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I. A Jedi should find humour in the universe around them, and in themselves.
By the end of his first day in the Jedi Temple, Baze has not spoken once.
He knows the masters are getting frustrated with him. He doesn't understand everything they say, but the tone tells him enough. He has gotten good at listening to tone of voice, because from his aunties, the tone might spell the difference between a sweet and a hard pinch on the cheek.
"I don't understand," one of the masters says. "His mother said he could speak Basic."
Everyone in Jedha City can speak at least a little Basic. With so many people coming from so many places, Basic is the language you hear the most in the shops, everyone making a compromise to understand each other.
So, yes, Baze can speak Basic when his amma sends him to the shop to buy buns, or to greet Mr. Sel from down the street, whose mouth can't make the right noises for Jedhashi. But in a circle of Jedi Masters, all of them looking at him disapprovingly?
A Jedi with big eyes looks down at him. He's orange, like the city walls when the last of the sunlight hits them, and he has big black goggles over his eyes.
"Can you say hello?"
Baze would like nothing more than to say hello. He would like nothing more than to say anything, if that's what it takes to get them all to stop looking at him like he has laid an egg on the floor. But he isn't sure whether he remembers all the words. So he looks up at the big Jedi, trying to tell him that with his eyes.
Another Jedi, behind him, asks a question he doesn't really understand, only that it has the word "Jedhan" in it.
The orange Jedi shakes his head. Baze only manages to catch the second half of his response, "not here."
A master with hair even longer than his amma's asks, "What about Chirrut?"
The rest of the sentence makes sense, but he doesn't know who or what a Chirrut is.
Yet another Jedi Master, this one with a shiny bald head, groans. That much is even more universal than Basic.
He loses track of the conversation, drowning in a tide of different Jedi saying different things at once. If his amma was here, she would tell him to listen to the song inside of him, to listen to the Force. But his amma is back in NiJedha, without him to buy buns for her when she's too busy with the baby, and he is here.
Baze hadn't cried when he left his amma's arms. The Jedi who had taken him said that he was so brave for that, that he would make a good Jedi someday. But he worries he's about to cry now, in front of all the important Jedi who his amma told him he needed to listen to.
He bites down on the inside of his cheek so hard that it hurts, and tries to focus on that instead.
The long-haired master comes back with another boy around Baze's age, with a big smile on his face. He has very, very blue eyes, and they don't exactly focus on where he's looking. Baze thinks he must be blind.
"Hello," the boy says, and he almost cries, because the boy says it in Jedhashi. "You must be the new one. Nice to see you!" He grins extra big, as if to let Baze know that he thinks his joke is really funny.
And maybe it is funny, or maybe he's just relieved, because Baze finds himself laughing, echoes bouncing off the big white walls.
The bald Jedi Master sighs, loudly.
"I'm Chirrut Imwe."
"Baze. Baze Malbus," he says, because the laughing has unstopped his throat, and it's much easier to talk to this cheerful, ridiculous youngling.
"Oh, so you do talk! My Jedhashi is not very good," he continues. "But I know some. The library has..." he flaps one of his hands, trying to get at the word, "hearing books."
"I know Basic too," Baze responds. "I'm just... not good at words," he finishes, lamely.
"Well, I'm sure the masters would want me to learn from you. I talk all the time. Hungry?" he asks, moving on to the next topic so quickly that Baze is almost jarred.
"How did you know?" he asks.
"The Force told me."
"Really?"
The boy grins proudly. "Yes." He stands there like that for a moment, and then adds, "Also, Master Jinn says you hid your lunch under the table when no one was looking."
Baze looks down at the floor. Nothing had looked familiar, and even the stuff that looked okay had been touching the other stuff at the edges. He hadn't wanted to offend his new hosts, but he couldn't bear to eat it, either.
The master with the goggles asks Chirrut a question that Baze isn't quick enough to catch. Chirrut rattles back an answer, far quicker than Baze could manage in Basic or even Jedhashi.
"He wants to know if you are all right. What should I tell him?"
Baze considers. "Yes," he says. "Tell him yes."
Chirrut grins, then talks to the master again. This time, Baze is able to catch the words "help" and "food".
He looks back at Baze. "It's almost dinner. Master Koon says I can come with you to the mess hall and show you what doesn't taste like bantha shit."
Baze is about to open his mouth, say that he doesn't need anyone's pity, when Chirrut barrels on. "If you do me a favour."
"What could I possibly do for you?"
Back home, he knows all the best alleys to hide from the older kids, all the houses where the people are so rich they leave fruit hanging on their trees where you can pick it, all the best places to see the first sunlight on Ancestors' Day. Here, he doesn't know anything.
"Teach me some real Jedhashi." He looks so embarrassed to be asking it, to be admitting to something he clearly wants, that Baze relaxes. This is obviously not just taking pity on the new boy.
"Deal," he says, and spits on his hand to seal it, like he always does with his friends back home. "Shake on it?"
He can tell from the masters' silence afterwards that this is not how they do things here.
But Chirrut laughs, hard and bright, tipping his head all the way back as he does it. "I like your style, Malbus." He takes Baze's offered hand and shakes it vigorously, in a very solemn mockery. At that, Baze starts laughing again.
Coruscant is nothing like home. The buildings are all different, the food is wrong, not even the air tastes the same. But if there are people like this ridiculous, fast-talking boy here, maybe it won't be so bad.
II. A Jedi should resolve disputes peacefully whenever possible.
Chirrut leans his head back against the wall, and reaches out into the Force.
Master Koon always tells him to use his words when he's talking about the Force, to be a little more descriptive. Today, it's folding and flowing, cool around him like water, like wind. Everything must be going well in the Temple today.
When he breathes in, he tries to breathe in some of its calm.
The people around him float in its clean water. Behind the doors of the Council room, there are fourteen Jedi with the tide of a conversation flowing between them. There is some cross-current, but for the most part, they're in agreement.
The first time he'd ever told one of the masters that he knew exactly how many people were in the Temple, he was in a class talking about the Temple's architecture. The other students hadn't believed him, but he'd counted off the points of life until he had gotten to a thousand, six hundred, and twenty-nine. The master had gone quiet, and then taken him to visit the Council room.
He can do better, now. Now, he can almost listen in to what people are thinking or feeling, even from a way off. Not always, and not always correctly. But it's the kind of thing that makes the masters go silent.
He scowls and kicks his legs against the bottom of the bench. If only that was enough.
Something snakes through the Force, a presence that hadn't been there before. When they gets close enough he's sure they can hear him, he asks, "Baze, why are you here?"
The footsteps, which had been echoing on the marble, stop. "How do you always know it's me?"
Chirrut grins widely. "The Force told me."
He can tell almost all the initiates in their year apart by their presence in the Force, even without the little distinctive sounds they make. Baze is all curled up inside themselves, like the snails Master Yoda had shown them in one of the gardens.
Baze sits down at the other side of Chirrut's bench and Chirrut can feel the stone vibrating as it comes into contact with another warm body. "I'll take your word for it."
They usually talk in Basic, because Baze's Basic is better that Chirrut's Jedhashi. But it still takes Baze a while to say things, because he always worries about using the right words. Even though Baze acts so grown-up, he can be sensitive about stuff.
He lets out a big breath and asks, "Your echo box messed up again?"
"No," Chirrut says, dipping his head. "I'm doing extra meditations with the masters."
He'd rather be in trouble. At least trouble would be over quickly. At least trouble wouldn't mean sitting for hours with a big circle of masters around him, willing him to do something, anything. Willing him to lift a single sheet of paper with the Force, as even the youngest initiates can.
At least trouble has never left him on the edge of frustrated tears.
"That sounds like fun," Baze says, and Chirrut is appalled to realize he actually means it. Baze really is the worst kind of nerd.
He snorts. "You do it, then. Last time I was in there for three whole hours listening to Master Amundi say that everything is possible through the Force if you focus hard enough."
The disappointment is the worst part. They don't mean to be unkind, but Chirrut can read it all over them, as though they had labels stamped with touch-writing. Chirrut Imwe, so brilliant at reading and understanding the Force; if only he could use it.
He can't explain why it's so hard for him to manipulate the Force. It's not like touching it, or like swimming through it to learn more about people. It feels like cutting away at a bush to make it into a shape that you prefer, snapped branches singing out in pain. It makes him feel sick.
Why would you want to do that when the Force was so warm around you already?
"That's dumb. Lots of things are impossible. Master Galli says it's impossible to have both an unstoppable force and an immoveable object. Master Devo says it's impossible to create or destroy matter. Master Nu says it's impossible to get people to return their kriffing books to the Archives on time, although I think she forgot I was there when she said that. "
Chirrut laughs.
"Anyways, the point is, sometimes the Force just doesn't will things, right?"
"Yeah, I guess that makes sense. Wish the masters saw it that way." He shakes his head. "Anyways, enough about me. What about you?"
There's a long moment of silence. "I gave Helico Dev a black eye."
All of those words make sense separately, but not together.
"You gave Helico Dev a black eye?"
"Yes."
"Why? I mean, besides the fact that he's Helico."
Someone was going to punch Helico Dev one of these days. Chirrut just hadn't expected it to be studious Baze.
Baze says nothing.
"Was he bullying you? Was he bullying someone else?"
It had probably been Helico bullying one of the first-years. Baze wouldn't have bothered getting in a fight for his own sake, but he hated when things weren't fair.
"Why didn't you just tell one of the masters?"
Baze snorts. "Like all of the other times someone's told the masters on Helico?"
He does have a point. Helico gets in trouble and then just goes back to terrorizing people. On the other hand, no one's actually tried punching him yet. Knowing Baze, he probably thought through all the possible solutions and figured that the most logical one was knocking him out.
"But now you're in trouble instead of him!"
"Yes," Baze says, perfectly unreadable.
Sometimes Baze is annoying to talk to, because the Force doesn't tell Chirrut as much about him as it does about other people. He holds the Force tight around him, the same way he wraps himself up to his head in his blankets at night, and Chirrut can't see through it.
If this is what ordinary people feel like all the time, Chirrut doesn't like it.
"You're an idiot, Malbus. No, you're not even an idiot. You're a fool."
Baze is grinning in earnest now. "Thanks, Chirrut. I knew I could count on you for support."
The door to the Council room slides open, and one of the masters (Master Fisto? It's harder to tell with the grown-up Jedi) walks out.
"Initiate Imwe? The Council can see you now." Oh, yes, it is Master Fisto.
Chirrut stands up, trying not to let his feet drag, trying not to look like a sulky child. Enough of the masters already think he's being difficult on purpose.
Chirrut hears the soft scrape of hair on shoulders that lets him know Baze is turning towards him. "Chirrut? Good luck."
"Good luck to me? You better keep your luck to yourself, you're the one in trouble!"
But as Chirrut walks into the Council Room to be tested again, he appreciates the thought. Even if it is coming from a fool.
III. A Jedi must trust in the Will of the Force
Ilena Xan has been on many tracking missions across the galaxy, from Ryloth to Nal Hutta to Taris. But sometimes, she thinks her most difficult mission is keeping track of the initiates she teaches. While they're generally bright and willing to learn, finding them at short notice is like trying to herd Loth-cats in the dry season.
The week of the Initiate Trials, the initiates are excused from their regular lessons to train as they please. In practice, that means they huddle around their quarters, working themselves into a frenzy over whether they'll be chosen as someone's padawan or put into the Service Corps.
But there are always initiates who actually take the dictates seriously and sequester themselves away. Which is why she's trying to track down Malbus and Imwe with less than an hour before the first trial.
Normally, she would have gone deep into the Force and found their presence. But Imwe is a nightmare to track anywhere if he doesn't want to be found, leaving a trail that's as confusing as it is brilliant. And the Force is clenched so tightly around Malbus that he barely leaves a trail at all. So here she is, a Jedi Master running after children like an errant protocol droid.
She had tried the training grounds first, then the Archives. Both places had been empty, the Jedi who would usually be there flocked in front of the Trial rooms, waiting for the Initiates to enter. Where else could they be?
The mess hall would have been empty enough to clue them in that something was up, the Temple's droids have been sweeping the hallways at her order. It's unlikely that they would have left the Temple; or at least, it's unlikely that Malbus would have left the Temple.
That left the rooftop meditation gardens, the walled-in bubbles that kept out the noises of the city for masters to focus on serene contemplation of the Force. And, just as importantly, for younglings to enjoy the sunshine without disturbing anyone in the training grounds.
She takes the stairs up to the rooftop at a gallop.
The training grounds are warm today under the bright sun, and she has to irritably slap away a stunfly from her robe before it bites her. Although speeders have an air clearance from the Temple, she can hear them honking and buzzing over the city.
The atmosphere is very different when she steps into the meditation garden – the air cooler and quieter, the only sound the murmuring of the quiet stream feeding into the fishpond.
From beyond the buzz of plant life and the slow minds of animals, she can feel two points of light.
As Master Xan creeps around a fern, she hears the last fragment of a sentence,
" – know that we're supposed to focus on the Trials right now, but what do you think being a padawan will be like? Do you think we'll get to go off-planet? Do you think we'll see the other padawans much?"
Oh, that's Imwe all right.
"I haven't really thought about it. I know I'm going into the Service Corps anyways."
She has a clear sightline on the boys now, through the branches of a low-hanging tree. They're both lying on the grass near the fishpond, sunlight drifting over them.
"Baze Malbus! You are not going into Service!"
Baze snorts. "The Force tell you that?"
Chirrut rips out a handful of grass and dumps it directly onto Baze's face. "As a matter of fact, yes!"
Baze spits out grass, sputtering indignantly, and grabs Chirrut by the front of his tunic.
Master Xan pitches her voice loud enough to be heard over the rustling leaves. "Practicing your sparring for the trials, gentlemen?"
Both boys jerk around immediately, clearly surprised. Baze looks as though he's been kicked in the chest which, to be fair, isn't that far from his usual expression.
"It was my idea," he says, automatically.
Master Xan sighs. "Neither of you are in trouble," she says, although at any given time, there's probably something Chirrut Imwe should be in trouble for. "Although you will both be in a lot of trouble if you aren't down at the Trials in twenty minutes."
Now, both boys look alarmed. "That soon?" Chirrut asks.
"Twenty-five, if I'm inclined to be kind. Which I may or may not be." She crosses her arms across her chest, trying to suppress a smile.
They scrambled to their feet, shaking grass out of their hair and tugging their robes so that they hung more neatly.
"And, for the record, Malbus, there is nothing wrong with being chosen for the Service Corps."
Baze looks puzzled. "Oh, no, Master Xan. I know that. I'll be honoured to be part of it."
Malbus is the only Initiate she'd actually believe that from, both because he's never sought to be in the spotlight and because he's an appallingly bad liar. But it's unlikely that Baze, the best student in most of his classes, will be passed over by one of the Consulars.
"But you won't be," Chirrut says, rolling his eyes. "Don't you believe me?"
It might be friendly encouragement, it might be genuine truth. That's one of the things that unsettles the other Jedi Masters about Imwe – he knows things that he has no business knowing. Some of them whisper that he might be the Chosen One, some that he has no place among the Jedi at all.
Master Xan, however, believes there's no use in thinking of him as anything but an ordinary boy. An ordinary boy who sometimes needs to be reminded about the rules. "Initiate Imwe, as touched as I am by your faith in the Force, may I remind you that you both need to be down at the Trials in twenty minutes – fifteen minutes, now."
Chirrut flashes one of his thousand-watt smiles at her, and salutes like a cargo pilot. "Yes, Master Xan. We're on it, Master Xan." He grabs Baze's hand and tugs at him, almost pulling the other initiate off his feet.
Master Xan sighs. There's no chance Imwe is going into the Service Corps, even though he can't use the Force even to move a blade of grass. He would benefit from a master with a keen sense of humour and a healthy distance from Code orthodoxy. Perhaps someone like Aayla Secura, who gives the Council her service but not her soul.
She shakes herself. She doesn't feel the pull to choose a padawan, so this shouldn't be her problem. They will follow the path they fall on, and given their natural talents, they will probably fall on their feet.
Still, she watches the laughing pair until they pass out of her sight.
***
A week after the trials, Jocasta Nu picks Baze as her padawan, to no one's surprise but his own. Master Xan has to hide her smile, seeing him look up at the head Archivist with awestruck eyes, clearly buzzing with nervous excitement.
If Master Xan is not surprised at the master who chooses Baze, she is certainly surprised at the one who chooses Chirrut. Initiate Imwe comes back from the training grounds one night with a grin big enough to fit a landspeeder and the news that Master Yoda has chosen him as an apprentice.
Master Xan knows the choice was not as simple as that. There have been whispers of backroom politicking, that another Jedi had been about to choose Chirrut before the Council overruled them. The whispers are all looped in with the whispers about Chirrut's strange brightness, that perhaps Master Yoda had chosen him because he wanted to keep an eye on him.
Master Xan almost speaks to him, almost asks if another master would perhaps be a better fit for him. Because Master Yoda is an excellent teacher, perhaps the best in the Order, but the teacher has to fit the student. And there's a piece out of place between them, for all their shared knowledge of people and their impish sense of humour.
But she thinks better of it. The Council is composed of the brightest minds in the Order, the ones most used to navigating the waters of the Force. Perhaps they see a facet of the situation that she does not.
So she stays silent, and smiles when they receive their padawan braids. Whoever their masters are, they will be a credit to the Order.
IV. A Jedi should respect and honour their lightsaber as though it were a part of their own being.
Baze breathes in through his nose, and imagines being in a huge library, bigger even than the Archives. He imagines the datacrons pulsing and blinking in the cool silence, a thousand books that will never be opened by human hands.
He picks out an empty one and breathes his worries into it, breath barely warming the cool metal. After he's finished, he encrypts it, locks it back away into its case.
Master Nu had taught him how to do it, the time he had forgotten to be quiet after one of his nightmares. A Jedi is supposed to keep a handle on their feelings, she had said, kindly, but sometimes we need a little help.
When he feels centered , he opens his eyes.
As soon as he does, Feena strikes, training lightsaber whirling through the air. He brings his up defensively, then steps back to counterstrike. Feena is fun to spar against, because her aggressive style means he has to push himself. He parries another blow, twisting his lightsaber slightly so that she's a little off-balance.
And then he nearly drops his own lightsaber, because Chirrut Imwe is standing in the corner of the training grounds, surrounded by a group of eager listeners.
Baze has not been waiting for Chirrut to come back from Ilum. The Force decides how long it takes an initiate to find their lightsaber crystal, and the Force doesn't rush. And neither should a Jedi.
So he finishes off the match, willing himself to focus on it completely.
"You were lousy," Feena says, bluntly, adjusting her string of padawan beads so they sit right in her lekku again. "Something eating you?"
"No," Baze says, pouring a waterskin over his head. Coruscant is never really cool, but today, the heat is unbearable. "Just tired, I guess."
He walks over to the big group. Chirrut is talking as much with his hands as with his voice, obviously telling some dazzling story about his quest to pick out a lightsaber crystal. Chirrut has can turn an ordinary story into something funny enough for the sourest masters to laugh at, riveting enough to keep the tiniest initiates still.
Baze rubs the water out of his eyes, feeling ridiculous.
It's beneath him to be jealous, especially of another padawan, especially of another padawan he's friends with. Jedi are supposed to be proud of the successes of their brothers and sisters, and they certainly aren't meant to envy them over something as superficial as their ease in a crowd. But seeing Chirrut laughing with his head tipped back, radiant, makes his stomach twist guiltily.
It's been like that a lot, recently.
Chirrut scrambles to his feet when Baze has closed half the distance between them, pushing his way through the crowd of padawans.
"Baze!"
Chirrut grins at him, and Baze feels suddenly, uncomfortably present. His tunic is soaked through from the waterskin, and it makes him feel exposed.
He folds his arms across his chest. "How was Ilum?"
Chirrut's eyes open wide, in sincere enthusiasm. "It was beautiful," he breathes. "The crystal there sings, not like the little bits of kyber in our lightsabers, but like a thousand people singing at the same time."
Chirrut's hair has grown longer in the front, and a few strands hang down over his face, damp with sweat. Baze feels the strange urge to brush them away.
"And the Force there! It's Light and Dark and happy and so, so sad. I wish I could have stayed there longer." There's a wistful look on Chirrut's face, and it feels too private to be watching.
Baze looks away. The other padawans are dissipating, no longer held by the magnetic field of Chirrut's attention.
"What about you?" Chirrut asks, “What did you feel on Ilum? You never did tell me.”
Baze shrugs. “I’m not as sensitive to the Force as you are. Just the same things, I guess, but less strong. Why does it matter?”
The truth is, he can’t remember very well. It’s one of the things he put away in the dark library, so it must have been troubling, or overwhelming, or just something he couldn’t put a name on. A Jedi is supposed to be in control of their feelings, so sometimes he puts them away until he figures out how to deal with them. Whenever that happens.
Chirrut cocks his head to the side, flipping the hair out of his eyes. “It matters because I’m interested!”
Baze puts his hands up in front of him, laughing. “You can interrogate me another time! Right now, you owe me, because you just came back from Ilum eleven rotations late! What took you so long?”
Chirrut rolls his eyes, but concedes. “It took me a long time to build this,” he says, and pulls a long metal staff out from inside his robes.
Baze whistles. Chirrut had been planning on making a saberstaff, but neither of them had been sure whether it would work.
“Nice one, Imwe. Totally worth the wait!”
It sounds less casual than it had in his head.
Chirrut grins, the kind of smile that lets Baze know he’s about to be let in on a secret. “Watch this!”
When he activates the saber, Baze has to stifle a gasp.
"Master Yoda said that no one's had a white lightsaber since Master Altis!"
The light is so bright that it's almost painful to look at. Baze leans in closer, studying the beam.
"But it's not white," he says, puzzled, after a moment's inspection.
"What?"
"Well, it is white, if you're not looking very closely. But up close, there's all kinds of little bits of red and purple and green and blue. Oh! And there's yellow!"
The colours alternate, blinking in and out of existence through the white beam. It's almost mesmerising.
"Really?" Chirrut leans in, and Baze wants to take back what he said, swallow it or tear it into pieces too small to read. He always says too much when he's talking to Chirrut.
"I mean, I can see them, but if the masters couldn't see it, it's probably a trick of the light, or – or something wrong with my eyes." But the flickering colours are so lovely that it almost seems a shame.
"No. No, I mean, none of the masters could really look at it. They all said it was too bright."
Baze cocks his head to the side. "It's not that bright. I can look at it just fine."
Chirrut grins, the gorgeous, irreverent grin that Baze envies more than anything. "You're the only one who's been able to."
The knowledge makes Baze feel tight in his skin. It's like what he'd felt when he'd told Chirrut about his own new lightsaber, yellow as the Jedhan sand. Chirrut had half-solemnly told him that yellow was the colour of protectors. For some reason, the word had made him feel shivery all day. He'd had to file it away in his library to focus on Master Nu's lessons.
"Anyways, the whole reason I came over here was because I wanted to spar with you."
Baze steps back. "Oh no, no. I've just been fighting Feena, I'm dead on my feet." He isn't that tired, not really, but the thought of fighting Chirrut is suddenly mortifying.
Chirrut pouts. "Fine, then. But we'll have to duel tomorrow, then. I haven't fought much with the lightsaber, so I need to fight someone I know I can win against."
"Asshole," Baze says, and punches him in the shoulder. It’s too hard, harder than he meant, but he can’t take it back.
He watches Chirrut walk into the middle of the training yard, chatting with one of the older masters whose name Baze can't call to mind.
This is all so stupid. Chirrut is funny, and clever, and bright, and, well, beautiful, but he's always been those things. And Baze has always been happy to just be Baze, unnoticed and unnoticeable. It’s not like he wants the attention that Chirrut’s talents get him. It’s certainly not like he wants the admiring, possessive looks that Chirrut gets from other padawans.
So what does he want of Chirrut?
He drops to the grass in the middle of the training yards, putting his hands on his knees to ground him.
The library is there behind his eyes when he closes them. Whatever he wants, it’s just another thing to be filed away in the darkness of the deep stacks.
V. A Jedi should have a calm and peaceful mind.
Dear Baze, Chirrut types, and then stops. He doesn’t know what he wants to say.
The letters started years ago when they were padawans, as a way to make sure they both remembered their Jedhashi when they were separated. Chirrut would send Baze all the ridiculous hypothetical questions Master Yoda got tired of answering, and Baze would send him back very serious answers, supported by citations from Archival texts.
All the questions he has now are too serious for their old game.
Dear Baze, the place we're stationed is a complete waste of a planet. If the air quality were any worse, we could weaponize it and win the war in months.
He listens to the screen reader say it back to him, and then deletes it. Baze worries too much, and even if he means it to be funny, he'll probably get a message back bothering him to wear the proper breathing equipment so he doesn't get lungrot.
Dear Baze, we have visited some pretty interesting planets recently.
No. Baze would genuinely be interested in hearing all the boring details about trade routes and troop movements, but there's an embargo on sending information about their movements over the holonet. Something about Separatist decoding strategies.
Besides, Eriadu isn't actually that interesting. Just more treaties that no one will listen to, more nights spent on guard duty because they can't really trust anyone on the planet, more fights that leave more and more of them grim and silent.
A question he wants to ask Baze: If one Jedi is worth a hundred droid soldiers, what does that mean when there are hundreds, thousands of droids being manufactured every day?
Baze is half a galaxy away, commanding a small company of clone troopers. He's never able to tell Chirrut where he is, but he makes up for it by telling him about his troopers in exhaustive detail; their names, where their names come from, who gets space-sick at the drop of a robe, who has tattoos they regret. And it's not just the clones in his company that he's friends with; he seems to have met half the army at one time or another.
Chirrut had worried about him at first, whether his company would mistake his silence for standoffishness or weakness. But it seems from his letters that the clones appreciate having a commander who will just listen.
Also, one who shares their love of designing impractically-overpowered weaponry.
Dear Baze, he types. You had better not get yourself blown up by one of your idiotic experimental blasters before I have a chance to see you again. I will be very angry with you if you do.
That's as good a start as any.
Our mission here is going as well as you might expect. We've caught one of the Separatist generals, but she hasn't said much. Master Windu has suggested sending me to talk to her, as he can imagine that she would say anything rather than listen to another hour of my questions. I told him that honest questioning is the source of all knowledge of the Force, to which he replied, "Imwe, I am this close." I think that means I won.
Chirrut stops typing for a moment to listen for feet in the passage, the soft whir of droid treads on the floor outside. No one is there. He's still in the clear.
The diplomatic part of the mission is going less well. Yesterday, one of the generals here thought Master Yoda was Master Secura's padawan, and ordered him to get drinks. Master Yoda did just that, and then casually announced who he was while he was drinking his Coruscanti Whirlwind. The general spat it all over the table and two of the diplomats.
Baze will laugh at that. Chirrut doesn't want to examine exactly how much of what he does is bound up in making Baze laugh.
It's good to be here on a mission with other Jedi. As you can tell, Master Windu is his usual joyful self, saying cheerful things like, "The Republic stands on a knife's edge" and "The Separatists have unprecedented power" and "Imwe, that's really not as funny as you think it is". Master Secura is still wickedly funny. When we see each other again, I will have to tell you what she did when one of the barons here asked for her hand in marriage. And Master Yoda -
Chirrut sits with his hands poised on the keyboard for a moment, and then thumps his head down onto the desk in front of him, defeated. He doesn't know what to say about Master Yoda; the Jedi Master has become yet another thing that confuses him. It feels like Master Yoda is constantly testing him, pushing at him to an end Chirrut doesn't understand. He's sure that if he could just talk to Baze about it, they would be able to figure out an answer.
But that's part of the problem. Half of those lectures and tests come after Chirrut has mentioned Baze.
Master Yoda is as confusing as always. Perhaps, when I am eight hundred years old, I will understand him.
I wish you were here, he types, and doesn't erase it even though he immediately wants to. Having them around isn't the same.
Chirrut never knows exactly what to call the unspoken thing lying between him and Baze, the set of threads floating loose in the Force. Baze is his friend, of course. But Chirrut has lots of friends, friends among the other knights and the masters and even the service droids. And none of them are the same as being friends with Baze.
Fooling around with your fellow knights is normal, as long as it doesn't lead to deeper attachments. And Chirrut has kissed plenty of his friends (well, at least, some). But kissing Baze makes him feel different, as though he could never possibly get close enough. More than once, he's woken achingly hard with the thought of Baze's hands on him, Baze's voice rough in his ear.
Baze, who worries about his clone troopers as indiscriminately as he worries about the smallest children in the Temple. Baze, who is made of closed doors, but who blooms so beautifully in the Force when one of them opens. Baze, who is loyal and kind and always tries to carry the galaxy on his shoulders.
Master Yoda is constantly saying that Jedi need to let go of the things of the world, that they are luminous being and not crude matter. A question Chirrut always has in the back of his mind: If only the Sith deal in absolutes, then why can't we be both?
He types out, No one here thinks my jokes are as funny as you do.
Speaking of jokes, I made up some new ones to tell Master Secura's padawan when we were on guard duty yesterday. How is the Force like gravtape? Because it has a dark side, a light side, and it binds the galaxy together!
So many of the older masters say that he has an uncanny awareness of the way the Force flows around people, that he can hear the most sensitive notes of people hanging in the air. But it never gives him easy answers when he wants them the most.
A question he desperately wants to ask Baze: do you feel this way too?
What do wampas have that no other life-form in the galaxy does? Baby wampas! Why can't you send a Jedi videos as part of a datamessage? Because attachments are forbidden!
He hears a creak and stops typing, fingers hovering over the board. But reaching out into the Force reveals that it's not a person, just the ancient palace shifting part of its load.
It's not that he isn't allowed to be sending this message to Baze. No one has expressly forbidden it, and to him, that's almost the same as permission. But he knows what the Masters would say if they knew about it. That he should be thinking about the mission instead of dwelling on absent friends. That a good Jedi should be like wood, like stone, not something with a beating heart.
A final question: what if you don't care anymore?
Anyways, I really do want to see you again, and not just because I can't wait to kick your ass at sparring again (9-6, eat it!).
He knows the exact exasperated sigh Baze will give when he reads it.
The ending has always been the hardest part of the letter for Chirrut. He can never figure out the right thing to end with. "May the Force be with you," is too formal, and besides, it doesn't flow as smoothly in Jedhashi. He had ended a letter with "Sincerely" once, and Baze had written back immediately, demanding to know who he was and where he was holding Chirrut Imwe hostage. And, well, "love" sounds too big, too much. Baze is cautious, and that's the kind of thing that would terrify him, whether or not he returns Chirrut's affections.
Slowly, he types out Yours, truly.
It's an innocuous greeting, almost professional, if you ignore the comma. The comma makes it into something else, something more. Because he is Baze's, truly, in every way that matters.
He lets his fingers slide off the keyboard, playing the whole message through in the screenreader's slight Coruscanti accent. It doesn't say enough, but then again, none of the messages he sends to Baze ever say enough.
So he taps his finger, sending it away, impossible to take back. He imagines it floating above the poisonous sky of Eriadu, echoing through the stars and finding its way to wherever Baze is, on the far edge of the galaxy.
And for a moment, he can feel the Force shimmering around him, bright and good and true.
VI. A Jedi should respect and honour the wishes of the Jedi Council
When Master Imwe is expelled from the Jedi Order, there are two things everyone knows for sure.
One, that Master Imwe had just returned from a successful diplomatic mission to Naboo. And two, that he had been expelled directly after a meeting with the Council that he himself had called for.
Neither of those facts point towards a dismissal. So rumours run wild.
The clone troopers assume that it was because he was such a loose blaster, listening to the Force more than his superior officers. Some of the more intellectually-inclined clones discuss it over meals, but most of them don't. It's aruetii business, and therefore, not theirs.
The older Masters wonder if the difference between his understanding of the Force and the Council's had finally grown too large for the Temple to contain. Or, as some of them whisper behind closed doors, whether the Council had seen something in Master Imwe that grew away from the Jedi path.
The younglings guess that he said rude words to Master Yoda, or that he finally did a practical joke that was too big, or that he'd spent too much time making them laugh instead of reading the big important books. They guess a lot of things, but they don't really care about the reason. They just want him back.
Chirrut's yearmates do not talk about their suspicions. They do not talk about Master Imwe at all now, though they think of him almost constantly. There is no point in talking about him when they all know the same things.
(That Master Imwe has always loved too much and too fiercely. That Master Imwe would fight any rule he thought was foolish or unfair, whether or not he had a chance of winning. That the Council is prepared to ignore what you are prepared to hide, but that Master Imwe wouldn't, couldn't.)
The inveterate gossips whisper that Master Imwe had fallen to the Dark Side. But that rumour never manages to take hold. Nobody can really picture Chirrut's bright blade turned red, his laughing eyes narrowed in menace.
Whatever else he might be, Master Imwe has always been filled with light.
VII. A Jedi's first loyalty should be to the Order
Whenever Jocasta Nu passes through the great First Hall of the Archives, she takes a moment in front of the statues there. Even the youngest padawans know that they stand for the Lost Twenty, the Masters who chose to leave the Jedi way of life because of irreconcilable differences.
She always pauses before the statue of Yan Dooku, the last of the Twenty. She had known Yan before he left the Order, and had considered him a friend. Sometimes, she studies his eyes for anything that might speak of discontent, examines the lines around his mouth for a hidden twist of malice or cruelty. But the face is the same as it always has been.
She also checks for traps or hidden assailants. One cannot be too careful these days, especially since the disappearance of Master Malbus.
He had been presumed missing three rotations after a few of the clones under his command had seen him walking towards the spacecraft hangars. Apparently, he had looked so grim that his troopers had assumed he was pursuing a threat, and had asked him if there was anything they could do. Master Malbus had said that he had to handle it alone, they said sadly, and they only wished that they could have done more. When asked why they hadn't told the Council sooner, one of the clones had said, with a blankly innocent face, that they had assumed it was Jedi business.
No one had questioned the clones further. Their loyalties were to the Republic, after all, and those loyalties were unimpeachable.
Master Nu had been the first to be informed about her former padawan's disappearance. Her voice had not cracked as she ordered a search of the Archives, and her hands had not shaken when the results came back negative. When she had asked to be the one to search his quarters, her tone had been impeccably dry.
His rooms had been left in their usual state, datapad left neatly charging beside his bedroll. A few books of Jedhan poetry, which his living will said were to be left to her, were the only items worthy of note.
Such was the summary she had given to the Jedi Council.
Several members of the Council may have other ideas. They may have been told that the day before his disappearance, Master Malbus had been seen typing out a datamemo at his desk in the Archives. They may have seen Master Nu leaving his quarters with a face as blank as a funeral mask. They may wonder why his datapad had been blank when she brought it to the Council, as though someone had wiped it clean.
Master Nu doesn't have time for such speculation. As any archivist knows, hypotheses are cheap unless they are supported by facts. And as any archivist knows, the Temple Archives' records are complete. If there were any data that threw Master Malbus' loyalty into question, their chief archivist certainly would have been able to find them.
So Baze Malbus joins the lists of the presumed dead, the Jedi whose bodies no one has been able to find or recover. And the statues of the Lost Twenty stare back at her blankly, telling her nothing.
VIII. A Jedi should not give way to anger or fear
"You did what?" Chirrut hisses, not even bothering to keep his voice low.
A few of the bar's patrons look over at them, then look back. This is not a nice part of Coronet City, and they're probably used to fights near closing time.
"I left," Baze repeats, calmly.
"To come looking for me?" Chirrut asks, with a mocking edge. "I am not some lost padawan who needs to be rescued and brought back to the Temple. The Council has made it very clear that I am not welcome back unless I change my beliefs, which I am both unwilling and unable to do."
"I have not come to bring you back," Baze says, and sits down on the barstool next to him.
The Rodian behind the bar comes up to them, asking if they want anything. Baze demurs. He doesn't know whether Chirrut has been drinking, but his own resistance to alcohol is legendarily low.
Chirrut pinches the bridge of his nose. "So you really did leave, then."
"I left a note for Master Nu." He pauses. "Well, more of an essay. I suppose it was too long to be called a note."
Chirrut laughs, knife-edged with hysteria. "You left an essay. Of course you did. What else could I have expected from thorough, thoughtful Master Malbus? He leaves the Order he dedicated his life to with a week's notice, but at least he provides citations!"
Baze doesn't say anything.
"Go back," Chirrut says, voice cold.
"What?"
"I said you should go back. Go back to the Temple, say that whatever you wrote was a mistake, an error in judgement. They'll take you."
"No."
"So that's how it is? Reliable Master Malbus, abandoning his charges and his troops to go off on a fool's errand?"
That one hurts. But it's so obviously meant to hurt, to get him to drop his position and go in for the attack. And the bitterness in Chirrut's voice is twisted in with pain.
So he just says, "I told Twenties I was resigning my position as commander before I left. My company knows what I'm doing."
He would have had to resign even if he hadn't left. A month ago, Whisper had let it slip that he was just ten years old, and Baze had been horrified to hear that few of the clones were any older. Even if they were meant to age faster than humans normally did, the fact remained that they were children, not even old enough to be padawans yet.
"I'm not going back."
Chirrut's eyes narrow until the cloudy blue is as tight as the beam of a lightsaber. "I could make you."
Baze almost laughs. "You couldn't. Even if you would, you couldn't. I'm the only one in the Temple as stubborn as you are. And I say I'm not going back."
Chirrut's face collapses down on itself. Baze has seen Chirrut angry, sad, elated, proud, afraid.
He's never seen him look helpless.
"Baze. Don't martyr yourself over this."
And the last gear clicks into place.
"I'm not being a martyr, Chirrut. If I were, I would have stayed."
He swallows and looks down at the floor.
"I didn't know it before...before you left. I didn't understand." Until the moment Plo Koon had pulled him aside with a grave look on his face. Then he'd understood everything at once. "I don't want to be part of the Order without you. I don't want to be anywhere without you, really."
He can't look up, he'll lose his composure.
"And I don't care if you think it's a bad decision. Master Seshi says that Jedi need to let people make their own choices, even if they're bad ones. And if the Order is stupid enough not to want you, then it's not even a choice."
He looks up and crosses his arms in front of his chest, daring Chirrut to argue.
Instead, Chirrut laughs, and it's like watching the sun break over Coruscant again. "Baze Malbus," he manages, finally. "You're impossible. I don't understand how the masters thought I was the stubbornest, most mule-headed youngling in the Temple, because you're a thousand times worse."
Baze has seen Chirrut's smile brighter, unshadowed by sadness. But he has never seen it this soft.
"I mean it. Look at my face if you think I don't."
He doesn't know how else to ask Chirrut to touch his face. He hasn't figured out how to say the complicated things yet. He's only just figured out how to think them.
Chirrut stretches a hand out, slowly, and it hurts Baze's heart all over again to see how hesitant he is.
"I'm not going back to the Temple," he says, almost stuttering as Chirrut's thumb traces the ridge of his lower lip. "There isn't anything there for me now. I'll follow you to the kriffing Outer Rim if you try to stop me." He pauses. "I mean, if you want..."
"Of course I want," Chirrut answers, so sincerely that Baze almost has to look away again. His hand curves around to cup Baze's cheek. They've kissed before, in quiet parts of the Temple, but somehow, this feels like more. "Maybe it's selfish, but I do."
The bartender walks up to them, very, very cautiously. "A-are you sure that you don't want anything?"
Baze notes the vibroblade hidden in his sleeve. He hadn't even realized what a confusing show they must have been putting on for the rest of the bar, or what a nerve-wracking one. Two Jedi getting into a fight at the end of the evening was probably high on the list of things a bartender didn't want to experience.
"Yes," he says. "And I'm sorry for all of that. My partner and I," and Chirrut beams as he says it, "were just having a discussion."
“I think,” Chirrut says, “I think that I’m ready to leave.”
The street outside the bar is damp and calm, the torrential rain earlier driving all but the most determined criminals inside. The air smells green, the breeze drifting in from the jungle.
Chirrut stops under a streetlamp. “Where next?” he asks.
“I told you, I’m the one following you here.”
Chirrut rolls his eyes. “And what if I wander into an active volcano? I’m told there are plenty of those on Corellia.”
“Well, then, I guess I’ll have to learn how to swim in lava,” Baze says, grinning widely.
Chirrut doesn’t even bother to rise to that one.
They stand there for a moment, Baze watching one of the planet’s moons drift through the ragged clouds.
He doesn’t have the right words for what he wants to say, in either Basic or Jedhashi. But he needs Chirrut to understand that even if the Jedi didn't want him, Baze always will. So he reaches for Chirrut’s hand and slides his own into it, feeling his skin catch on familiar calluses.
They walk out of the circle of light together, out into the darkness of the city.
IX. A Jedi should be attuned to disturbances in the Living Force
When Chirrut remembers that day, it's always disjointed, the moments like a broken string of silka beads.
First: the terrible note in the Force, harsh and discordant, as though the air itself is bleeding.
Chirrut has felt people die before, the Force swirling through and around the emptiness to bring them back into itself. This is worse. People are slipping away so fast that even the Force can't fill the emptiness, leaving blank spots in its fabric.
Behind the curtain of pain, there are still people in the marketplace, walking and talking and laughing and buying. Chirrut can feel them, but the pain flowing through the Force drowns them out.
"Baze," he manages, through the pain. "The Jedi are in danger."
Second: Baze has found a company of clone troopers, and is trying to explain what has happened. Chirrut can catch bits of what he's saying, but he's more focused on what's happening unseen between the troopers, an incoming undertow.
Which is why he brings his lightsaber up in front of Baze, early enough to deflect the first blaster bolt before it sings home.
Then: Chirrut has just parried two bolts when he hears Baze's shout of pain behind him, followed by the sound of his knees hitting the packed dirt.
Chirrut whips around, homing in on Baze, on whoever has hurt him. Two troopers standing over him, easily taken out by an arced swing of his lightsaber.
He takes advantage of the momentary reprieve to pull Baze behind a wall.
"It's just my lightsaber," Baze hisses, but Chirrut knows it's more. There's pain, and the song of the kyber has dimmed.
He takes the lightsaber from his unresisting hand, and hears an ominous rattling from inside of it.
"Baze," he breathes, "the kyber," but by then, the surviving troopers have found their position.
Finally: the marketplace is almost silent.
One of the troopers is still alive, choking blood onto the packed dirt. Baze is beside him, holding his head.
"Good soldiers follow orders," the man says, and Baze must have taken his helmet off because his voice is human again. "Good soldiers follow orders."
"What was the order?" Baze asks, desperately. "Why did you..."
"Good soldiers follow orders," the man says, and Chirrut realizes that he's crying, thick wrenching sobs. "G-good soldiers follow orders."
"What's your name?" Baze asks, in a voice that has been scraped bare. Chirrut has never heard anything like it. "What's your name, trooper?"
"Good soldiers follow orders," he repeats, more sob than speech. "Good soldiers follow-"
There are no more ripples in the Force.
X. A Jedi should protect the helpless and uphold justice in the galaxy
Stim doesn't want to be doing this. He very much doesn't want to be doing this. But he picked the endurance card from the pack his company had shuffled, so he's stuck with it.
He knocks on the new captain's door, rapping out twice fast and once slow, the way troopers are supposed to. He's in enough trouble already without messing up protocol.
The man who opens the door isn't wearing a helmet, and he almost gasps.
"Come in. CC-3347, isn't it?"
Too late, he remembers he's supposed to salute. "Y-yes sir!"
The officer sighs. "Not sir. Just Captain Daggers. Just come in and make your report."
Stim walks into the office, trying not to stare at the officer. Or rather, trying not to stare at his face, which marks him out as a genuine Fett. Probably one of the last originals.
"It's about the arrests, sir - Captain. Or, well, the attempted arrests."
The officer sighs, again, and sits back down in his hoverchair. "Attempted?"
Stim can feel his hands starting to shake, and he clenches them behind his back. "Yes, sir. Attempted, sir."
The officer pinches the bridge of his nose, his famous nose on his famous face. He must have been very good to make it out of the post-Republic years without being remaindered.
"We sent in two platoons of armed troopers to take a few unarmed rebels, and you're telling me the arrest was unsuccessful?"
The people they'd arrested hadn't looked much like rebels to Stim. For starters, rebels tended to look better-fed.
But if Captain Daggers said they were rebels, then they were rebels.
"Um. Yes, sir. Captain. There was a complication, Captain."
"That complication had better have been a kriffing rancor with wings."
"No, si-Captain. Two men." He realizes exactly how unimpressed the Captain must be. "One of them had some kind of plasma blade, cut right through our armour."
The blade hadn't been the scary bit. Stim had seen things cut through trooper armour before, when they were stationed on Mandalore and Steelix caught a vidroblade between the ribs. It was that the man had appeared out of thin air, taking out Scorch and Click before he'd even seen him moving. He'd seemed to know everything they were going to do even before they did it. And his eyes had been as hard as ice.
The officer's face refocuses. "A plasma blade, you say?"
"Yessir."
"And the other man?" Captain Daggers asks. Stim feels like the captain already knows what he's going to say.
"We didn't get a good look at him," he admits. "He was shooting from too far away. We didn't even know he was there until Beta - I mean, CC-3340, tried to take one of the civilians hostage, and he shot him right through the hand." He pauses before saying the next part. "And CC-3321 says, I don't believe him, but he says he thinks he was shooting with a repurposed At-At cannon.
Captain Daggers squeezes his eyes shut. "Yes," he says, simply. "It was an At-At." He worries at a knuckle with his front teeth for a moment, then asks. "You're a loyal Imperial trooper, right?"
"Of course," Stim says. He might not be the sparkiest blaster in the arsenal, but even he's not that dumb.
"Well, you know the myth of the Jedi, right? The Jedi that absolutely do not and never did exist?"
Stim isn't sure whether or not he should know about it. "Can't say, sir," he says, striving for perfect honesty.
"The man with the blade is one of those nonexistent Jedi. The Jedi that absolutely do not and never did exist. Catch my meaning, CC-3347?"
"Yessir." Stim doesn't know much about Jedi, but he has a lot of experience with facts that both do and don't exist.
"Him and his friend have a rap sheet about a mile long, in at least seven different systems. Mostly for destruction of Imperial property and aiding and abetting rebels. They keep sending Inquisitors after them, but so far, no luck. Can't catch them, can't kill them, can't track them. It's like hunting smoke."
"Have you seen them?"
"No, but they caused a real kriffing nuisance for one of my divisions a cycle or so ago, when we were stationed at Kashyyyk. Some of the labour even got away."
Stim gulps. The labour camps on Kashyyyk are locked up tighter than a trandoshan's mouth. He doesn't even want to think about what had happened to the troopers who had let prisoners escape
"They're real hardcases, career terrorists. If the Inquisitors were any good at their job, they would've put them away by now, Jedi or not." He sighs. "Did all of the rebels escape?"
"Yessir."
"Typical." He looks away from Stim, rolling his eyes. "Bunch of kriffing newbatchers, not enough brains to aim and breathe at the same time. Well, unless you have anything to report, you can return to your company. If you see any more Jedi, don't forget to wave goodbye to them for me."
Stim, a little annoyed, tries for sarcasm. "You mean the Jedi that don't exist, sir?"
Captain Daggers shoots him a look that could wither durasteel. "That will be all for now, CC-3347."
Stim leaves the room as fast as he possibly can.
Well, the meeting hadn't been a total wash. He'd have a story to bring back to the rest of his company, the story of the two ghost-men who disappeared like magic and haunted the dreams of generals.
Stormtroopers always love a good horror story.
XI. A Jedi should always be mindful of the Living Force
"You should be safe now."
The Togrutan girl laughs, but it's a tired, insincere laugh that pierces Chirrut's heart.
"Just like that?" she asks, incredulous. "They've been hunting us for months and, just like that, whoever sent them won't send anyone else?"
He can feel her attention divided, one eye searching the alleyway for exits, the other one firmly on her younger sister.
"Not when the Empire think they are hunting you down on another planet. My husband is scrambling their communicators so they should send messages that they are both very much alive, and very much not here."
Behind him, the buzzing and frequent pops tell him that Baze is still working on it.
He hadn't bothered to drag the bodies of the Inquisitors away first, because neither of the girls seemed troubled by them. The older girl had actually nudged the closer one with her foot several times, as if making sure that he was actually dead.
"So they were from the Empire, then?" She sounds more resigned than surprised.
"Yes, I'm afraid they were."
"Who were they?" she finally asks.
"The Inquisitors, they call themselves. Force-users loyal to the Emperor." His mouth twists sour. "They exist to hunt down the last of the Jedi. And anyone else who is strong in the Force."
"Like Shana?"
Chirrut can feel the younger girl behind him, watching Baze at work. Her presence in the Force is warm, like a stone left in the sunshine, and curious.
They've had plenty of run-ins with Inquisitors over the years; some hunting, some being hunted. This one had been a tip-off from one of Baze's contacts on Ryloth, that they were after a young Force-sensitive. Chirrut had been disheartened to realize exactly how young.
"Yes. Like Shana. And like me."
Baze walks up behind him, dropping a hand onto his shoulder. He must be finished, then.
At one time, he would have been able to guess what Baze was thinking even without that brief contact. But now, Baze is an absence in the Force, like the stump of a broken branch.
Chirrut nods, and lets the older girl know that they need to move out.
He's worried that once they start walking, it will be impossible to keep the younger girl out of earshot. But he can hear her circling around Baze, light steps to his heavier ones.
"It's called a lightsaber," Baze says to her. "And no, you can't touch it."
Hearing Baze's voice without his presence in the Force still aches like a newly-lost tooth. Chirrut can from his voice that he's tired, and that the blow he'd taken to the arm hurt more than he'd admitted. But nothing more.
"What does it do?" She skips ahead two steps, and then slows down to stay even with him.
Chirrut doesn't hear Baze sigh, but he can feel where the sigh would go. "Nothing, now. It doesn't work."
"Can't you fix it?"
Any adult asking him that would have been met with an icy silence. Instead, he stops walking, and says, "No. It's too broken."
The cracks running through the kyber have dimmed the blade, made it more heat than light. Baze says that it's too volatile to be practical, and that his cannon has better range anyways. But Chirrut knows that there's more behind the refusal.
"Okay. Can I see your blaster?"
This time, Baze does sigh.
"Do you know what would have happened...what would have happened to Shana if we'd been caught?"
The older girl is as tense as a felinx ready to spring. Chirrut thinks about how best to answer.
"She's still young enough that they would have believed her to have potential. They would have brought her to their school, to be trained."
He doesn't say more, though he guesses at it. All the Inquisitors he's met have felt hot and bitter in the Force, shot through with jagged scar tissue. They are clearly people who have turned hurt into hurting, ruin into ruining.
"Trained," the older girl repeats, dully. Chirrut can tell she's guessed at the meaning gaping behind it.
"Is there any way she can...stop being like she is? Like, a way to turn it off?" Unspoken behind it is love, and terror. Chirrut doesn't even need to go into the Force to sense that.
Chirrut sighs. "No way that you would want to try. It would mean her cutting herself off from the Force."
"What?"
Chirrut grasps for words. Without a connection to the Force, it will be difficult to explain to her.
"Imagine that someone has cut off the feeling in your arm. You can still tell that it's there, even move it a little, but it's numb. Are you with me so far?"
She nods, then says, "Oh, sorry, yes."
"Now, imagine that numbness inside of your soul. A part of you cut off, but still present enough that you can feel where it should be."
She shudders, shooting a nervous glance back at her sister. "That sounds horrible."
"It's a path that few would choose." Chirrut only knows of two people in Jedi history who have done it to themselves, and only one who has done it to himself deliberately. "A last resort."
Baze had listed his reasons as though he were conducting a trial. That the Jedi had doomed the galaxy with their arrogance. That the Emperor and his masked enforcer had devoured the galaxy with their fear and greed. That maybe using the Force meant that you saw everything as something to be used.
Those had been his stated reasons, but there had been others. Baze has always been so sensitive under his hard shell, his anger little more than grief wearing armour. And there is so much to grieve about, these days.
He clears his throat. "Force willing, we can help her without going that far."
The girl stops in her tracks, the Force tightening around her like a muscle. "Are you going to take her away?" she asks, and he can hear her shift her hands into fists.
It's foolish, he knows, that his heart is broken by such small things when the Empire has taken so much. But it's the small things whose loss hurts the most – the carelessness in the voices of children, the way people talked about the future as though it might happen, his husband's steady, reassuring presence in the Force.
"No," he says, gently, trying not to let the sadness into his voice. "Your sister should stay with you. That's where she belongs, not with two old men who wander around getting into trouble with the law."
She breathes out, and her shoulders unclench
"I mean that I can teach her how to hide herself in the Force so no one will come for you again. And how to defend herself, in case..."
"In case anyone does," the older girl finishes, sounding very tired. Her presence in the Force is dark and muted.
Her younger sister, on the other hand, has gone even brighter. And Chirrut hears the footsteps from behind them, only one set.
It takes the older girl a moment to notice.
"Shana, get down from there!" she finally yells. "He's already carrying – oh, for the love of the Force, you can't beg a kaadu ride off every friendly adult we meet!"
"I didn't beg, he offered!" Shana shouts back, the purest sound of offended young dignity. Her voice comes from so high up that she must be perched right on Baze's shoulders, far out of reach of his cannon.
"She couldn't walk fast enough," Baze says, gruffly. "Stormtroopers would've caught us in no time." He says it as if he's trying to excuse himself.
Chirrut smiles, slowly. Even after all these years, Baze is a terrible liar.
"I am so sorry," the older girl says, face in her hands, sounding for a moment like any exasperated older sister. "She's not normally like this."
"I am sure my husband will be able to deal with the terrible burden of carrying your sister for a little longer," he manages, trying not to laugh.
Behind him, he can hear Shana giggling, likely at something Baze has told her.
Sometimes, it feels as thought Baze is far away, that the walls he's put around his grief won't let anyone in. The Jedi taught their students to push their softness down into themselves, and maybe it's the Order's last irony that Baze had succeeded so bitterly.
But sometimes he's right there. When they get medical supplies through an Imperial blockade, when Chirrut can draw lovely, choked noises out of him in the soft bed of a safehouse, when they argue about the Force so fondly that it's barely an argument at all. When Baze, exhausted and heartsore, carries a little girl through a war zone.
"After all, the Force is with us," he says, and he's only partly joking.
XII. A Jedi should bring hope to those they meet.
Baze keeps a list of the five worst situations he has ever tried to sleep through, and while this is not one of them, it's getting closer by the minute.
The scientist's daughter is sitting angled away from him, but he can see her picking at her cuticles, the one on her left thumb already red and weeping. . She looks like someone about to start a fire, or a fight.
The pilot looks focused, but it's a glassy focus Baze knows as the first stages of shock, and his knuckles are white on the controls. When they had flown away from Jedha, he had asked Chirrut if they were from Jedha City too, with a voice as dull as a bore blaster. Chirrut had said they were, but that hadn't really been what he had been asking. While they could mourn for the dead, they couldn't mourn for a home. Only a place that could have been home in another life.
Of the things that the Jedi have taken from them, it's strange that the Order has taken this grief.
The captain has disappeared entirely, into the guts of the ship. Maybe it's because he doesn't want to look anyone in the eyes, maybe it's just because he doesn't want Jyn to swing at him.
Even without a connection to the Force, the air in the cabin feels impossibly heavy.
The droid turns to the rest of the crew. "I have recalculated our odds and, good news! It is 10% less likely that we will burn up in hyperspeed!"
Bodhi smiles weakly. "That's good."
"Of course, that's because we are now 12% more likely to simply run out of fuel before we get to a viable port, meaning that we will continue to slow down until our life support systems shut-"
"Kay, can you do us a favour?" Cassian asks, popping his head up through the ladder hatch. "Stop talking, before he faints and you have to pilot us yourself."
"I am not about to faint," Bodhi says, faintly.
From the look on his face, Baze worries he might try to fight someone for his honour, even if the only thing he can do right now is be sick on them.
And into the middle of this comes the distinctive, low sound of Chirrut meditating out loud.
Baze sighs, dragging his palms up his face. Someone is going to try to kill him, and then Baze is going to have to handcuff them to the ship, and then he certainly isn't going to get any sleep.
Instead, Jyn asks quietly, "You were a Jedi, right?"
"Am, not were," Chirrut says, so imperiously that Baze has to bite down a smile despite himself. "The Order may not exist any more, but that doesn't mean the Jedi are gone."
Jyn rolls it around in her head. "My mother was – well, she wasn't a Jedi, she didn't make it. But she grew up there. She must have been young with you, right?"
Baze runs through his registry of faces, trying to see if there were any that had Jyn's eyes, her steady jaw. But his memory has warped and melted in the past twenty years.
"What was her name?"
"Lyra. Lyra – not Erso, Daress. She was in the mining branch of the Service Corps, if that helps."
Chirrut lights up. "Oh, Lyra Daress! Of course."
"You knew her?"
There's a terrible yearning in Jyn's question, and Baze lays an arm over his eyes to block out more of the light. He thinks of hands braiding his hair while he squirmed, someone placing a baby in his arms, a half-broken memory of a voice.
"She shone brightly in the Force. Knew more about kyber than almost anyone else in the Temple. Also, kept getting in trouble for sneaking out at night to look at the stars."
"Really?"
"Oh, yes. The masters caught her every time, but she always said it was worth the trouble to be able to see them. She knew the name of every one of them, and could find her way back to the Temple by them, wherever she was."
"Wherever she was," Jyn repeats, with a strange twist in her voice.
"One time she got lost with a group of younglings, on a day trip away from the Temple. One of them tried to sneak away from the masters, and the others followed, and so they all ended up getting lost together. By the time night came, they were all so afraid, but she used the stars to help them find their way back home."
Looking over at Bodhi, Baze can see him tilting an ear backwards, listening to the story while he taps away at the controls.
"Was she happy there?"
A child asking after her mother's happiness. It's so sad that Baze almost laughs.
"Happy enough, I think. She enjoyed the lessons, even if she missed home. She loved debating with the masters. She had her ideas about the Force, and no one was going to change them."
From his perch next to the pilot's seat, Kaytoo snickers.
"And she loved looking after the other younglings. They used to follow her everywhere, like Quor'sav chicks following their mother." Jyn laughs quietly. "No, really. She would have a line of little initiates behind her, all different species."
Cassian has poked his head partway out of the hatch, so focussed that his face almost loses its pinched look. He reminds Baze more than ever of Twenties and Jolt and Whisper, of his friends among the clone troopers. He has the same eyes, the eyes of someone who has been young but never a child.
"It certainly didn't hurt that this was around the same time the masters found the still hidden in one of the meditation gardens behind the statue of Master Farfalla."
No one laughs. They are all too tired for laughter. But there are a few weak smiles.
Baze knows his husband better than they do. So when Jyn excuses herself to ask Bodhi a question, Baze sits up and asks Chirrut in Jedhashi, "And how much of that was true?"
Chirrut's smile turns wry. "None of it," he replies. "I never even knew her. She must have been too young." He gestures at the rest of their crew. "But it's how it should have been, right?"
And Baze can't argue against that. It's how it should have been, how it would have been in a kinder universe, one with an eye for happy coincidences.
"Oh, go on, you unrepentant old liar. Dazzle them."
He brings Chirrut's fingers lightly to his lips, to show his husband that he's smiling.
When Jyn comes back over, he launches into another story, this one about something to do with Master Yoda and an argumentative initiate who certainly was not Chirrut Imwe. By this point, everyone is listening without disguising it, eyes fixed on Chirrut as he draws the story out with his hands.
Sometimes, it's frustrating that Chirrut takes no pains to disguise that he is a Jedi, a habit which has gotten them into more than one unnecessary firefight. But he can't really begrudge his beautiful, exasperating, impossible husband for it. Faced with darkness, Chirrut's defiance has always been to burn brighter.
Even after all these years, Baze can remember the Jedi Code word-for-word, can still recall the whir of the datacron under his fingers as he memorized it. There had been hundreds of rules, shoulds and shouldn'ts and musts and needs, and he can still recite them all, even after the Jedi's legacy has gone rotten in his mouth. Chirrut has always picked the rules that he thought were important, and ignored the others. But Baze thinks that if the Jedi were ever capable of being anything good, then Chirrut, loving, irreverent, faithful Chirrut, would have been the best of them.
With his husband's voice so close to him, Baze closes his eyes.
XIII. A Jedi should be able to let go of their attachments.
There are many theories about what happens after death.
On Mandalore, most people believe in a hall of heroes, a place of celebration for those who died in battle. Nabberians tend to believe in reincarnation, the Jedi believe in complete unity with the Force, and Jedha has (had) too many beliefs about death to name.
Ship captains have their own ideas, a kind of quiet, unspoken religion.
In a shipboard marriage, the vows rarely mention death doing anything part. Most captains have seen too much of the cold, uncaring expanse of space, how easily a life can be cut short. Anything that ends with death isn't built sturdy enough for them.
Instead, the captain asks the universe to let the partners stay together in the Force, always. To let their atoms reunite after death.
Most captains say it with a knowing twist of their mouths, a wry sidelong smile. The universe is a big, careless place that hurts people without pattern or logic, and it's hard to imagine it welding two people back together after they've been separated.
But every once and a while, they really believe what they're saying.
Like when two young Jedi ask a cargo pilot to marry them in the moments before hyperspeed, eyes shining, hands clasped so tightly it seems like they'll never let go.