Work Text:
Baze never expects to meet the Jedi, that star flare that Chirrut sensed briefly on Hoth. He imagined that their paths were too different, too divided. The Jedi is one of the main reasons for the fall of the Empire, while he and Chirrut did their part, helped send hope hurtling through the universe, and then retreated to a small planet very far away from everything to build a temple, to take in orphans young and old, to give a home to those without one, to peel the layers of fear back from a hundred hearts to reveal something greater lying within. They did a thing--a very important thing as Chirrut is quick to remind him whenever he hears Baze downplaying it, which is often because Baze has never been a man to gloat or boast about himself, though he has words of praise aplenty for the rest of them--and then left so that everyone else could do the much bigger things. And now that politics are involved, the reconstruction of the inner workings of planets across galaxies, Baze has even less interest. He never even liked temple politics, which were, in comparison, much easier than all of this hubbub about the universe.
Sometimes he thinks of sending Chirrut to them, of telling him to just go and say his piece because Chirrut has quite a lot of thoughts on all manner of things, and he is never disinclined to share them. Baze thinks that if anyone could make them listen to reason it would be Chirrut, once he had gotten all the ridiculousness out of his system by wandering around the room making jokes about being blind of course because Chirrut has never been known to get right to the point in anything. However his husband says quite the same about him, that if anyone should go talk to them about the need for balance and to be careful of tipping everything one way after it has been on the other it is him, but Baze does not want to speak in front of people, does not want to speak with people that he doesn’t know, and does not think they would listen to him anyway. That is how it goes whenever one of them brings it up, and then they are locked into a standstill argument for at least an hour so he has stopped saying anything about it at all.
This is actually quite a relief because he never wants to be separated again, even with that cord of the Force humming through them, circling around them, tied and knotted and intricate and always glowing, always evolving, and it is rare to find them further apart than the span of a room. And Baze has finally, after some cajoling from Chirrut and Jyn, who might be more tenacious even than Chirrut, which is a problem, allowed their marriage necklaces to be made. They are simple, nothing as fancy or intricate as some of the couples on Jedha used to have, but Baze always felt like those were more for the claiming of monetary status than the expression of love and fidelity. Theirs are smooth, stamped steel on simple braided cords with the starbird on one side, and “you carry my heart” in raised Jedhan on the other, which Chirrut can easily read. He keeps his tucked into his robes, against the skin over his heart while Chirrut always wants his own out, proudly displayed where he can run his fingers over the words while meditating or let the children tug on it on the occasions when he lets them crowd into his lap.
Their life probably does not seem simple from the outside. It is a collection of small structures hastily put together in the middle of a clearing that is surrounded by trees and near a river. Everything is sturdy and designed for the climate, but it is. It is not the Temple of the Whills, and it never will be, and this is something that pains Baze sometimes, that small prick of regret in his heart, a curled bud that will never bloom nestled in among the flowers--there are so many flowers, he has petals unfurling for days, an entire garden that fills him and rushes through him, and Baze thinks that he never dreamed life could be like this, that it could be full of so much love that even his hands cannot hold it all, that even his arms cannot contain it, that it runs over him, drenches him like so much warm water but without weight, without drowning him in any of it--until Chirrut kisses the thought away or raps his staff across his knuckles depending on what sort of mood he is in on the day, and Baze is reminded how laughter can be a comfort all its own. The type of comfort that Chirrut has always been the best at providing and knowing when it is enough.
Their life might not look simple with the steady trickle of orphans from across the galaxy, orphans who speak more languages than Baze knows, more languages even than Chirrut knows such that they had to ask Cassian if there was some droid the Rebels--they’re Rebels no more, Chirrut had corrected him, but there are pathways in Baze’s brain that can never be overwritten and they will always be the Rebels, they will always be rebelling, and he is okay with this distinction--would let them have that could help with the translations. Cassian had answered with a fleet of decommissioned droids with mismatched arms and eyes and panels, every single one of them painstakingly reprogrammed until they were helpful but not bothersome. And not a one of them like Kay, which Cassian seemed to think was prudent even after Chirrut had explained that Baze only threatened Kay because the two of them thought it was hilarious. Kay, of course, had simply lingered in the background, arms crossed over his metal chest, and talked about how fearful for his life the “hulking man” made him, and Baze tried not to laugh at the pained expression on Cassian’s face. And Baze had tried to explain, when Cassian arrived with them, all of them, a horde of droids that almost seemed like they would outnumber the orphans, that they did not need this many, that this was perhaps too many, but one look at the captain’s face, those eyes that managed to still be a child’s eyes wanting to please, stopped him, and Baze accepted them, every single of one of them.
The droids make many things easier than they otherwise would be in the community. They whir and buzz and complete tasks that Baze could do, that Baze should do considering this was all his idea, his plan, but he lets them because otherwise Chirrut clicks his tongue in that way that he has, the displeased but saying nothing way, and Baze, Pavlovian by now, backs away from the task. He supposes that perhaps he does not have to do everything, and spending time with the orphans is more important than moving supplies from one building to the next anyway. It is also infinitely more rewarding.
Everyone on the planet learns Jedhan and Basic. Baze would happily learn--though falteringly and badly when it comes to speaking because his tongue is too thick apparently, but he can read anything if given enough time to learn--all of the children’s languages so that he could attempt to speak home back to them, especially in the night, especially when they cry. Nightly he makes the rounds, a giant shadow crossing through the big dormitory halls, stopping to pull one child and then the next into his arms, carrying them in the dark, whispering words of comfort to them, singing the songs of Jedha, the songs of the Whills, convincing them that nothing will hurt them, that even the ghosts, the bad memories that the Force planet conjures up, cannot do anything to them because he is there, and Chirrut is there, and, “We will fight anything in the universe for you. For all of you. We love you.” Eventually they will quiet and sleep, dream peaceful dreams, wrapped in the Force, tiny glimmering lights, each one of them, but they are never overwhelming to him, never too much. Most days all he can really sense is Chirrut anyway, but this is normal, a reality of his that has stretched out for years and will continue for years; he has never needed to feel the rest of the universe, though sometimes it seems to need him to do so. He lets it come and go as it pleases. The only cords he wraps his fingers around belong to his husband, though he would, if asked, only if asked, let them fall as well. He trusts that this is something Chirrut will never ask of him.
Chirrut who will wake when he returns, pull him into bed and latch his strong arms about him, a hold tight enough to convince both of them that nothing could break it. Chirrut who will press kisses into the crook of his neck and chide him gently about getting a full night’s sleep, still pretending that it is a thing Baze has ever been capable of doing, and Baze knows something in his husband is calling out a warning without words for him to be careful, for him to be steady and keep something of himself safe, keep something back. Baze cannot. He is love running over these days, a garden that blooms without fail, hearts and petals falling across everything, and he thinks that he has never smiled or laughed this much since they were children, hand in hand, teasing each other, Chirrut’s every word making him feel light enough to float away into the atmosphere, to float away into the sun and just be happy. Right before he slips, tumbles, descends into sleep, into whatever dreams the Force planet will give him--hopefully the happy ones, the thousands of moments that Chirrut has filled in his past--Chirrut will whisper into his hair, “Be careful for once, love. Just a little. I cannot lose my heart again.”
And Baze could argue that it is Chirrut who is never careful, it is Chirrut who loops strings around the wrists of five of the older orphans and then leads them all out on expeditions into the forests flanked with three of the droids to hopefully keep them out of danger. It is Chirrut who rushes into things without looking. Yet he knows what his husband means, and he cannot argue it with him, instead just pulls him closer, licks at his lips, steals kisses while fingers slide over flesh until, inevitably, they are almost knitted together, all those threads pulled tight, hands lingering on the marriage necklaces, which are the only things they wear to bed even when it gets cold. This is why he agreed to having their quarters in a separate building, after all, one free of any of the droids who roam the halls of the others nightly to check out every little sound. Because Baze does not want to be disturbed when Chirrut presses so close that all he can do is make pleased, choked noises and gasp how much he loves him, how much he will always love him.
Their life is simple, and their life is kind, as kind as any life can be, because there is always sadness in the world, there are always things that go wrong, nothing is ever completely light, which is what the Whills taught and what they teach. When they lose the first orphan to an illness that is far too advanced, that they can do nothing about, Baze meditates for three days and takes only water until Chirrut, as angry as the clouds during Jedha’s rainy season, thunders into the temple building and whacks his staff across his knees. Until Chirrut puts his hands on either side of his face and reminds him, sternly, always knowing what Baze needs more than Baze himself, that the Force is a balance, and sometimes they will not win the way that Baze wants to, but he cannot allow that to drown him again. “Rise, fool, from all your ashes.” And he does. And they do.
Despite all of this, though, their life really is simple. It is routines. It is Baze watching the droids fix breakfast in the mess even though his hands itch to do it. It is Chirrut in the temple leading the children in prayer and then in the practice yard taking them through their forms. It is Baze in the horrifyingly small but ever growing library, carefully writing out the texts of old because his memory never fails in many things, and the Force planet helps, augments the part of his mind that caught and kept all the words, seemingly ingrained them into his Jedha sand colored flesh. It is squealing children who want to see the waterfalls. It is orphans crowding into their laps and kissing their faces and braiding his hair, which Chirrut will fix later because it will be a mess but Baze can never say no. It is Baze laughing so hard he fears that his ribs will break, and it is Chirrut smiling so wide that Baze thinks his face will split open from it.
So he never expects that Bodhi will return home after a supply run with the last Jedi in the universe, though he should have gotten used to his not-children surprising him by now since that seems to be all they are capable of doing. Not breaking him or wounding his heart with their leaving as Chirrut feared, as Chirrut warned that night on the Rebel ship, but surprises they have aplenty. Like the way that Jyn will stay for weeks at a time or how she will throw her head back and laugh in a way that Baze never thought possible when the children force her into joining their games, when they tug at her hands and they all speak Jedhan together. Or how Cassian comes when the Rebels force him to take leave because he has done too much, and he is wearing himself out and then he will spend three hours repairing his droids, augmenting them, just flitting from one to the other making repairs or software upgrades. Cassian is careful with the orphans, distant, as though some small part of him is concerned about ruining them if he gets too close, and Baze doesn’t know how to help that, not really, so he leaves it to Chirrut to sort out. Slowly, slowly Chirrut convinces the man to meditate with him, and Baze sees Cassian weep during it while Chirrut settles a hand on his arm and murmurs soothing words. Neither of them ever ask Cassian what the Force planet showed him; both of them can imagine what might linger inside a man who has been fighting his entire life, who has wrapped himself up in so many cages that Baze sometimes wonder how he can see anything but bars.
Bodhi is their most constant companion, the one who left with them, who stayed with them instead of hopping back and forth between them and the Rebellion. Even though he was a hero, even though he proved himself ten times over, the Rebel leaders were concerned about his mind, the way that he would sometimes trail off in the middle of sentences or stare into space as he chased a sentence or a word down. They were worried about putting him in a battle, about triggering something when he already seemed like he was still close to the surface of his trauma. So Bodhi came with them, stays with them, flies their ship on supply runs to fetch goods or bring orphans home. Never too many, never more than they can handle, though this stipulation is made by Chirrut and Chirrut alone because Baze has never, not once in his life, been able to say no to a frightened child so it is up to his husband to keep the reigns tight, to tell the Rebels how many they can harbor, and to enforce it.
Sometimes, though, when things are bad, when the Force planet stresses him out, the way it can stress all of them on occasion, Bodhi will just take the ship and fly for a bit. Stars are in his blood, the universe is in his skin, and he needs to fly. Baze worries for him when this happens, yes, but he knows better than the Rebel leaders. Bodhi never loses himself when he flies. The flying brings him home better than anything else. The flying cements his mind together, laces him back into his skin and brings him peace. They turned away an asset, but this is fine because their rejection fixed Bodhi into their orbit, allowed him to keep a watchful eye on his not-son.
“They are all yours, you silly thing,” Chirrut whispers to him at night when Baze cannot sleep, when he thinks, over and over, about Bodhi and Jyn and Cassian, that worry creeping through their Force bond to fix itself in his husband’s mind as surely as if Baze had spoken it aloud. “They are all yours, fool. You can stop with your qualifiers.” He settles a hand across Baze’ broad chest, fingers tracing the skin over his heart gently. “Your first flowers.”
Baze will catch his hand and press kisses to his wrist, worry every graceful part of that hand with his teeth until Chirrut’s breath is fast and labored like he has just finished the most exhausting of exercises. “You are my first flower.”
“A rose.” Meant to be playful, meant to be light but far too breathy for mocking, far too dazed to be anything other than heavy love, thick like a tauntaun blanket.
Baze will suck a digit into his mouth, tease Chirrut’s overly sensitive fingers with his tongue while his husband shivers, just goad him for a moment before answering. “Jasmine.” The scent of which always lingered in the temple garden, the same scent he catches on Chirrut’s skin, that he chases into all the dark and hidden parts of him, presses his tongue to, tries to catch, seeking petals to fill his mouth and undoing his husband completely in the process.
It has been years since Baze felt comfortable enough in the universe to be as physically demonstrative as he is now, and neither of them has a word of complaint about it. Baze blushes and stutters out irritation, grumpy excuses when Jyn or Bodhi point out the various bruises that occasionally litter their bodies because he and Chirrut are strong, clench too tightly, kiss too hard, and bite without ever considering that it might show later. They grapple and love like they are discovering each other anew again, and perhaps they are. Baze thinks about how the body sheds skin cells, how every few years one is made fresh again, and he never wants skin that has not known Chirrut’s touch, never wants flesh unwarmed by the heat of him.
They are sitting in the archive building, alone save for each other, a rare occurrence during the day, because Jyn has come for a visit so Chirrut suspended lessons as none of the children would have been able to focus on them anyway. Baze was slightly surprised the first time Jyn arrived at their temple once the orphans had come, surprised because she was not standoffish or harsh around the edges with them the way that she is with almost everyone. The sight of her striding purposefully into the center of their ring and engaging the children, instantly getting caught up in their games, laughing with them, made his heart absolutely sing. So while Jyn and the droids and the couple of other wayward members of the Whills they have been able to locate since the fall of the Empire watch the children, he and Chirrut are left to their own devices. Baze takes the time to write the teachings out while his husband hums in the background, waiting for Baze to finish the paragraph he is working on so that they can debate the next one, polish it before he jots it down, turns it from memory to document. This habit of theirs makes the work take longer, but he doesn’t mind. Time spent doing something well with someone that he loves is preferable to time spent doing something as efficiently as possible.
They have time, he reminds himself, a truth that seems to become more evident, more tangible with each passing day.
Chirrut is humming, his fingers occasionally dragging through Baze’s hair or over the shell of his ear or across his arm, the hundred thousand small touches that they both allow these days even if they can be a distraction, when something shifts in the air around them. No, not in the air. It is beneath that. It is through that. It is something wound up in much more than just that. Something shifts in the Force, rattles the chain between them, and stops the sounds from Chirrut’s throat, stills Baze’s fingers in their writing. At first it is small, a hum, a barely there noise, and then it is like a star scream, over loud and everywhere. Baze instinctively clamps a hand around Chirrut’s wrist to ground the both of them in each other as the Force planet catches the wave and amplifies it, sucks them in, catches them in its undertow.
It recedes after a moment, and they are both gasping from the intensity. Baze’s thumb smooths over the pulse point in Chirrut’s wrist, trying to steady him because their Force bond is practically keening with something that he is not sensitive enough to name; the particulars of it elude him, but he can still feel it, dark and twisty and sucking at him like the area of sand in the Jedhan desert that they once found when they were boys, that Chirrut found, that ensnared his dancing feet, but Baze had been strong enough even then to pull him out before their moon inhaled him. After a moment that feels like a forever of waiting for his husband’s breathing to steady a little, Baze realizes that he knows that flare. He recognizes it, at least part of it, though what he recalls is not what it has become.
“The Jedi,” Chirrut says, but his voice is low and throaty, overwhelmed and angry, which Baze does not understand.
“Uncles,” comes the high familiar voice of one of their charges, Pyla, and then Jyn is standing in the doorway, the child on her shoulders. Jyn is grinning in that way that she only smiles when in the presence of the children, like she has finally found people who she does not have to become steel with, does not have to intimidate to prove that she is worthy to stand in the same room with them. “Uncles, brother Bodhi has returned.”
“With a guest,” Chirrut says without even bothering to correct Pyla, to inform the child to call them Master or Guardian the way that he normally does, the way that Baze never does because he doesn’t mind hearing terms like uncle or baba fall from their lips, doesn’t mind the small way in which those titles go against the regimented tiers of respect that were ingrained into the teachings of the Whills. Too soft, too yielding, especially to children, Chirrut chides him when Baze lets the very smallest children call him baba and tug at his beard and just cling on him, wrapped bodily around his legs as he moves, slowly, ponderously, careful, smiling all the while.
There is none of that chiding in Chirrut’s current tone, none of that pleased teasing. This is the steel voice, the iron will, the man who can take down squadrons of Stormtroopers in a tight alley while Baze stands back at the mouth of it, guards it, holds his repeater canon, holds Chirrut’s lightbow but never makes a move because Chirrut doesn’t requires the backup. This is a man who has not stepped outside of his husband’s body in a long time because nothing has called him out, nothing has needed protecting in that way. And Baze wants to stop it, wants to put a hand on Chirrut’s chest and push that kyber particle of him back inside because there are children and he is there and this is just Bodhi. And the Jedi. Nothing more. But Baze will not do that because he trusts Chirrut, and if Chirrut is upset there is reason for it. If Chirrut is upset, quick to laugh, bright, shining, spinning top Chirrut, then something is well and truly wrong.
“I know how you do that shit,” Jyn mutters, her Jedhan impeccable and lovely by now, lilting and perfected but still crisp and careful at the edges like she is always worried about faltering, “but it never gets any less unsettling. Yes, he brought a guest.”
“It’s Luke Skywalker!” Pyla squeaks out in open awe.
Baze lets go of Chirrut’s wrist the moment before he stands, watches him for a moment, both of his perfect, lovely hands--the hands he has held, kissed, sucked, idly caressed, caught and clung to with desperation on the sands of Scarif which has become just another memory that he can access without feeling like his heart is imploding--are wrapped, knuckle white, around the staff Baze made him once they were settled on the planet, imbued with a tiny sliver of kyber that Cassian gave him but will not breathe a word about its origins. It only takes one glance at Jyn to see that she knows, she recognizes this face, this stance as well from the marketplace in Jedha and from all the incidents that followed, a cascade of events, each one tipping into and causing the next, a chain reaction.
Jyn knows, and her eyes flicker to Baze for precisely ten seconds before she hums to herself and then jostles Pyla slightly before saying, “Hey, let’s go back to the temple and see what everyone else is up to.”
“No, I want to meet him.” The child’s tone is pleading, and Baze would no doubt waver, but Jyn is more like Chirrut in this facet of herself.
“Maybe later. The Guardians have to make sure everything is safe, don’t they? They protect you. They protect everyone. They have duties. They have promises to keep.”
Promises to keep. It rings in his head and inches into his heart to nestle among the flowers. Yes, they do, don’t they? So very many of them that he has whispered in the night to the children, to Chirrut, to the Force itself when no one else on the planet seems to be stirring. I will keep them. I will surround them with my body and myself. I will allow no harm to fall on them. I am one with the Force, and the Force is with me. It flows through me and guides me. I am adrift on the arms of its stream, and it takes me where I need to go. And I will protect all of its creatures for my shoulders are broad enough, my will is strong enough, my heart is great enough. I am enough. Baze’s Guardian prayer. The prayer that split through him when he found his kyber crystal deep in the caves of Jedha, nestled into a crook of rock, hard to see, a fissure in it that made it flawed but lovely, perfect for him.
He never told Chirrut his kyber song, his Guardian song. He didn’t need to; the moment he returned Chirrut had known, had looked slightly pained by it all as if he was worried Baze had, once again, taken on far too much for himself. “Oh, my fool,” he had said, hand cradling Baze’s cheek. Baze who was ecstatic and high on kyber song and glowing from the Force moving through him, who didn’t understand why Chirrut looked like something was in danger, like someone was bleeding and the wound could never be stopped. “My sweet foolish love.” And Chirrut never told Baze his own kyber song, but Baze thinks he can guess it; thinks, too, that Chirrut probably altered it, guided it, to ensure that it included him because that is how Chirrut loves, every bit as fiercely as Baze does but quieter and more guarded, thornier on the outside because someone has to hold the door closed and not let everything in.
Baze stands and places a careful hand on Chirrut’s elbow, fingers brushing against the fabric of the dark blue robes he chose because Chirrut looks lovely in them even if the cloth is still not fine enough for his husband. No cloth not born of Jedha will ever be good enough, and they have all come to accept that by now though Chirrut still occasionally grumbles, still sighs and picks at the hems, wistful, endearing in his exasperation. “Chirrut,” he says, and when his husband inclines his head towards him slightly the mark of concern, of pain is evident. “Love, what has happened?”
“The star has gone dark at the edges, splintered at the core. It holds itself together but some of the hope has leached out of it. Someone has,” he pauses to click his tongue against the roof of his mouth as he considers his next words, “handled it poorly.”
Without even asking Baze knows that Chirrut means the Jedi, and he remembers how it felt on Hoth in that small span of time when they and he inhabited the same base. He recalls how it stuttered, newborn and so so bright, in the Force like a fledgling testing its wings for the first time. It is not the same now. Even his senses are good enough to discern that, but he just assumed it was from age and time and the war. The Jedi went to war, after all, he fought, and he won. Battle changes a man, Baze knows. Chirrut knows this, too, but he speaks as though this is more than that, as though this was purposeful, someone molding that star flash of white white into this more mottled gray configuration that weeps with pain at the edges and seems to have shuffled away from the cords a little bit, protecting itself when it should be embracing, flinging itself into the pools and eddies of the Force.
Baze has felt like that inside himself. When he was in his self-induced exile, he shoved everything as far away as he could, closed his eyes, built all the walls he could manage and watched them slowly erode just so he could raise them again. He created cages and traps and boxes inside himself, an internal minefield of misery that has taken years to dismantle, though the going has been much faster since Scarif, since the bacta and opening his hands back up to accept what has been there trying to hold them the entire time. The Jedi, he thinks, should not know this kind of life; no one should.
“Are we greeting?” Baze asks, a useless question because Chirrut will never allow anyone on the planet without sizing them up personally, without ensuring that their ripple across the energy will do more good than harm, but seeing as how his husband hasn’t moved Baze thinks the question might provide the needed impetus.
Chirrut clicks his tongue again and strides forward, away from Baze’s careful fingers. The staff thonks angrily against the floor as he crosses to the door. There is a moment, a long one in which the span of seven seconds seems to expand, open up and become the whole of the universe, one breath turning into all breaths that have ever existed, wherein Baze wishes he still had his repeater canon, still had his armor, still had all the weapons that were carefully tucked into pockets and boots and the back of the shielding over his chest so that he would never be caught unawares without a way to protect Chirrut in the thick of battle. But all of those have fallen away, and he cannot wound anyone with hands covered in flower petals and scars. All he has is his own broad body and the reawoken moves that training with Chirrut has brushed off, though he will never be as quick or as strong as he used to be, will never have the same impact. He should not worry; Chirrut can take care of himself. This is a fact that has been proven more times than even Baze can remember, but he always worries, every time. It is his place, after all.
They don’t have to go far, just out into the courtyard, which is less grand than what they had at the Temple of the Whills. Theirs is just grass in the center of the circle of structures, though there are benches and the beginnings of a wall around the edges of everything that the droids have been working on building with homemade bricks, but it is a slow process, and Baze has asked them to only do it in their downtime because there is not much they have found on the planet that necessitates walls anyway so it simply becomes an aesthetic. In the center of the courtyard is Bodhi, arms spread wide, hair in a ponytail but still curling around his shoulders and his face, in a flightsuit the same color as their robes, talking animatedly to a man next to him, a man swathed in so many robes that Baze cannot get a sense of his size or his shape, cannot even see his face as hidden as it is, as though he is nothing but an illusion, a trick of the Force planet itself.
As they get closer, Chirrut still managing to find a way to make the staff click despite the fact that they are now trodding on grass, Baze can see how enraptured Bodhi looks, his eyes shining and focused only on the figure heaped under its collection of robes in various shades of beige. There is a bold and open expression on Bodhi’s face, in the way he smiles softly and tilts his head shyly, and Baze is old enough to recognize it, has seen this sort of look blossom across faces before, a haze of infatuation, perhaps the quickening pulse of love, and he begins to worry anew. Chirrut’s staff twitches back to smack across his shins, pulling him back to the concern of the here and now rather than drifting away into what might be, and Baze frowns but says nothing for there is no arguing with Chirrut, especially not here and not in front of Bodhi and the twilight Force boy who may not even exist under all the fabric at all.
“Oh, Luke, here are the Guardians,” Bodhi pipes up when he spots them, his tone peppered with a little confusion and a flash of disappointment that Baze understands means that he wanted the Jedi all to himself for as long as he could manage, that they have arrived too soon for his liking, that they could have taken hours and it still would have been too soon. He remembers that feeling, the way it would clutch and wound round his heart when he was near Chirrut in the beginning before the kisses, before the confessions, that first flower unfurling and tipping towards the brightest light that Baze has ever known, has ever found on any world, in any solar system across the galaxy.
The robed figure turns toward them, and now Baze can see that it is a person after all, huddled under all those layers, though his face and his hair are light enough that they are almost lost amid all the sand colored draping. It is not the color of sand on Jedha, which was red and rust and orange, sunsets and rocks and mountains, the color of Baze’s own skin. No, this is more like the sand on Scarif, pale and fresh. The only thing about the Jedi that really stands out, especially amid his soft palate, are his eyes, which blaze blue and bright. It’s not the same color as Chirrut’s, kyber blue, nor the color of their robes, the murky, darker utilitarian blue that is good because it conceals stains. No, this is a warmer blue, like the skies of Scarif when they first set down on the planet, before it filled with the smoke of battle and imminent death.
Baze wonders why the Force will not let Scarif leave him? Why it brings it hurtling back to him over and over again like a cut being reopened by too much movement during healing so that it bleeds all over everything, sticky and red. Chirrut catches his wrist to squeeze it gently, funnels strength and love through their connection, strides forward, ever ready to take the lead in greeting, in measuring up the size of a new companion. Baze trusts who Chirrut trusts; it has always been this way, and today is not a day to change that.
The Jedi’s smile has faltered a little, and Bodhi has grown silent beside him, recognizing Chirrut’s steel face as well as the face that Baze knows he wears, that all of his not-children (they are his) have learned to read by now as concern and worry. He wonders how much of them the Jedi can feel, how powerful he is behind his walls, behind his edging away, that shoulder turned to a part of the Force. Baze wonders whether he can feel the planet and its own Force, the way it pulls and heightens and spins things around, the nightmares it can bring as well as the desires. He wonders about the way that things change when someone seeks to take control over something instead of leaving himself open to it, the way that it moves. How much does the Jedi miss about the world, about the universe? How much have all the Jedi missed about life itself? About love?
Perhaps it is a good thing that there are not so many of them anymore. Baze thinks it is a quiet tragedy to have beings skirting through the universe who are not allowed to know love when love is the most powerful thing that he has ever known.
“Hello Guardians,” Luke says, and his returning smile is small but genuine, yet still a shadow of the blaze that he was on Hoth. “I am honored to meet you. Bodhi has told me much about you and the teachings of the Whills.”
“What I know. I don’t know everything yet,” Bodhi interjects, his nervous hands flitting back into the infinite cycle of rubbing one over the other that he takes up when his is anxious, and Baze wants to reach out and still him but does not, has been cognizantly trying to stop treating Bodhi as fragile because he is a capable man even if it can be hard to remember when all Baze wants to do is protect him.
Luke glances over at Bodhi, and Baze thinks he sees something click in the small man, in the way that his blue eyes linger, in the way that the corners of his lips tip up, something that means Bodhi is captivating for him as well. “Bodhi has told me a fair deal, but I am very interested in learning more about your understanding of the Force. My teachers,” his voice wavers here a bit, “did not have much time to impart everything about it to me. I would love to know more about how you see it.”
He is small. That is one of the prominent impressions that rises in Baze’s mind. The Jedi is small and delicate looking. He is shorter than Bodhi, though might not be quite as thin, but it is hard to tell when he is dressed in an entire stall’s worth of fabric that swims in layers around him as though he has never known water so dives into linen instead. If Baze could not see him in the Force, the steady, thrumming crackle of him, the wavering hints of gray, the wall, the distance placed between himself and the flowing of the stream of life itself, he probably would have welcomed him as freely as any other orphan who steps foot onto the planet. But he can see it, which changes everything. So Baze says nothing, folds his arms into the sleeves of his robe and stands, a pillar of their temple, a pillar of their faith, a pillar of the true Force, as Chirrut steps forward, as Chirrut makes the greeting.
Chirrut makes sure to speak in Basic. “Welcome to Lyra.”
(Jyn cried when they told her. Actual, hot tears and shaking shoulders, the sort of weeping that they did not see often, and Baze had held her as long as she let him, which was not long at all because comfort was something that had rarely been given to her, and she had problems accepting it even from them. Yes, Jyn had suggested a name, but when they finally got her to talk about her mother, her mother who gave Jyn her kyber, her mother who was brave enough to face the Empire and die at their hands in an attempt to protect her husband, her child, there was no question in their minds. It had to be Lyra. It was always meant to be Lyra.)
Luke watches Chirrut’s approach with something akin to awe, and Baze wishes Chirrut could see it, hopes he can feel it, that there is still something light in the heart of the man who seems like a boy forced into the role before his time. This is true of so many of their not-children. But if Chirrut feels it, if Chirrut knows it, he does not allow it to sway him. He crosses to Luke, so close that his staff collides with Luke’s boot and causes him to step backward to give the man more room. Before he can evade him, Chirrut catches his face in both hands to hold him steady. “Someone was reckless with you, but we can correct it. If you will allow it.”
Out of nowhere, unexpectedly, the Jedi, the boy, the almost man smeared over with all those shades of gray and wrapped in too many layers of beige fabric as though they can protect him from whatever has hurt him, begins to cry. Not the fierce tears that Baze has seen from Jyn or the terror struck despair that comes over Bodhi, not even the clutched hands and hard fought sorrow that Chirrut can sometimes ease out of Cassian. This is torrents. This is rain. And it happens in seconds. One moment he is smiling, bright eyes and interested, but the next he has deflated to a small boy, just as meek and lost as any of their charges, and Chirrut leans his forehead against his and whispers, “The Force is with you, Luke Skywalker.”