herself up all the time, but he does neither because he will not hurt her pride like that, and he is sure that it would. “I don’t know anything about any of that. The energy or the weather. Well. That’s not true. I looked at the weather a little. It’s temperate. Not too close to the system’s sun, not too far. It rains, it snows. Not like Eadu or Hoth though.” The way she says the names of those planets says everything.
“Is there sand?” Chirrut asks, and Baze holds his breath. Sand used to mean Jedha. Jedha with its winds and chill. Jedha with its kyber. Jedha with its busy marketplace and the voices of many rising and falling like a symphony. Sand used to mean home. Now sand sticks in Baze’s mind and in his throat, now it makes him think of Scarif, the memory that rises, unbidden and unwanted, is of Chirrut, falling, fallen, broken, dead. A thing that did not come to pass despite the fact that he saw it.
Baze is not sure he can suffer to choke on more sand in whatever amount of life he has left.
Jyn’s eyes cut to him as though she can hear what he is thinking, and Chirrut has stilled, fingers tapping out a message only discernible to Baze on his knee, that it is okay, that they are here. There is a beat where it almost seems like Jyn is waiting for them to finish their silent discourse before saying, “There are rock beaches. No sand.” And he thinks that perhaps she has come further than he gives her credit for because that is the kind of detail one would need to be looking for in order to find in a report.
“Rock beaches,” Chirrut repeats, and the only way to describe the tone behind that combination of words in his mouth is awe. Jyn has not only found them a place that seems like it might be devoid of sand, but also one with new things that Baze can show to Chirrut, which is really all that he wants. And if Chirrut is delighted in just the idea of the thing, he cannot wait to see his face when they are there, when he describes it to him, presses stones into his waiting hands, feels him discover it through the Force. Suddenly Baze is very enamored of this planet, haunted or not, stuck in a stretch of dangerous space or not. They are men who have lived through dangerous things, after all. They are men who have seen beauty rise from wastelands, and second chances spill through where they have no right to belong at all.
“Does it have a designation?” Baze asks because even though Jyn does not look uncomfortable, there is that sense to her, that she isn’t quite sure what to do with herself or her hands or her gaze. It seems like quiet moments are tense moments for Jyn, and Baze does not like to think too long on what the reason for this might be because it is something he cannot fix for her. All he can do is give her tools, and only if she lets him. So far, though, Jyn refuses to hold onto anything they pass, lets them all drop, forgotten, onto the ground.
Her answer is not immediate as she rolls her shoulders and cracks her knuckles. Then she looks up at him, mouth stretched into something that is almost an actual smile but still seems more than a little harsh. “Nothing official. Not that I saw although it might be buried in all the text. Currently there’s just a designation, which I don’t remember.”
Baze doesn’t blame her there. Planet designations do not exactly roll off the tongue like poetry or lodge in the mind like songs. They are much heavier, possess very little finesse. It doesn’t really matter to him what it’s called if it works out, which they have no guarantee about one way or the other. Still it is nice to have an option, nicer still that it was Jyn who brought it to them.
The visit appears to be at a close as Jyn stands, brushes her hands off on the legs of her pants and gathers the empty pack. The strewn pile of cloth by the base of the chair will be gone through, tediously and with much complaining, by Chirrut later, and then Baze will return the discarded items to one of the Rebels who will likely say nothing. So many of them just stare at him, as though unsure what he is capable of. He wonders if they will always consider them rogues, Chirrut and himself. It does not bother him. People have thought worse things about him over the years, some of which have even been true.
“Thank you, Jyn,” Chirrut says, turning his head back to her.
“Just something I found while I was working on other things. Don’t think twice about it.” Said like someone who is not used to reaching a hand out to others, like someone who is even less used to them reaching back. Then she pauses, shifts her weight before she looks back at them, and this time her eyes are on Baze before she averts her glance to the ground. “I mean, you guys could call it,” and then she mispronounces a word in Jedhan so badly that he barely manages to understand it.
Until he does. Hope. The Jedhan word for hope. It is absolutely sentimental and too much. It is too much, and it makes his heart clench. Not just the fact that Jyn would suggest it, but that Jyn would stand there, pride obviously in her throat, and suggest that name in their language after bringing them this gift. Jyn who knows how much hope can cost, hope much it almost cost them all, but how important it can be.
Baze does not even need the prodding of the cane against his foot to stand and cross the room, enclosing her in his arms before she can react. There’s a moment when he expects her to dart or hit him as soundly as he has seen her maim people with her baton because every fiber of her locks up in his embrace. But it passes, and she almost sags into it. Baze wonders how long it has been since Jyn Erso was held, since she was comforted. He places a hand on the back of her head, and it seems terribly small and fragile in his palm. “Thank you, little sister,” he says, and his voice is wet at the back, thick and heavy with the rush of emotion. He tries to tame it, temper it, because he is sure that between the kyber crystal in the room and the rush along the string between them that Chirrut is probably getting more than a little overwhelmed by the eddies of energy in the room.
“Who taught you the word?” It is Chirrut who asks, and Baze must be right about the energy because his husband’s voice sounds strained in the way that means he is struggling back to the surface although it is tinged with happiness, gratitude, as well.
In an attempt to make it easier, Baze steps back, ignores the fact that there is a moment where Jyn seems to panic about losing the reassurance. He puts space between himself and the crystal, he takes deep breaths, repeats the mantra in his mind, evens himself out in order to reduce the pressure on Chirrut.
Jyn clears her throat, takes a moment to gather herself back together, and then looks at Chirrut. One of her hands is settled over her shirt, and Baze is positive that the necklace is under there. Maybe her gesture is an attempt to dampen it, but Baze knows it will not help. Still, though, the fact that she tries means so much. “Bodhi,” she says with a shrug, and it is no surprise at all. “I have to go.” She doesn’t even wait for them to respond before turning on her heel and walking crisply out of the room, the door sliding solidly shut behind her.
Chirrut stretches a hand out into the air, searching, and Baze takes it in one smooth motion, no hesitation; there is never any hesitation when it comes to Chirrut.. The other he places on Chirrut’s chest, feels his heart through the layers of fabric, how quickly it beats. It would be easy to slip into prayer, use meditation to calm them both, but there is another ripple to the emotion, another path. Baze chooses to follow that one instead. He leans in to kiss Chirrut, and it is young, hopeful, perhaps a little too harsh, but it draws a long sigh that makes it hard to think of anything at all. When Chirrut’s fingers twine into his hair and tug, he moans, and lets his husband use their combined hands to pull him onto the bed and closer. They fall into each other, spiral, chase that Force thread that binds them infinitely, tightly.
In the afterglow, with Chirrut’s ear pressed against his chest, Baze reads the information on the datapad aloud and each word is another buoy of hope.