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“You believe,” says Chirrut, quiet but audible around the clunk and hum of their stolen ship. It is the first thing any of them have said since leaving Edu. He points his eyes to Jyn in a gesture she can appreciate. A question she can answer.
“Yes.”
Chirrut smiles. Under examination Jyn can read no more pity than happiness in it. He has a face shaped by war and by struggle, but he keeps softness about him where everyone else in this ship has none. It probably doesn’t do him much good. “Wise of you,” he says. “It’s a good source of strength when hope and courage fail.”
Jyn shrugs and then curls tighter around her knees. “Survival got me this far.”
“Ah, but to want to survive requires belief that there is something worth surviving for.”
A harsh laugh behind Chirrut is Baze listening in. “Or maybe she has a stubborn streak. Can’t let the men who destroyed everything else get the satisfaction of destroying you, too.” But he’s looking at Chirrut when he says it, and maybe it has history. Maybe it means something else. Not Jyn’s business. She doesn’t want to know.
Her father always wanted to know. And look where that got him.
Isn’t grief supposed to be knife-sharp? All Jyn feels is tired and bitter. Even the thought of revenge means nothing—the Empire wouldn’t care, the Rebellion wouldn’t care, and Jyn wouldn’t care either. What matters is finishing her father’s work. Someone else can care about wrong and right.
Maybe Cassian. He sure talks a good game about it.
“I guess we all know about survival now,” pipes up the escaped pilot, nameless for all Jyn knows
Jyn turns her head to look to the front of the ship, but only at him. “Where did you learn that?” she says, biting. “In Jedha? On Eadu?”
But the pilot doesn’t reply. He probably doesn’t want to fight—it’s obvious he would lose, and he has been beaten recently enough to remember why it isn’t worth it. They all know he’d lose. He knows nothing about survival.
“The Force never did anything for me,” Jyn mutters, since Chirrut will hear it anyway. “I still never saw proof it isn’t there.”
Silence had fallen after that. The woman Jyn’s thoughts trudge on, mostly likely, but she will not speak unprompted, and there is nothing else of use to say. Grief does not always respond well to words. It has not for Baze.
Chirrut can reach across his hand to Baze, though, and have it captured. Baze sees different, but he still sees Chirrut, and his skin is warm where Chirrut’s has grown cold. “You always have terrible circulation,” he says, a common complaint.
“I always have,” Chirrut replies. “Fortunately, I also have you.”
On this vessel there is no privacy to be had. Perhaps it’s cruel to speak of togetherness when their companions all sit in isolation, but enough weight rests upon himself and Baze without keeping apart. He pulls, and Baze allows himself to be drawn in, until they have done away with the space between them. Under Chirrut’s fingers the pulse beats in Baze’s wrist.
“Yes,” Baze says, and Chirrut can feel the way he would have smiled once. “One better than the Force ever did you.”
It hurts each time Baze denies what once he believed in, but it seems to bleed the poison of the injustice they live with, and they both cope how they must. They lived, but lost their lives, and they had been the fortunate ones. Chirrut once again holds the argument behind his teeth.
He shuts his blind eyes before they burn. “I am with you,” he says, “and you are with me.”