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They’re back on Yavin 4, and Baze can’t stop his hands from shaking. As the adrenaline of battle and its single-minded focus fades his body is adding up the plasma burns and the near-misses, the crushing terror and the vigilance, and presenting him with the bill. Everything hurts.
Chirrut is in a bacta tank. The burns on his arms and chest look less livid, filtered through the pale of the bacta. On the shuttle back, Baze cut Chirrut’s robes off of him, everything but the charred patches that were stuck into his open blisters. He was unconscious by then, and Baze told himself it was a blessing that Chirrut didn’t have to feel this anymore.
He didn’t expect the rebels to have bacta. He hasn’t expected anything in a long time, has forgotten to hope for much beyond what his hands and Chirrut’s can bring. On Jedha, there hasn’t been any bacta for a long time. When the occupation started, the Empire bombed out each hospital, each storage facility. On Jedha, people died from plasma burns, not quickly but slowly, infection burning them up from the inside. They died in pain, unless someone took mercy on them, and gave them a quicker death. Baze was merciful.
Chirrut isn’t in pain now. He’s insulated from all that - safe, floating, healing. The caves here are cold, which Baze is used to, and damp, which he is not. He finds a place for himself against the wall and sits down, facing Chirrut.
A droid comes up to him. “Visitors are not permitted to stay,” it tells him. Baze ignores it and it repeats itself, over and over, “visitors are not permitted to stay” until he reaches up and grabs it by the neck. His fingers find its manual override switch, where the carotid artery would be if it were human.
“I’m staying,” he says, his fingers resting on the switch but not flipping it, not yet.
“Understood,” the droid says. He releases it and it straightens and turns back to Chirrut, beeping darkly.
He does not know if Chirrut can sense him through the Force; he is not sure if the Force is here with them, if it has ever been with him. He prays anyway.
Bodhi comes to sit with him, cleaned up and wrapped in a too-large blanket, clutching a mug in his hands. He sits on the floor next to Baze.
“I wanted to bring you some tea but they don’t have the right kind,” he says, handing the mug over. “And then I couldn’t find the mess hall. Sorry.”
Baze doesn’t know what he’s apologizing for and can’t bring himself to care. He takes the mug. It is the wrong kind of tea - weak, watery, no milk and no spice. It’s warm, at least.
“My uncle used to make me tea before school,” Bodhi says. “They don’t drink it in the Empire though. To wake us up they just gave us ...” He stops. His hands are restless, picking at the edge of the blanket. “When I left - I just wanted.” He stops again. He’s crying.
Baze puts his mug down. “Chirrut makes a good cup of tea. A little too sweet maybe.” Or he did when they had the money for sugar and milk, which wasn’t often. But before, in the Temple, that was Chirrut’s job, every morning. He never measured, just said the Force guided him. Baze would ask him if the Force wanted all their teeth to rot from the sweetness.
“Will you go back?” Bodhi asks. “To Jedha?”
There is nothing for him there. There is nothing for him anywhere in the galaxy except for where Chirrut is. Bacta is expensive - nearly priceless, now that Empire controls the plants that synthesize it. Baze knows that some of the soldiers on Scarif died in the transport back and some of them are dying here, without bacta treatment. This healing, Chirrut’s life, will come at a heavy price, Baze knows. He will not let Chirrut be the one to pay it.
He shrugs. “It’s up to him,” he says, nodding towards the tank. “You?”
Bodhi looks down. He’s crying, silently, but with his whole body. Baze pulls an arm over him, bringing him in close.
“It’s always like this, after a battle,” he says. It isn’t.
Bodhi falls asleep next to him on the floor. Baze sleeps too, in the fits and starts of an aging warrior, not deeply enough to dream. Droids come by, checking on the tank, scanning Chirrut. Chirrut’s skin is whole now, unblemished.
Cassian comes by. He crouches in front of Baze and Bodhi. Bodhi startles out of sleep, jerking hard against Baze’s shoulder.
“Mon Mothma wants to see you,” Cassian says.
“Me?” Bodhi asks. His voice shakes.
“No,” Baze tells him. “Me.”
Cassian offers a hand to Baze, to pull him to his feet. Baze doesn’t accept it. Everything in him aches.
“When will you be draining the bacta?” he asks the droid that is by the console next to the tank.
“In 2.4 hours, if healing continues at its present rate.” the droid says.
“I’ll go then,” he tells Cassian.
“It’s urgent,” Cassian says.
“Then she can come here.” Baze meets his eyes, steady.
--
To his surprise, she does. Her guards stand by the doors to the chamber, but she gives the room one long, inscrutable look and then sits beside him on the floor.
The droid makes an angry series of chirps. “This is a medical facility. Sitting on the floor is unsanitary and blocks the exits in case of emergency.”
“You should have built cots into these rooms,” Baze tells Mon Mothma.
“The beds here aren’t much more comfortable than this floor. They carved them out of the rocks.” She settles her robes around her, her fingers careful as she smooths out the folds.
“You let the army outfit the place, didn’t you?” he asks.
She gives a little laugh. “I try to remind myself rebellions are not meant to be comfortable.”
“I’ve been in prison cells more luxurious than this,” he says.
“So have I,” she says to him, which surprises him, but he thinks she means it to.
“I haven’t,” Bodhi says, and both of them start. Baze thought he was asleep again.
Mon Mothma lets out a slow breath. “I wanted to promise you both, to promise all three of you,” she nods towards Chirrut’s floating figure, “that you are free to go, as soon as you wish.”
Baze waits. He has served many masters, some good and some bad. He knows what is coming next. There is a price for Chirrut’s life, and he will pay it in blood and in death.
“Princess Leia has been captured by Darth Vader. We think - we hope - that she has hidden the plans from the Empire. We are trying to find and recover the plans before they do. Our fleet has suffered heavy losses already, and our remaining pilots are on high alert. But it may be some time before we are able to offer you passage off this planet.”
“Until then, what do you want me to do?” Baze asks. It’s best to be direct in these matters.
“To make yourselves as comfortable as you can,” she says. “You are our honored guests.”
“I can fly,” Bodhi says. “To help find the plans. If you’d let me.”
She bows her head to him. “That is a brave offer, Bodhi Rook. But for you, it is time to rest and heal. When the time comes, and if you still wish to, I will help find you a ship.”
Baze looks at her. “The ships you send for us, the bacta. That costs something. What’s the price?” Billions of credits. On Jedha, he remembers a man begging the storm troopers to take his dying wife, to save her. He had offered them everything he had. They had shot him, on the steps of the temple.
Here, they have Chirrut, helpless. They have Baze by the heart. He wants to know, now, what he must do. So he can prepare himself.
“It is we who must seek to repay you,” she says. She stands, dusting her skirts. “I will send word when I have a free ship for you.”
“Until then,” he asks, “could we have some cushions?”
She smiles and leaves, trailing her guards.
--
Chirrut comes out of the bacta whole, his skin smooth. He’s also completely naked.
“Oh,” Bodhi stutters. “I’ll just. Go. See you later.” He tries to walk out of the room with his eyes closed and bumps into a droid.
Baze barely notices, his mind and his hands cataloging Chirrut.
Chirrut leans against him heavily. His skin is damp and clammy, and the dirt and blood from Baze’s skin smudges off onto him. Baze takes the robe that the droid offers and wraps him in it, careful. Chirrut presses his face against Baze’s chest.
“He will be weak for a few more hours,” the droid warns. “He may want to sleep.”
Another droid leads them to their room. Baze wishes he could carry Chirrut, scooped into his arms and held safe there, but his strength has almost left him. They lean on each other.
Their room is small and windowless. As Mon Mothma said, it is carved out of the rock of the cliff. Their weapons are piled in one corner. There is a table with clean clothes stacked on it and a stone bed lined with a double layer of cushions.
Baze lays Chirrut down in the bed. On Jedha, Baze had carved their marriage bed from fallen wood from the temple’s sacred grove. The wood had warmed under his hands as he’d worked, smoothing away its harsh edges. That bed is long gone, burned when the temple was taken. Now even its ashes would be scattered high into the atmosphere.
“I felt you,” Chirrut says, “the whole time.”
Baze strips off his clothes, made foul by battle. “I should clean off.”
Chirrut flaps a hand, dismissive. “I can’t see the dirt.” It’s an old argument, well-worn. Baze lets him win this time, pulling on a clean, soft pair of pants and climbing into bed next to Chirrut. He tries to put himself between Chirrut and the door.
“Don’t,” Chirrut says. “I can sense an enemy before you can see one. And you sleep better with your back to the wall.”
Sighing, Baze levers himself over Chirrut, settling himself in. His body pressed against the stone on one side and Chirrut, alive and clean, smelling of bacta still, on the other.
“What now?” he asks. He kisses the side of Chirrut’s neck, his cheek, his jaw. Somewhere, outside, on this strange green planet, it’s late afternoon.
Chirrut turns into him, tucking their bodies together. “Sleep. Then you need to take a shower.”
“I thought you couldn’t see the dirt.”
“I can smell it,” Chirrut says, settling himself into sleep.