A/N: So I had these rough ideas that I wanted to put into a fic but no idea what I wanted the fic to be about. But I wrote them down anyway, and now that I'm finished I still don't know what it's about. If you can figure it out, I'd love to know. But otherwise I'm going to call this a fairly loosely-structured character study.

The Whills are the Star Wars Red Cross/Doctors Without Borders: assistance without discrimination and taking no sides. Very literal interpretation of "balance of the Force". Clightly unhealthy relationships. Sorry but if your whole purpose in life is someone else it's a little unhealthy.

Chirrut is not a Jedi.

But he probably should have been. In another life, he would have been.

In this one, Chirrut is left to the Temple of the Whills and its Guardians as a young child; his mother appearing with no warning, on a day as cold and as clear as any other. If there was any poetic justice in the galaxy, Chirrut would have been abandoned on the doorstep of the Temple on some dark and stormy night: lighting and thunder, rain lashing down, a small, blind baby screaming in a basket. But the Force has no need for poetry, and it rains so rarely on Jedha that his mother would have had to wait a long time to complete the drop. And she had been dying, with no time to waste on stories. So she had simply walked in one day and given her son over to the Guardians.

Baze did not come to the Temple until years after, so he must be content with what he is told of Chirrut's arrival - that it was a normal day and Chirrut was delivered with far less dramatics than most of the other Temple orphans. Perhaps, some say, that very ordinariness was extraordinary. Others remember it with a slight difference. They say that Chirrut's mother had no eyes; only dark, empty sockets in a gaunt and sickly face. They say that she was a Miraluka, blessed and cured to navigate only with Force sight. They say that with her heritage, Chirrut's eyes were never going to last for more than a few years, but in its place there is a gift more precious than mere sight. Those that were there the night she walked into the Temple are disinclined to talk about it, and Chirrut was too young to remember. So Baze is forced to decide the truth for himself. As a child, he took their whispers and speculation on faith, as he did so many things. As an adult, he would rather have something to blame for Chirrut's blindness - would rather curse the Force and fates that took Chirrut's sight from him and left him in a temple, rather than trust that it is all as it is meant to be.

Chirrut does not share in his doubt or his anger. Chirrut does not resent his blindness. Chirrut believes that everything is as it should be, even when everything hurts.

In another life Chirrut would have been a Jedi, but in this one the Guardians had hoarded him too jealously for his connection to the Force; how he can see the Force as it moves in and around and through people and objects in a way that is not quite true sight, but affords him the ability to react and to navigate. The Guardians were not bad people. They were good people, in fact. Loving, in a world-encompassing way. But not always in a personal one. They needed what Chirrut represented, more than they needed who he was. Even so, they had let him run free and live as he chose, wandering the streets to preach to the people and delight them with his antics. Just so long as he returned to the Temple every night to help them see the Force.

Baze thinks that it's unfair that Chirrut never grew up to be a Jedi. He would have been good at it. People would have followed him across the galaxy. Here, in a hovel in Jedha City, against the dusty stone pillars and walls where they wait for something he doesn't know, Chirrut only has Baze. Baze, and the orphans and the poor and the forsaken of the once-Holy City who come to him seeking guidance and fortune and to take everything that Chirrut has to give. In some ways, Baze thinks, they're to that different than him. For all he professes to protect Chirrut, to love him, he still needs him for more than that. He needs him for faith. And it would have been different, had Chirrut joined the Jedi Order. They wouldn't have needed him for the Force. The Jedi took in Force-sensitives from throughout the galaxy, and among them Chirrut would have been just a person among many. Not a symbol.

They would never have met, that is true. But that wouldn't matter. Baze would't have minded, because he would have died a long time ago. He is only alive today because of Chirrut; because of a young boy who found him in his own youth, when he was abandoned and starving and spending his days under a glaring sun that offered no heat and his nights in an alcove off the dirty streets, shivering violently, curled up under a thin blanket. He'd been sitting on a bench when he'd heard someone sit down heavily next to him. He'd smelt Chirrut before he ever saw him, the tangy, metallic sent of blood and the fine dust of Jedha that got into your nose and made you sneeze. Baze had planned on ignoring the unfortunate stranger next to him, but Chirrut spoke. "Would you be so kind as to help a poor, blind Guardian-in-training back to the Temple?" He had said, and even not knowing him Baze could hear the barely-contained humour in his voice.

He'd turned to look at Chirrut, a smile on his face and blood on his teeth and Baze had rolled his eyes and helped him to his feet. Chirrut had been limping badly even with his arm slung around Baze's neck and before they were even a third of the way to the Temple, Baze had huffed and scooped him up into his arms. He may have been half-starved, but Baze had always been big and solid; and Chirrut was not small, but he still had all the slightness of a youth who's hard work would one day turn to hard muscle. Chirrut had squawked at the treatment, but he had also grinned at Baze and thrown his other arm around his neck and when they arrived at the Temple and a few of the Guardians had rushed out to check on them, Chirrut had faked a fairly impressive swoon that led to the Guardians offering Baze a meal in return for his help. And Baze had simply never left.

If Chirrut had become a Jedi, Baze would be dead.

And Chirrut would have died with the Order.

And he would not have had to be there when Jedha fell.

-00000-

When they were young and Baze had been at the Temple a few months, he had asked Chirrut why he was not training to join the Jedi.

Chirrut had been practicing handstands. He could get his feet above his head easily enough, but he couldn't yet manage to keep his legs pointing straight up for more than a few seconds before flopping back down to the ground. At least he was learning controlled falling. Baze liked to watch him practice. They had been too young at the time for it to be anything other than innocent. As an older man, Baze still likes to watch; but now, seeing the way Chirrut's muscles pull and stretch makes him shiver as he remembers how they move against him, and he watches beads of sweat funnel down the rivulets in Chirrut's back that he knows so intimately.

Back then, it had been nothing but a child's fascination watching someone do something they could not. Baze could do little more than kick his legs halfway up into the air before crashing back down, and he watched in a kind of jealous awe as Chirrut managed to turn his fall into an awkward sort of somersault and finish sitting beside Baze in the sand outside the Temple.

"Because I want to be a Guardian of the Whills." He had said, as if it wasn't the dream of everyone too foolish and too young to understand the consequences of becoming a Jedi.

"The Jedi wouldn't take you." Baze had scoffed.

"They would so." Chirrut had said, bottom lip pushed out in a ridiculously exaggerated pout. "One even asked me to leave with her when she visited to get some kyber crystals."

"Why didn't you go?"

"I told you." Chirrut had shrugged. "I am happy here."

(This is the part Chirrut doesn't tell him until much later, until they are closer to their death than to their meeting. Until Baze has found his faith and lost it and left, and found another and came back. Until they are married in a small and secret ceremony in the shadow of the ruined Temple, when the surviving Guardians of the Whills gather for the last time before scattering throughout the galaxy. Until they are pledged to each other for life. Until their vows. "I was waiting." Chirrut says. "I was waiting for you.")

-00000-

Baze gained his faith in the Force quickly, and with the devoted dogma only the youth can afford and the convert can find. It had worried the Guardians, who knew that such fervent and uncritical belief was just as easily lost at even a minor perceived slight. And they had been right, and Baze loses his faith as quickly as he found it.

The Jedi fall, and so does Chirrut.

They're walking the streets of Jedha City when it happens, side-by-side, arms brushing when Chirrut stumbles and falls to his knees, Baze too slow to catch him. It's not feeling the deaths of the Jedi that causes it. They don't know until days later that there has even been deaths. News comes slowly to Jedha.

It's feeling the Force.

Chirrut uses the Force to navigate. Through it, he can sense the way that everything in the galaxy is connected, and he can feel that connection flow through him and guide his steps. But when the Jedi fall, the balance of the Force tilts; like the one side of a scale being sliced of, leaving the other swinging wildly out of control, violently shooting up and away and settling far off-centre. It's wrong and it's sick and even though his connection to the Force is rudimentary at absolute best it still makes Baze feel nauseous. The Force has no unity, no equilibrium, no give-and-take. And suddenly neither does Chirrut.

He stumbles around like a pilot fresh out of a starfighter after too many spiral manoeuvres: completely off kilter. It's as if in the Force being thrown out of balance, Chirrut too has lost his centre.

He is many years passed a time when he couldn't manage a simple handstand without ending up on his face on at least half the attempts. It's no trouble at all now to get his legs up over his head and crossed into an inverted imitation of a seated position. When he's feeling particularly whimsical, Chirrut will walk on his hands like that for the children who ask them for stories. Chirrut has no real talent for storytelling - too inclined to go on tangents - but Baze develops quite the reputation for being straightforward and not sparing the gory bits.

But everything changes when the Jedi fall and the Force swings out of balance and suddenly Chirrut is confined to the Temple and he can hardly walk without stumbling, his body lilting from side-to-side, compensating for shifts in gravity or ground that aren't happening. He keeps his hands outstretched to fumble around as he moves, until one of the Guardians has the idea to give him a staff to use as a guide and Baze wanders into the Jedha City market and finds him an echo box.

Chirrut adapts. He learns to use his staff and the box to navigate the Temple and later the streets. He starts to rely on his hearing to read the movements of people to compensate for the awareness of the living Force that has been thrown out of balance. His sense of the Force starts to shift to a new centre in its uneven state, until Chirrut is once again as talented a Guardian and warrior as anyone. Although never as good as he had been.

But while Chirrut recovers, Baze's faith in the Force never returns. He watches everyday as Chirrut practices; throwing himself into his new self-imposed training regime, through cuts and bruises as he makes mistakes and collides with objects he once would have avoided easily. And with every scrape, every mark on Chirrut's skin Baze feels his resentment and his anger and his fear grow. Because the Force has abandoned Chirrut. And Baze, he can't - he won't - believe in something that would do that. He can't have faith in something that would hurt Chirrut. He cleans Chirrut's wounds, rubs salves on his bruises and presses his lips to them all as if his love can somehow fix everything, and Chirrut tells him that it is the will of the Force that this is happening, that there is a reason for everything. And Baze can't be here anymore.

It's all too much. He can't watch Chirrut be hurt, and then listen to him accept it as something that had to happen. He can't listen to the Guardians who tell him that everything is as it should be, that this is the Will of the Force as Chirrut stumbles and more news comes to the Temple every day of the new orders being passed by the Senate, and more rumours of people dying when they resist them. He can't be here.

And Baze waits until Chirrut has recovered as much as he is likely to and in the dead of night he flees the City, flees the moon, and joins the next starship that leaves for the deep, dark emptiness of space.

-00000-

It isn't until years later - until he is far enough passed the hurt and the anger and the betrayal, passed the devastating loss of his faith, and both the way Chirrut's skin feels and the bruises that marked it are a fuzzy memory - that Baze is able to look at himself and the cannons and armour strapped to his body, and realise his own hypocrisy.

It wasn't only the Force that had abandoned Chirrut. He had done the same.

And in his moment of realisation, Baze finds the next starship making the rare journey to Jedha and goes back to the moon he once called home.

Because if he can not have faith in the Force, he can no longer have faith in himself for the same reason.

Chirrut is the only thing he can believe in anymore, and Baze makes his way home to him.

-00000-

It's not that he thinks that the Force is made up. That would be stupid. Baze knows that the Force is real. He's seen Chirrut use it, relying on the way it moves and flows through everything living to navigate his world. He's seen the Jedi use it, on the occasions that they visited the Temple. Different than Chirrut, they manipulate the Force to perform fantastic feats, change and bend it and the galaxy in turn to their will. The Force speaks to Chirrut, but the Jedi speak back.

He's seen those who are more inclined to the Dark Side of the Force. He has a clear memory from when he was a child of a girl sneaking into the Temple and stealing a kyber crystal while the Senior Guardians pretended not to sense her. Baze had asked them why, afterwards, and they had told him of the Sith and other Dark orders. Most thought that the Temple of the Whills stood with the Jedi, but they were wrong. The Temple stood only with the Force, and the Force is about balance, not morality or justice. The Guardians did not emphasise the difference between the Light and the Dark. Even the Sith don't know this, because the Sith do not listen and they do not learn. The Senior Guardian had told him they would have simply given the girl a kyber crystal had she asked, but Baze supposes that theft is the Sith way.

This had been long before the fall of the Jedi. Now, that same girl would never have been allowed to vault over the Temple walls or inexpertly attempt to wrap the shadows around herself to hide. The Force is out of balance, and no more power can be given to the Dark. Baze thinks they should have chosen a side a long time ago, and Chirrut tells him that they did, and the side they chose was that of the Force. It is the argument they have the night that Baze flees Jedha for the other side of the galaxy, and Baze's fury at Chirrut's calm at the Force's refusal to step in and stop the destruction that is happening keeps the realisation of his hypocrisy at bay for years.

There was a time when Baze could even sense the Force himself, if he meditated enough. Just on the edge of his consciousness, a living, pulsing connection between everything and everyone in the galaxy, and when he touched it he felt like he was a part of something vast and unknowable and magnificent.

So Baze knows that the Force is real, but he doesn't believe in it. He does't believe that it is Good or it is Right. He does not believe that it makes anything happen. People make things happen; terrible, awful things and the Force rests underneath it all and lets them. The Force doesn't care, and it is used in every horrifying way imaginable to hurt people and Baze can't believe in it.

(Chirrut knows this. He knows Baze, and he knows why he would turn away from his faith. It would be funny, if it weren't so sad. He teases that Baze was once the most devoted Guardian, but the truth is that that devotion came because Baze never truly understood the Force. Every reason he gives for not believing is a tenant that the Guardians were taught as integral to the Force - it does not care, it only connects; it does not make things happen, but it can be made to; everything that happens is only a part of the whole of the Force, a blip in it's tapestry that is the galaxy. These are the things that Chirrut was taught, and Baze never heard them because he had wanted to believe that the Force was Good. Chirrut knows that Baze is too kind and too gentle under his gruffness to every truly have understood the nature of the Force. That is why Chirrut loves him. Because the Force is not good or righteous or moral, but Baze is. And between them, Chirrut has everything.)

-00000-

If Chirrut had been trained to be a Jedi, he would have been able to flip the switch on Scarif from the safety of their hiding place. He would not have had to walk out. He would not have been killed by an explosion, and Baze would not have held him in his arms as he died, and then stumbled to his own death so soon afterwards.

If Chirrut was a Jedi, he would never have made it to Scarif, and Baze would not have made it to Scarif. And there would have been nothing for the two of them After.

The Death Star fades into hyperspace and the dust and sand and water of Scarif settles over the ruined landscape and for a time there is nothing.

And then there is something. It is not something that can be seen. It is something to be sensed, a movement in the Force. It rises from the sands like a mass of blue stars in a far off system, slow and faint and unformed, but real.

A second mass rises not too far away, and they reach for each other; no hesitation, no fear as they come together and mix into one galaxy with a tender and fierce joy. They twine together, lost and found and complete in each other, and circle up and far away from the destruction of Scarif into the vastness and the beauty of space.

And the part that is Baze thinks "I am one with the Force–"

And the part that is Chirrut finishes: "–and the Force is with me."