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Baze finds Jyn easily enough; all he has to do is follow the yelling. This is not particularly fair to Jyn as it’s not just her making the noise. The hanger where the pilots and the mechanics flock, whether it is just to talk or to work on the ships, is noisy in general. It is full of shouting and curses in a handful of languages, banter yelled from one side of the room to the other, the continuous whirring and beeps of all the droids who barely budge from the sides of their pilots. Everything echoes off the metal, and the high ceiling, the open space, gives the entire area a strange feeling, like it is a small, safe shell nestled in the heart of the freighter, like nothing can touch them even though they stand inside of and around machines of war. For a few moments, as he lingers outside the door, listening, Baze can hear how young so many of these people are, how bright and buoyant. In another world, in another life, they would have better. They deserve so much better than this, this war in which the Empire builds a machine that can destroy an entire planet at the touch of a button just because someone disagrees with them and their dictatorship.
The universe is not a fair place, Baze knows, and he has seen it in action more times than he likes to think about because all of them hurt. The Force is not fair, he knows. He ran from it for awhile, that truth, as ugly as any scar across his body, as painful as any wound. Yet, if he could, he would make the universe fair for these children who shout and carry on as much as any of those who inhabited the streets of NiJedha, the ones that he ran with as a young boy, the ones that he protected as he got older. Even though he knows that the path of trying to wield the Force is not one he can walk, for many reasons, he thinks that if it was possible to change the world for these sparks struggling their way out of the darkness, he would. He would make it so that they could blossom, full blown, in the air, flowers, stars, suns. None of their potential would be wasted in the clash of blaster fire against metal, ship fighting ship to a fiery, uneventful, early end.
He has to take a breath and center himself, push the thoughts away. Locking things up is getting harder, and there are many reasons for this change. It’s the freedom from the weight of his armor, his gun, and all the deaths that both those things represented, though he will never be able to get too far from the memories of what he has done. Also it is his willingness to accept the Force again, the renewed meditation that he slips into easier and easier each day, as warm and welcoming as water. And it is the fact that he is finally learning to forgive himself, a task that has always been his greatest struggle, one he normally hands over to Chirrut who has and would forgive him everything even though he clicks his tongue disapprovingly at the fact that Baze will never completely unwind the knots of his deeds from his own heart.
When he finally steps into the room and starts to make his way over to Jyn, Baze attempts to not pay any attention to the heads that turn to look at him, the suddenly whispered words that stand out harsh and stark against the backdrop of so much noise. The days of caring what others think of him were left in the dust of the ruins of the Temple of the Whills. At least that was what he thought. As each day with the Rebels passes, he finds that he cares, more and more, about how others see him. Especially when it comes to those he is close to even if that is just a handful of people. The Rebel leaders have the kind of long, drawn out plans that he has never liked, they weigh people as gains and losses in their war. Baze prefers the Rebels like those in this hanger, the ones who came to stand on the shores of Scarif with them, the ones who died because it was the right thing to do even though the calculated risk had initially been considered too high to bother. He wants these people to know that he respects them, and he wants their respect in kind.
Most of the murmurs that he catches are in Basic and carry no dark undercurrent, whispers about where Chirrut is predominate, and he realizes that since they woke from the bacta, they have been nigh inseparable. Always close in the past, always bound, now they hover around each other like doting, lovesick birds, and the current instance of their separation seems to run a knife of concern through the crowd around him. The press of it in the Force is almost enough to compel Baze into saying something, though he isn’t quite sure what or how it would be perceived. As a whole, the Rebels believe in the Force the way that most people in the midst of war believe in the unseen, waiting for proof, and Baze has nothing tangible to give them and never will.
Jyn is working on a ship, hanging precariously upside down by her knees, face turned to the inner workings exposed by a lifted panel. There is dirt and engine oil all over her clothes and face, but she is smiling in a way that Baze has not often seen, her voice tinged with some accent he does not recognize. Baze wonders, in that moment before she catches sight of him, what lives Jyn has managed to filter through during her scant years in the universe, how she has managed to hide herself under different names, different backgrounds so as not to be Galen Erso’s lost child, the daughter that Saw Gerrera left behind. How many faces can she pull off before getting to her own?
Chirrut once called her a variegated pattern in the Force, which is a code that Baze knows well. He is, himself, a variegated pattern in the Force, having shifted through many lives, many roles, many colors, some of which he is prouder of than others. So it did not surprise him when his husband made the same assessment of Jyn as they sat together in that ship that carried them away from Jedha. Baze had expected Chirrut to fade into meditation or grow quiet, mourning the loss of their city, their world together, but his husband had spent the time noting the quirks and the shifts of the Force around their companions, speaking softly of those impressions to Baze during the flight, each word in Jedhan, heavy and purposeful as though Chirrut was afraid of their language disappearing as readily from his tongue as their city had been razed. Later they had both fallen apart in each other, but during that ride, Chirrut had painted the only kind of landscape that was left to him, and Baze had allowed him to do so even though they were both playing at the idea that Baze had no use for the Force then.
Baze clears his throat, and Jyn glances over, her face brightening even more when she catches sight of him. Considering the injuries that she sustained, the damage to her leg, Baze wants to chide her for hanging upside down the way she is, for not being more careful. Even with the harness he can see supporting her, it seems like a risk that should not be taken. He tries to remember that these people, as much as he wants them to be, are not entirely his to care for, have not granted him that responsibility. So he keeps his mouth shut, and trusts that Jyn will not be able to see the concern flooding through his eyes, or will at least not call him out on it if she takes notice.
There’s a long, strange moment where neither of them seem to know how to acknowledge the other until Jyn breaks it. “Where’s Chirrut?”
The question almost makes him laugh not only because it betrays the fact that Jyn is more comfortable with the other, who will gladly fill empty air with chatter when he knows it is necessary, but also because it echoes the sentiments of the people he passed in the hanger. “Meditating with Bodhi.”
Jyn makes a noise that reminds him of himself and looks back at the twists of wires. “Give me a hand with this then.” It is not a question, and Baze respects that. Respects that Jyn takes the step to acknowledge that he has obviously come here for a reason and presents him with a cover. On the outside, Jyn seems spiky, forlorn, the type of thing that, if found in the desert, one might leave on the sand instead of picking it up to tuck into a pocket, but she is not this through and through. If she were, there never would have been a Scarif for them to nearly, almost, basically die on.
Without Jyn, hope would not shine as bright in the Force as it does now. Baze cannot see much, but even he can see that.
Ships, as Jyn soon discovers and as Baze could have told her had she asked, are not his forte. Baze knows weapons and the rudimentary electronics in the echo boxes that Chirrut has used over the years, cannibalized and patched together bits of scrap they made work out of desperation--and the will of the Force according to Chirrut--as much as skill. When it comes to the more complex system in front of him, he feels like an initiate scrabbling through books, trying to learn everything as quickly as possible and then tripping himself up because he has reached too far too fast. He bites back a curse in Jedhan as something sparks, singeing the tips of his fingers, which he pulls away, resisting the urge to put them in his mouth the way an injured child might. In that moment, the first for him as complaining about the lost trappings of their former lives is normally Chirrut’s role, he wishes for his gloves back. The Rebels have gloves, of course, but a lot of them do not fit the spread of his hand properly, and none of them move the way he is used to. Or, perhaps, he is just an old man who wants his things back and cannot be happy with what he is given.
It is obvious that Jyn is getting annoyed, and he knows that she is used to working with people like Bodhi and Cassian, the other pilots, people who have the same basic knowledge that she does. Baze, who has always liked to learn new things, but at his own pace, slow, steady, not frenetic the way that Chirrut does, is also starting to feel the twist of dark frustration at the base of his skull so he is pleased when Jyn pulls herself up and suggests that they take a break.
He huffs, pushing up from the spot he made for himself, and clambers down to the ground, swiping at strands of hair that have, once again, made their way into his field of vision. “How about I get us some caf?” Perhaps then it will be easier to bring up the real reason that he has made his way down here today, which he has deftly been avoiding because he is unsure how to broach the subject, but it should be done soon. While he asked Chirrut to keep Bodhi occupied until he returned, the younger man is likely to think something is amiss if he takes too long in rejoining them or if Chirrut’s antics become especially interesting. Then Bodhi and possibly Chirrut will find them, and nothing will be resolved because Baze doubts that Jyn will have this conversation in front of an attentive audience. The hanger, while full, offers its own brand of privacy. There are so many conversations being spun around them that they all settle into a white noise that offers the chance to say things without fear of them being recognized.
Baze flounders in these types of situations; he is not the sort to settle down for a long heart to heart, especially with anyone other than Chirrut, but sitting together and talking over drinks companionably is something that he knows, and so he reaches for that, hopes it might make it all easier. He remembers afternoons spent in the courtyard of the temple with Chirrut, both of them bent over cups of steaming tea, talking about lessons, and then their voices falling in pitch as they whispered about each other, murmuring together like that until the stars broke through the sky, until the tea grew cold, until the only points of warmth were each other. And other nights, after the fall of the temple, spent huddled together around the smallest table in NiJedha, voices just as low as they had been when they were boys, muttering love and loss over yet more cups of cooling tea. Yes, Baze has a soft spot for sitting and drinking and talking. Something about the gentle warmth of the cup in his hands and then that warmth suffusing his body makes him more pliant, frees something in his throat and his mind so that words will come. He wonders if it will be the same for Jyn or if this will be another battle. Either way is fine. He is married to the strongest will he has ever known, after all, so dealing with one more will not break him.
As he turns away, Jyn says something in Jedhan that makes Baze stop and look back at her, one eyebrow quirked curiously, because he is certain she has no idea what she has just said. “What?” she asks, eyes on his face, and it seems like there is a touch of panic in the way she sets her mouth. “What did I say?”
“Who taught you that?” His tone is gentle, the start of a smile tugging the corners of his lips up.
Jyn still looks confused and a little concerned, as though she is debating whether or not this is worth the trouble. Baze thinks that she spends so much time convincing herself that she no longer has to run that she misses the deep care they all have for her. When she answers, her voice is light, flippant, though that in and of itself seems forced. “I heard Chirrut say it. Did I pronounce it wrong? What does it mean?”
This information does not surprise him, and Baze laughs, even closing his eyes for a moment as he allows the wave of fondness to wash over him. Not just for Chirrut, but also for this scrap of a girl in front of him, trying so hard to bare her teeth in anger at everyone around her, but softening in turn when kindness is shown. “Old fool,” he finally translates and watches how this new understanding ripples over her face, shock that melts into embarrassment and then almost fury at having been had.
“What?” she sputters but continues before Baze can answer. “Why? He says that after you do things for him. I assumed it was thank you. He said that after you shot a trooper who was aiming at him in the head.”
Jyn’s tone pitches up with her volume as she speaks, trying to wrap her head around the situation, and Baze has to cover his face with a hand, pretending to stroke his fingers over his beard, in order to hide his smile. Once he has smoothed the mirth out of his features, he crosses his arms over his chest again. “Yes, well, Chirrut has other ways to thank me.” Most of them involve lips pressed against skin when they are alone, but Jyn most decidedly does not need to know about that. “It has become a term of endearment more than anything. So your intention is not misplaced, little sister.”
When Jyn doesn’t say anything, just continues to sit there with her eyes too big for her face and her teeth clenched together in a way that Baze wants to warn her will make her jaw ache but doesn’t because it’s not his place, he makes a move to leave the hanger again. The mess is not far, and he still thinks the caf is a good idea. He hasn’t managed to get more than two steps away before she says something.
“Why?”
Baze turns to look at her, sitting there on the ship, knees drawn up to her chest, face smudged. Jyn looks small, childlike, like a hole has been blown open in her somewhere, and he decides that caf can wait no matter how much he would like to have the solidity of it there, the reassurance. “Why call me old fool?” he asks, settling with his back against the ship. It allows him to look at her askance instead of full on, and he has found that sometimes this calms skittish people. He remembers children who came to the temple, young, too young to really understand what the temple meant, what the life there meant, but they flocked to it because it was safe, and the way they would flinch under scrutiny or if hands got too close without warning. The masters taught them to treat those children carefully, like wounded kyber, where too much pressure applied to the wrong place would shatter them. “I have a year on him, and he thinks he’s clever. Nothing more.”
Jyn makes a sound that is half hum and half something a little more like a huff of air, an annoyed but understanding sound. Chirrut was right about Cassian walking caged, but Baze thinks maybe his husband missed the war that rages in the heart of Jyn. His husband gets distracted by the kyber she wears. It sings too loud and too sweetly to him, but Baze’s senses are weaker, and he can sidestep its siren song easier.
They sit in silence for a beat, each waiting for the other to start, and Baze realizes that if he lets it continue on this way, they might remain like this well into the night. “About Cassian,” he starts, not completely sure where he will go after that. Baze is not in the habit of mending other people’s relationships or speaking of them at all. This is an area that Chirrut is better at navigating, but Jyn tends to linger in crowded spaces, sticking to the throng so that she doesn’t stand out too much. The hanger bustles with too many people, too much energy for Chirrut, and Jyn hasn’t made an appearance in their quarters since telling them about the planet, probably fearing this exact conversation after what happened in the mess.
“What’s the Force like?” she interrupts him, steering the conversation down a completely different course before Baze can properly react.
Instead of shoving things back to where they were, Baze scrubs a hand over his face as he considers how to answer. “That is a very broad question.” His words are slow and precise, his Basic careful as it always is because his accent stains all the words. In his mind, they are the color of the Jedhan sand. “The Force is a different experience for everyone. You could come join us for meditation tomorrow. Chirrut would enjoy that. We have not seen you much lately.” It is not his intention to try and guilt her with the suggestion, and he does not even consider that it sounds like that until it is out of his mouth.
If it bothers her, Jyn does not show it. “Things are busy. Ships to work on,” she counters. Baze thinks that he would like to see Jyn spar with Chirrut. He knows that she is fast on her feet, deadly with her baton, but he wonders if she can block strikes as easily as she blocks words. “Speaking of, we could work on your ship a lot faster if you didn’t steal Bodhi from me for hours at a time.”
Baze chuckles, patient and slow, unwilling to rise to what Jyn leaves hovering there. “Bodhi is free to come and go as he pleases, but I can hasten Chirrut a little.” They both know that his husband has the tendency to ramble on, especially now that he is sinking, companionably, back into the Force. He loves talking to Bodhi about it, who is all big eyes and listening ears and questions. Baze likes watching them interact because the conversations, the stories, the chants, quiet Bodhi, they bring his memories back, little slices here and there. And, yes, sometimes they are not good memories, and sometimes he cries, but that is also part of putting a person back together.
Jyn is picking at the cuff of her pants, hands always liking action. “No, it’s good for him.” They fall into another silence, though Baze thinks it is less tense than some of the others. “What about to you?”
“Hmmm?” he asks, looking over at her to catch her eyes fully. “I’m sorry?” Although he thinks that he knows what she means it is always best to have people repeat things to make sure when dealing with Basic and indirect questions. That and Jyn can talk the way that Chirrut does, in loops and spirals, so he wants to make sure they are on the right page before he says something he should not.
“What’s the Force like for you?” When she speaks, she drops her eyes as though worried that they might give her away, and Baze smiles softly, sadly, at the top of her head, the shoulders sagged under so much worry, so much running. He knows what shoulders like that feel like.
The question is unexpected but not unwelcome. Baze clambers back onto the ship to sit because he is old and his body complains about standing on hard metal floors. Sitting on the ship is not much better, but at least this affords his feet something of a break. He wonders about the best way to tell her because the answer is long and short, simple and complicated, it is all the words in his head and the one in his heart. Sometimes they all run together to the point that he cannot untangle them. In the end, though, he goes with easy because that is always on the tip of his tongue, and he has trouble explaining the depth and breadth of the other answer in anything but Jedhan, which has words and meanings built expressly for the Temple of the Whills and its Guardians. “Chirrut,” he says after a moment, voice wistful and soft. “The Force is a lot of things, has been a lot of things over the years, Jyn, but mostly it is Chirrut.”
“Isn’t that problematic?”
Baze spreads his hands in a gesture of affectionate defeat. “You have met Chirrut.”
Jyn makes a noise in the back of her throat like someone who is patently disappointed or misunderstood. “No,” she says forcefully and pushes a hand through her hair. “I mean, what happens if you lose him? Then it’s just gone too, the Force?”
This conversation as it turns out is not what he had initially thought it was, which is true of a lot of situations. All he can do in the face of it is attempt to be light on his feet and handle it well. He wishes, again, that this was a task Chirrut had taken to hand. “I might have made it too simple. He is,” Baze presses his lips together, trying to figure out how to explain how love and the Force and Chirrut have all wrapped themselves up together in his mind, his heart, his soul.
Eventually, he reaches for a parable that they used with some of the younger initiates because it is simpler than trying to parse so many years of a life, of a faith, of a love to her. “The Force is like an ocean. It is big and deep and everything is contained in it. We are but shells in this ocean. Sometimes shells come together and sometimes they drift apart. Even if they are destroyed, they do not cease to exist. When he,” Baze cannot physically form the next word so he tries a different tact. “In the bacta, I could feel him in the Force. Even when I thought our shells had been destroyed, even when I thought I was swept away by the ocean, I could feel him there in it with me. That never faded.”
“And what if he just left you? What if he just stayed here with us while you start the temple? Would he still be the Force for you then?” Jyn’s voice is steely cold and quiet, it has all the edges of ice on Hoth, all the chill of the rain on Eadu, and the bite of the wind on Jedha. Jyn has taken all the harsh fragments of the worlds she had moved through and built them into her body.
Baze wishes he could have shown her the temple courtyard, the garden, the kyber caves. He wishes he could have shown her rain on Jedha, when it fell warm and bountiful, the way the sun would rise. He wishes he could have tugged her beside them when he and Chirrut played in the snow on Hoth. Somehow Jyn has managed to skip over all the light things, has let their impact slide off of her instead of harboring them in the corners of herself, small victories to linger and impart sweetness after the moment has gone. Baze wishes he could strike that away, that he could show her why it is just as useful to recollect a field of flowers as it is a moment of betrayal.
“Jyn,” he starts, and moves so that he is closer to her, close enough to settle a hand on her shoulder, covering it completely because she is small and jagged, small enough sometimes to fit in the palm of his hand, which is where he would keep her safe if she would let him, if she were his child to hold. “Open hands catch the waves better than closed.”
She drops her head forward, and he thinks he hears a growl catch in her throat.
In his mind, he hears the click of Chirrut’s tongue against the roof of his mouth, the small shake of the head his husband uses when he is disappointed. Baze is not handling this well. He is talking in images and tricks again, in the teachings of the Whills instead of the solidness of the everyday. This cannot be helped. His entire life, he has always had either too many words or too few, and the too many have often been taken straight from one holy text or another. Chirrut used to tell Baze that initiates loved his sermons because it gave them more time to sleep in the morning while he waxed poetic. Jyn does not need poetic; it is too soft for her and will simply be torn to shreds before she can see the point in it.
He sighs and scrubs the hand not on her shoulder over his face. “Chirrut is free to do as he pleases. It would not diminish my love for him, or how much I believe in him. We would just not physically be together. We have weathered such storms before.” Would it hurt him if Chirrut decided to do as she has suggested? Of course it would. It would be like pouring molten metal over his skin, but he would survive it. They have made an assortment of promises to each other over the years, and one of those was that they are free to choose their own actions. Baze has followed Chirrut for almost his entire life because he chose it, because when he weighed everything that there was, that was the thing that made the most sense. Chirrut has always contained a sense of purpose that Baze does not. Until now. Now Baze feels that drive, and he hopes that Chirrut continues to choose to follow him in it.
This, though, is not the point that he thinks Jyn is trying to make. He does not think that she is trying to protect him from being hurt in this fabricated scenario of Chirrut suddenly deciding to side with the Rebels. Rebels whose food he detests and whose clothes he sometimes simply will not wear such that Baze opens the door to find his nude husband stretched across the cot or just meditating on the ground like he is in a bath house.
“Jyn, little sister,” he squeezes her shoulder as he says the endearment, “what is this about?”
She does not shift away from the contact, and he thinks that this is a start. When she looks at him, her eyes are bright but hard, tiny slices of kyber buried there, and he wonders whether there are any soft people left in the entire universe anymore or whether the circumstances have turned them all to stone, have made them all build their own fortresses hundreds of feet high like Jyn and Cassian. Or broken them almost beyond repair like Bodhi.
“Cassian.” The name is spoken as though it is something she does not like having in her mouth. “I thought we had come to an understanding. And now,” she shakes her head and looks away, though Baze can tell she is not seeing the things in front of her so much as replaying something in her head. “I forgave him for Eadu.” That is a boon because even though Cassian did not pull the trigger, his part in her father’s death is a mark, heavy and dark. “And then Scarif happened. I thought we would be even closer after that.”
Baze nods, unsure what to add to the conversation because he never got anything but the basic details about what occurred to them on Scarif. He knows that they lost Kay, that Jyn and Cassian where both grievously injured and that the plans went sent. Anything else that might have happened, bonding moments, pieces of trust built between Jyn and Cassian are not his to know, and he cannot comment on them. He cannot comment on much because Cassian Andor has been a ghost since Hoth, which might be part of the issue, especially since Jyn is speaking in broad terms of people leaving. Jyn who has had so few people to count on during the course of her young life.
“And now it’s like he’s just locked into being the Rebel’s good captain. Every time I go to ask him about something, no one will tell me where he is because I don’t have the clearance. He spends all his time with the leaders, plotting something that they can’t tell us because we’re undeserving all of a sudden. Good enough to die for the Rebellion, good enough to die for hope, not good enough for anything else apparently.” It sounds a lot like something Baze himself might have said. Fury tints the words and smears through the Force.
Baze doesn’t have to be very sensitive at all to pick up on it because it is oppressive. Anger and fear, pain, they all settle deep into the bones, into the mind, they all whisper dark little words into your ear if you let them. Baze knows this because he has felt this before. It’s part of the reason he ran from the Force for so long, after all. It’s part of the reason why he ran so far away from himself as well.
“Perhaps,” Baze begins when there has been enough quiet to signify that Jyn is not going to continue, that she has lapsed into the anger in her mind instead of fetching words out of it. He thinks back to the days, weeks, months even of living in the temple, living side by side with Chirrut and being unable to say or do anything about the fact that he loved him, being stuck, bound inside his own cage then as well, a different one from the sort he would wear later. Cages, he thinks, can be such safe places when they have been custom built by your hands, to keep things out, to lock things in. Especially when you are young and hurt and know nothing else. It’s not a guarantee that this is what is happening with Cassian, but it could be a part of it. He chooses to think that it is a part of it, here in this moment when Jyn looks like the heart of a star, angry and hurt, and all he wants to do is comfort her the way he has always wanted comfort for himself.
“Perhaps he doesn’t know where to start, and it’s easier to focus on those tasks,” is what he finally manages to say, and he knows that it is small, but he has nothing else to go on because Jyn is not wrong. Cassian has moved so that his circle barely intersects with theirs anymore. “We are not always meant to keep those who come close to us.” Another piece of poetic temple advice that he worries will frustrate her all the more.
Jyn hesitates for a moment before placing her hand over his on her shoulder and then leaning her head against both. “Maybe I thought it would be different,” she says, low and quiet, barely above a whisper, which is a rare thing for Baze to hear from her because it seems like Jyn always wants to be heard after walking through a life where no one listened to her or what she wanted, where other things drowned her out.
This is where Chirrut would offer sage advice about persisting in the face of adversity or make a joke or talk about how everything is as the Force wills it. This is where Chirrut would make Jyn smile and forget this anger that reflects sadness for a moment. And while Baze believes in the path that his husband takes, even when it is reckless and convoluted or half thought out, it is not where he is most comfortable, is not what he picks first. “It is not the same, but you have us if you want.” He adds on a term of endearment in Jedhan that is used in families, for daughters, and isn’t sure whether to hope she asks or lets it alone.
Baze has always felt the ache of wanting children like a formerly broken bone that hurts only when it rains. On Jedha, it was easy to forget. The land was parched, the world was bad. Rains came only seldom and brought nothing but mud and damp misery. There was no safety anywhere, and he was doing well to keep himself and Chirrut alive. Even after leaving Jedha, it was a series of jumps from one death to another, and if the twinges came because of the presence of Bodhi and Jyn, they came, and he pushed them away.
It is different now. There is a little more safety, and his grand idea is up in the area, all sparkling and glittery like any new desire. And Bodhi and Jyn remain. Yes, he knows that they are not children, they are certainly not his children, but it feels like the sky has opened up and it is pouring sometimes when he is near them, all his bones ache, he just wants to fix anything and everything he can. Chirrut used to say, in his chiding, teasing voice, that Baze grew so big because his heart could not exist in anything smaller. Baze is not sure if he can fix whatever is happening between Jyn and Cassian, though he will try, but he is sure that he can offer what he can give, which is care and maybe a sense of family to this girl who has had so little of both of those things.
If she will take it. And that is the thing about Jyn. You can hold two hands out to her, open, non-threatening, full of something, and she might just walk away from them both, unable to take the chance to reach out and be disappointed again. Baze understands this too. He will simply keep opening his hands.
After another moment, Jyn lifts her head, lifts her hand, and moves away. She repeats the word in Jedhan that she stole from Chirrut--old fool--and smiles. “I thought you were going to get caf,” she says, looking at him as she fiddles with an assortment of spanners that she has placed along the gleaming metal of the ship. There is something softer in her eyes, a giving. It isn’t much, but Baze thinks that it is enough, it is a start. It can take a lot to tame a star. “I don’t want to be at this all day.”
Baze grins back and runs a hand over his beard before clambering back off the ship, and he will need to go through more stretches tonight, might even need to ply Chirrut into giving him a back massage, if he keeps this up. For now, though, it is worth it. It is worth the stiffness and the aches, to have the moment, to extend the hand. “With sugar, yes?” he calls out to her as he starts for the door, and his voice, raised a little, draws the attention of the other pilots and mechanics. It bounces, echoes. When they were younger, Chirrut always asked him to speak loudly in the temple courtyard because his voice was a bell that he wanted to hear reverberate off all the walls. That is what it sounds like in the hanger, a bell.
“Yes,” Jyn shouts back, and her eyes crinkle at the edges. Laughter.
Perhaps he is not so bad at this as he thought. Though he still has Cassian to find, which is likely to be the biggest hurdle. Jyn does not seem upset over any one thing so much as she is confused by everything in general. The confusion, the lack of answers, makes the frustration run out of her in anger at a man she has tried to locate and been unsuccessful in tracking down. Baze has hunted men before, for many different reasons, normally for money, but this is not so different from that except it is a nobler quest. All of this can wait for another day once he has taken the time to bring it to Chirrut and discuss whether his proposed next steps are the right ones.
Right now he is hunting down caf.