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The sun was shining hot above Jedha when the Stormtroopers came.
The sun always shone hot, but its heat never reached the dusty sands below. The chill in the air was cut by heat from a second source, a hum in the wind from an Imperial Battlecruiser. A minute temperature difference could go ignored, but not by Chirrut Imwe, with every available sense on edge and aware in the moment when it came.
They hadn't been in the temple with the others. Chirrut and Baze, always at each other's sides, had gone out into the desert. Three days of meditation alone in the cold, with only each other and the Force for company. Mid-day through the second, the Force shrieked and shook with the sudden tremor of loss. Chirrut fell forward onto his hands, dry heaving into the sand as Jedi across the stars died in droves.
Baze felt nothing, no tremor, no deep concern. The moment that the massacre had begun was as the day had been: calm in it's quiet. Chirrut's world expanded and exploded behind his useless eyes, bleeding into every pore, but Baze world shrunk to a pinprick as his partner fell. He dashed down into the sand to grasp at Chirrut's face, his shoulders, to hold onto the weight of him. There was nothing else in that moment but them, there on the ground in the Jedha sands. Chirrut's breath came out in whimpers, trying to grasp at the words to explain what was happening. His tongue felt numb in his mouth, but the tears didn't come. He could only gasp as the electric chill of the Force convulsing around him ran through his bones. The worst of it was over in minutes, but those minutes extended endlessly for Baze Malbus, who could only see Chirrut's pain and echo it inside himself. He couldn't feel it, he didn't know
We have to go back. Now, we need to go now.
They walked their way back to the temple through the rest of the day and through night without rest. Chirrut insisted, struggling to find his feet and refusing to be carried or coddled. He walked through the sands in the direction from which they came with unfettered purpose, and with a numbness Baze had never seen before; A numbness that left Baze worried.
The sun had just come around the bend of NaJedha when the constant throbbing in Chirrut's ears, pounding like blood that was not his own, finally petered off into a still silence. His knees gave out beneath him. His chest rose and fell with heavy resignation, and he waved off Baze's attempt to lift him.
“I only need a moment.”
Chirrut smiled up at his partner from the sand, a weak attempt at reassurance that did not shine with his usual light but rather spoke of a hollow grief. It was the first sign of genuine life through hours of vacant existence, and Baze Malbus' universe shrunk further. Him, there was only him, only Chirrut Imwe on the sand. Baze nodded, breathing a sigh of relief and turning his attention towards the sky.
The battle cruiser came down into the far reaches of the atmosphere above the temple, and from their distance Baze could only watch. They're all dead, Chirrut had told him as they walked. The Jedi are dead, we must get back.
Shuttles broke the atmosphere, flying down to the planet's surface. They would never make it back in time. Chirrut stood again with more vitality returned to him than should have in mere minutes, his renewed energy the product of pure strength of will. He didn't need to see the cruiser or the shuttles to know they had arrived. He could feel the heat in the air, and he knew.
Rubble cracked underneath Baze's boot as he stepped through the threshold of what was once the reception hall. Sandstone and clay that once made up the structure of the thing littered the ground where blaster fire had hit. The smallest pieces of their remains turned to dust under his weight, to be blown away by the wind and return to the sands of Jedha. A poetic cycle of completion that their elders would have enjoyed, Baze had no doubt. Two weeks had passed from the day the Jedi died, and the day the Guardians of the Whills followed. Baze wanted to never come to this place again, with the ghosts that lingered in far too recent memory. They had barely made it back to the temple in time, all those days ago. So many of their brothers and sisters lay strewn on the ground along with half as many troopers. Unadulterated panic rang through the halls in the form of directive shouts, a youngling crying, the labored breaths of combat and the gurgled shrieks of the dying. Chirrut ran head-first into the fray with his staff at the ready. He would have died right there, had Baze not grabbed the blaster of a dead trooper and taken off another's head.
Where are the Elders? We need to protect the temple--
The temple is lost—Chirrut--
The bodies of their brothers and sisters still remained unmoving where they fell, open eyes eaten by beetles that had crawled their way out of the sands and into their home. No one has come to clean them away, to burn the evidence or lay the bodies to rest. Nothing had changed in those two weeks, dead troopers and their victims lying together indiscriminately. Baze toed at the helmet of one imperial corpse, askew from its head. He sneered down at the foul thing, and kicked the helmet away down the hall. A meaningless action with less release than hoped, but it did feel good.
Chirrut would have heard the sound, but he heard everything. Every echo of Baze's feet, among the empty silence.
They had helped the remaining elders lead the young down into the tunnels. The younglings could hide there they said, until the fighting was done. Don't come out until we come for you, the children were told. Or don't come out at all. Meditate through the silence, until enough time has passed. Some of them wanted to fight, some wanted to run, and all Baze could think as he took out another trooper was that Chirrut should be with them. Chirrut who could protect himself better than most but could still not see an inch in front of his face. Chirrut who could be brought down by a stroke of bad luck. Chirrut who had his back to them and slammed another one of the enemy down by their neck. The blaster fire meant for them hit the ceiling. It cracked, it crumbled, but it held. Baze counted the children behind him as they ran down the tunnel into the caves below, memorized their faces.
Where is Tal'en?
She isn't with the rest?
Chirrut had bolted down the hall then, and Baze followed. He always did. The door to the tunnel had been broken down with canon fire, and now Baze stared the burnt rubble down with deep seated dread. Nothing good would be down there. He took the steps down into the pit, and he was right. He often was.
Two weeks ago among burnt stone and singed bodies they found Tal'en. She was curled into herself underneath a fallen statue, bleeding, breathing heavily. Pale as the dead, but still breathing. Chirrut's hands searched the fallen statue for a weak point only to find Baze starting to pry the thing up. With their weight and strength combined they managed to move it, and Baze gathered her trembling body into his arms.
Sshh...Everything will be alright Tal'en. We are one with the Force and the Force is with us, breathe with me.
More are coming this way--
The last room in the temple that either of them saw before their escape was on the path towards their former quarters, and it stared Baze down like a chasm. The foot soldiers that Chirrut had taken down piled up outside the doorway. The one he had shot down himself with only one arm to spare lay sprawled at his feet, the blood that seeped out of its helmet from the crash to the ground now long dry. The one that managed to hit Chirrut; Baze crushed the hand of the corpse beneath his heel.
He would never forget this room as it was in that moment two weeks past, nor that split second of terror when Chirrut stumbled. He watched as his partner, the man he loved more than the Force itself barely dodged blaster fire and fell to the ground clutching his side, breath coming in gasps. In that instant Baze grasped for his own blaster took out the trooper. In that instant he stood and took out the rest. He fired until none were in sight in their little corner of the temple on their vast, barren wasteland of life.
Chirrut--
I'm alright, Baze I'm fine. We need—ah--we need to go back.
Like hell we do, let me see that. You're bleeding--
The temple, we need to protect the temple, they need us to go back.
To hell with the temple, we need to leave. Now.
Even wearing new clothes stolen at blaster-point from the market, Baze can feel the ghost of the torn hem of his robes. He had torn the fabric apart, tied it around his waist, forced Chirrut onto his back, and strapped him in place. Don't you dare let go, he warned, or I swear I will leave you here.
No you won't, Chirrut managed to mutter into his ear as he tightened his grip around Baze's neck, and that was all. Chirrut's virtual silence and lack of complaints unsettled Baze’s stomach further. He hoisted Tal'en into one arm and with a child clutching desperately at his robes, a dying man on his back and a blaster in hand, he ran. Not the front door, where there seemed an endless stream of Stormtroopers shuffling in to destroy the lives they lived in relative peace. Out a side exit, firing his way through when needed, away from the skirmish, the screams, the door that lead to nowhere but the Kyber crystals which the Empire sought. Away, anywhere but here.
Tal'en died of her wounds on the journey, her hands clutching tightly even in death, green blood drying on her face from a slow drip down her scalp. Chirrut survived. Baze made damn sure of that.
“I am one with the Force and the Force is with me, I am one with the Force and the Force is with me. I am one with the Force...”
Chirrut's chanting, though quiet under his breath, seemed infinitely loud in the small space that had once belonged to them. Baze found him kneeling by the altar in the corner left with no crystal, no value of any kind beyond the spiritual. He rocked slightly to the rhythm of his words, brow tense and tight as if concentrating hard enough would wash the walls of the spirits of the dead; as if praying would absolve him of the guilt of surviving. Both of their spare robes lay folded on the bed, with the remains of Chirrut's staff and a sparse assortment of belongings.
“You found your staff.”
Chirrut's chanting stopped, and he sat still in his position, hands resting upon his knees.
“My staff found me. It was exactly where I left it, who would have thought, though someone had to nerve to snap it in half.”
“That tends to happen when wood gets trampled.”
Baze adjusted the blaster rifle strapped to his side as he sat down on a bed that hadn't seen their warmth in two weeks. It hadn't seen Chirrut sweat himself through uneven sleep. It hadn't seen Baze repeat his mantra over and over again until he could no longer find the words, until his tongue and lips were chapped and dry, until his throat hurt from the repetition with no reply. It hadn't seen Baze tend to Chirrut's wound and care for him until he recovered. It hadn't seen them wrapped up in each other continuing their mantra together, We are one with the Force and the Force is with us, as one breath drenched in their grief, unable to sleep for the memory of it all, survivors of the night that the Force helped no one at all.
“I've thought about what you did, and I forgive you.”
Baze stared at the back of Chirrut's head, questioning exactly what he had just heard.
“You what?”
“I forgive you.” Chirrut repeated, unmoving from his position of prayer in the corner.
“You forgive me,” Baze echoed, and a feeling of anger crept up the inside of body, spreading out through his chest. “For what?”
“For carrying me away. We abandoned our brothers and sisters to die, and the temple to be ransacked, but I forgive you.”
“I saved you. You would have died--”
“And I would have died doing what I was born to do, what I have trained to do. But--” Chirrut continued, raising a hand to stop Baze from butting in with his growing offense. “But I realize now that what you did was as the Force willed it. We have a higher purpose, a greater goal in our future. We were not meant to die here. And so I forgive you. We are one with the Force...”
“What I did was as I willed it.”
Chirrut stopped, turning his head towards the man sitting on their bed, the man who hadn't finished their words where he left them. The man who always did, but who now burned differently. The Force moved brightly around him.
“Yes,” Chirrut replied, wary in the face of unexpected conflict, “And your will was driven by the Force that drives us all, that blesses us.”
“To hell with the Force!” Baze barked out louder than he expected, clenching his fists against his knees. “How many years have we sat here talking about the Force as if it will protect us? How many years, and for what? What good did the Force do for the Jedi, or for any of us, our friends and our elders? What good did the Force do for the younglings—their bodies are still down there, Chirrut, I saw them. They are down in that tunnel because we thought the Force would keep them safe. Was all of this death as the Force willed it? Was the Force with Tal'en when she died? She was a child, and you would say that she was destined to die, that it was her time? If this was the way of the Force then to hell with it. I don't want it, it's worthless. This is worthless, all of it.”
With his sightless eyes, Chirrut stared right through him, and Baze could only stare back. Nearing two decades by each other’s sides and he had never seen that look upon his partner's face. He couldn't describe it, couldn't identify it beyond something on the spectrum of hurt and betrayal. That look on his face left Baze feeling impotent in his rage. He had to stand, and barreled towards their window. Familiar stone released grains of sand onto his palms as he gripped the sill, staring out into the wasteland of their holy home.
“You don't mean that.”
“The only thing I have ever meant more was how much I love you.”
“And I you. The Force brought you to me, you know this.”
“I don't know what I know. A Force that brings me to you but allows children to be slaughtered shows no evidence of purpose. What has the Force ever done for us that we could not have done ourselves for ourselves?”
“The Force kept us alive. ”
“ I kept us alive. If the Force had played any part, the girl would be alive too.”
He was met with only silence, and Baze tried in vain to change the subject. Anything to get that look off of Chirrut's face, to stop himself from causing Chirrut pain. “We should leave, we can't stay here.”
“If you are going to leave, then you should.”
Chirrut's voice has never cracked in all the years that Baze has known him. It didn't now. All that it did was stay balanced on a wire, threatening to tremble but never doing so. Baze could almost hear the mantra in his lover's head, I am one with the Force and the Force is with me.
“I'm not going anywhere without you, you fool.”
“Why? Because you love me and I you? How long will you love me if you truly no longer have faith? I love the Force as strongly and as deeply as I love you. I will never surrender my faith in it to doubt, because I do not doubt it's hand in our lives. But you do, so how long will you continue to love a man who will do no such thing? How long will you love a man who will never stop believing that you are wrong to doubt? If you are going to leave me, I would rather you do it sooner, not later. I will not have you suffer me unnecessarily.”
There it was, the waver in Chirrut's voice as he held tightly to his resolve. There was that chink in his armor that Baze feared, that Baze himself had brought on. Any time and space between the windowsill and the altar was lost as Baze dropped down onto his knees to hold Chirrut's face in his hands. He wanted to forget this place, to forget the musty smell of the corpses in the hall, the children in the tunnel, the feeling of tight dead fingers against his robes. He wanted to have faith again, to believe in the will of the Force again, but all that he could do was grasp at the air. He wanted to kiss Chirrut until they died there, joining their brothers and sisters, but all that he could do was hold on to Chirrut's face, his own eyes misting from the weight of it all.
“Chirrut, listen to me. Hear me. You have my word that I will never leave your side. I will stay by your side and I will die by your side. I do not love you because the Force has brought us together. I love you because you are you. You are an idealistic dreamer and an idiot who runs head first into danger, and I love you for all of this, not in spite of it, do you understand? You could tell me every day that I am wrong, and not a word would change that. I am with you.”
Chirrut grasped for Baze's face, holding on to his cheeks and his ears with a grip to rival Baze's own. Their foreheads together, their breath as one, and the Force moved brightly around Baze Malbus. Chirrut smiled, and for the first time since Chirrut's fever broke, Baze did too.
“I am one with the Force, and the Force is with me,” Chirrut repeated into Baze's shoulder as they held each other in the room that once belonged to them, but now only belonged to ghosts. Baze stroked Chirrut's hair, pressed a kiss to his temple, and remained steadfast in his silence.