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Baze doesn’t know why he has come.
Even before the fall of the Temple, Jehda had never been the most exciting planet, and there was no job or target to lure him here now. There was nothing for him here, not anymore, not after nearly 5 years. But when his last job was settled (a bloody contract on an even bloodier crime lord, no frills, no complications, no guilt), he had immediately booked passage back to what he wished he didn’t still think of as “home.”
He realized the moment he stepped out of the ship that he didn’t have a plan.
So here he was, using the considerable skills at his disposal to follow a blind monk around a withering planet in secret. He told himself it wasn’t really a visit. He just wanted to ensure Chirrut was okay. Baze knew he was alive — his remaining contacts on Jehda had assured him of that much throughout the years — but it wasn’t so unusual to want to see evidence with his own eyes.
Still, he was looking from a distance. Speaking to him would only make it harder when he had to leave again. And he would be leaving again.
It wasn’t that he didn’t want to see him. He had missed Chirrut — like a severed limb or a lost way of life. His first sight of him, playing the gentle beggar for the crowded slums, had felt like dousing frozen skin in warm water. It hurt. But in those first moments, re-memorizing familiar features with new lines, Baze felt more like himself than he had in a decade.
And that was the problem. He couldn’t afford to be that man again. Wasn’t sure he knew how. That man was gentle and steady, held delicate green life in his hands and young initiates on his shoulders and laughed as easily as he trusted. That man held galaxies worth of affection and yearning for Chirrut. He had tucked those feelings away when he’d left, not wanting to mar them with fingerprints of dirt and blood.
Could he hold those feelings now without staining them? Could the man he has become even feel that way again, after so long? He wasn’t sure he had the strength to find out, and he was sure it would be a mistake to try. After all, even assuming he still found welcome here, he would be leaving again. There was nothing left for him.
From where he leans watching Chirrut chat easily with a fruit vendor, afternoon sun warming his features, Baze catches a flash of his brushfire grin and quirked brows. His heart drops. He ducks around the corner, breath shallow and mind bleak. He shouldn’t be here.
The Baze that Chirrut had known no longer exists.
With no warning, a hand clamps his arm, and he is three blocked blows into an altercation before a familiar voice drops low into his ear. “It’s me.”
Baze’s hands fall as he takes in Chirrut’s drawn face, Chirrut’s body nearly pressed to his in the cramped space. A week’s worth of watching and thinking suddenly very real and very demanding. “What —”
“I wanted to give you time, my friend, I did,” Chirrut explains in a rushed tumble. “But I lost my patience and began to fear you would leave this planet without speaking to me.”
Of course Chirrut had known.
Baze stares mutely as the moment lengthens, and Chirrut gives him a gentle smile. “You did not use to be so indecisive.”
That snaps him from his daze. He pulls his arm from Chirrut’s grip and growls, “Perhaps you no longer know me.”
Chirrut’s face collapses into an expression Baze cannot remember seeing before: Fear and pain laid over with fury, all plain to see on features more used to calm assurance or impish joy.
“Baze Malbus, I knew the moment you landed on our little planet. I have known your every step since then. You may not know yourself these days, but do not imagine you are so mysterious to one who knows the rhythm of your heart as I know my own.”
With a harsh breath that reminds Baze painfully of a brash initiate first mastering meditation, Chirrut’s face and voice gentle. “Please, you must at least share a meal with your old friend before you leave again.”
Baze, pulled from his own self-loathing by the outburst, finds he would do anything to avoid seeing Chirrut’s face so broken open again.
“I … yes, of course.”
Chirrut’s smile is reserved, but it is there, and he places a hand on Baze’s arm briefly to guide him back out into the street. They walk in silence to a partially collapsed building that serves as Chirrut’s current shelter. Baze shudders to see it, but he follows Chirrut inside without comment.
Chirrut gestures Baze to a patchwork pillow on the floor, eyes lingering for a moment in the general area of the repeater canon on his back, before he busies himself heating up water for tea. Baze finds he has to take a few breaths before he can convince himself to undo the straps of the weapon and leave it in the corner.
The moments pass in easier silence as Chirrut clatters around the collection of equipment that serves as a kitchen. Before Baze can summon words, Chirrut has settled on his own cushion and placed a plate of steamed buns and two mugs of tea between them.
“Forgive me for my earlier outburst, my friend,” Chirrut says with a ghost of his usual smile. “It’s just, I had so hoped to see you again.”
Baze is helpless against the spike of bitterness and fear that rises in him at the cautious affection in Chirrut’s words. “Hoped? The Force did not tell you I was coming?”
Chirrut’s blue-white eyes pin him for a long moment, looking through him as they often had, before he speaks, still gentle. “Perhaps I had my own crisis of faith in your absence. I could not quite trust in the inevitability of something I so desired.”
He sips his tea for a long, quiet moment. “But now, here you are. And it is good to see you again. Is it not?”
Baze is cracking open, thawing in the presence of care he no longer believed in, no longer deserved. And even to protect himself, he finds he can not lie to Chirrut in this.
“Yes,” he says, voice rough and not nearly gentle enough. “Yes, it is good to see you.”
Chirrut’s answering smile is radiant.
They eat across from each other and, for all the years between, it feels little different from the thousands of times they’ve done so before. Chirrut keeps his voice light as he catches Baze up on the news from the years he has been gone. Even with his light touch, it is clear the Empire’s occupation has not been kind to Jehda.
When they finish, Baze rises to gather the dishes, but Chirrut stops him with a warm hand to his wrist, face titled up toward him. It is silent for a beat, and then Chirrut’s thumb slides achingly gently over the thin skin where his pulse jumps.
Baze’s breath stutters from him all at once, and he asks, disbelieving, “Still?”
“My regard for you has never changed, my friend. It never will.”
Baze’s voice is hard as he asks, “Do you know what I’ve been doing these years?”
“I have an idea. You are not the only one who has struggled, who has changed. But …”
“But?”
“You are still Baze, and I am still Chirrut.” As if it was that simple. Perhaps it was.
Baze’s sob is a dry, broken thing. “I’m not sure that I am.”
“My Baze,” Chirrut soothes, and this is more than Baze expected, more than he deserves. Something warm and old rises in his chest, smelling of sweet incense and shaped like Chirrut.
His throat closes in a panic, images rising unbidden before him. Crimson acolyte robes burning the Temple’s garden, blood boiling from a plasma wound, Chirrut’s shoulder a wet black bruise the day he left. Caution makes one last grasp at control, and he tugs free from Chirrut’s grip and steps away.
“I can’t just … You don’t know what you’re — I can’t.” Baze swallows around the self-loathing thick in his voice and struggles to explain. But Chirrut rises with a scowl and interrupts.
“Don’t. You don’t get to do this, not this time.” He snaps, harsh but tightly reigned. “If you really still need whatever it is you found out there, fine. If you no longer desire my company, fine. But if you wish to stay here, with me, then do not deny yourself because you think you should.”
He steps into Baze’s space again, a hand ghosting over his shoulder. “I will accept it if you leave again. But if you do, I fear we will not see each other again in this life. All I ask is that you do not make this decision lightly.”
Chirrut’s sightless gaze pins him in place until he nods, and then, frowning at himself, clears his through enough to gruff an assent.
There is a flash of Chirrut’s soft smile and the pressure of a hand on his shoulder, before Chirrut whirls away in a burst of energy, gesturing carelessly behind them. “But you don’t have to choose right now. You should rest.” Chirrut does not face him as he speaks. “Take the pallet, I wish to meditate tonight.”
Baze stands slowly, feeling all five years in every limb. Taking off his armor feels like an admission, but as he curls into the bedding, vision filled with Chirrut’s back as he meditates facing the door (as he often did in those early, dangerous days just after the Temple fell), he feels safer than he has since stepping foot off Jehda.
He sleeps.
***
Baze wakes in the dark, early hours of the morning, internal clock not yet adjusted to local time. He lays in the silence for a moment, orienting himself to the closest exit and the corner his canon waits in, before he glances over to where Chirrut sits motionless in deep meditation.
He had woken to the same sight countless times over the years. But here, now, it is enough to make up his mind.
He stands slowly, gliding on silent footsteps over to his gear. He might as well not have tried — he never could elude Chirrut. He sighs when he feels him materialize behind him.
“Are you leaving?” Chirrut’s voice and face are steady, placid. Anyone who knew him less would miss the panic straining at the edges. His chuckle is dark. “Don’t worry, I won’t beg. I’ve made fool enough of myself already.”
“No,” Baze corrects him forcefully, voice low. “This time, I am the fool. And … I will happily beg for your forgiveness.”
Chirrut stills for a long moment, brows furrowed. Then he shakes his head and sways just slightly closer. “For leaving? You don’t need it. I could not leave, and you could not stay. I’ve always understood that.”
“Then for staying away. For trying so hard not to come back.”
“You’re here now,” Chirrut insists, his tone final. “Will you stay?”
Baze only hesitates a moment. “If you’ll have me.”
“Then that’s all that matters.”
Chirrut laughs, face light with relief and joy, and sweeps Baze into a hug. It’s more physical contact than Baze has had in years — not counting close combat — and though he returns the hug immediately, his movements are stiff and unsure.
Chirrut squeezes him gently, once, before drawing back. His grin is as steady and calm as Baze remembers.
“I’m not expecting everything to be the same, my dear,” Chirrut assures him, voice as soft as the fingers lingering on his shoulders. “I don’t want anything from you that you don’t freely give. I just want you here, with me. The rest, well … we will see what comes.”
Baze breathes steadily. He does not know how easily they will find a new equilibrium. What it will look like. But it is hard to maintain doubt in the face of Chirrut’s confident proclamations.
“We may not have a choice in how long we stay together,” Baze reminds him. “Jehda is still under occupation. I’m not sure we will be much safer together.”
Chirrut shrugs, unbothered. “Nothing will tear apart what the Force has brought together.”
“I don’t believe in the Force.”
Chirrut drops a hand to thread their fingers together. “Then believe in this.”
Baze is tired. He is home. He will follow where Chirrut led. Nothing but death will part them again.