Most of the Resistance members are superstitious: when you're fighting a battle that keeps on being just shy of defeat, you make saints out of anybody who stands still long enough. Not everybody admits to it, but many pilots say quick prayers to Bodhi Rook for an easy flight and safe landing, and operatives ask Cassian Andor for ruthlessness and luck. General Organa is quietly rumored to carry Jyn Erso's sole existing picture (Imperial Prison mugshot, sullen and bruised) with her, to call on when hope is needed beyond hope.
Baze Malbus they beg for protection and loyalty; Chirrut Îmwe for anger to keep going.
Baze learns about the sacking of the Temple three months after it happens, being as he is about twenty systems away and neck-deep in a complicated, dangerous job. He wraps it up in three days, with way more shooting than initially planned, and grabs the first available ship back.
There's no hesitation. It's one thing to leave Chirrut smug and snug and safe in his faith guarding the Temple and the city with his brothers, one thing to be enraged with him like this, another to think of him persecuted, blasted through, thrown out like garbage. Baze counts the hours, has too many nightmares for comfort and hopes fervently that not a single one of them is prophetic.
He half-expects to find the entirety of Jedha in smoking ruins, but the city survives these conquerors as it has all others. It's full of whispers and lengthy shadows and people glancing nervously over their shoulders for the telltale white of Stormtroopers uniforms, but the marketplaces still buzz with noise and colorful splendor, and the gossip still flies even under the shadow of the Imperial cruiser.
It takes him four endless days to determine that Chirrut outlived the Temple, and three more to track him to a small half-broken hovel at the edge of the city.
He walks to the door and Chirrut turns to him, smiling affably like they parted ways peacefully the night before and not in bitter anger two years ago. The effect is somehow spoiled by the yellowing bruises on his face, but little things like that never stopped Chirrut anyway.
"Hello, Baze," he says, and Baze leans against the wall and expels the tension of the chase out with one long exhale. Alive, then; alive after all.
"Hello, Chirrut," he says. "Playing vigilante here?"
"More of an itinerant peddler of faith. And you?"
"Mercenary, and a pretty good one. Want to tell me what happened here?"
He doesn't want to know, not really, but he thinks Chirrut should probably tell somebody. And Chirrut does, in a dry colorless voice with almost a sarcastic tint to it. He tells him of the day Imperials came, the cruiser hovering over the Temple, the Stormtroopers marching in, led by gray-clad officers, impersonal, impatient. He tells him of the way the Guardians tried to argue, then protest, then fight; of the ancient statues crumbled by the blaster fire, altars desecrated, acolytes hunted, murdered, burned, of the acrid stench of roasted human flesh filling the halls. Of the way he was knocked unconscious in one of the last desperate stands, and woke up hours later, alive and alone in the silent halls of the dead.
Baze listens quietly, doesn't ask questions, doesn't call out any names. Among the bodies cleared out by the Stormtroopers on the next day, probably effectively cremated somewhere, there must have been dozens of people he trained with, sparred with, laughed with, ate with, drank with, and he's not going to let a single one of them in. Chirrut is all he has, now. Chirrut will have to carry the rest of them alone, and Baze won't make space in his heart for grief for anybody else.
He says, "Let's leave. There are still places out there where the Empire does not reach, and you can peddle the Force there as well as elsewhere. We can be out of this place by sundown."
He's half-expecting an explosion for that, but Chirrut says instead, almost gently: "Baze, I'm - I'm deeply touched and honored that you came back for me. But I'm alive, and I'm safe, and I'm not seeking death for death's sake. You can go back to your life without worrying about any of that."
Baze slides down the wall, abruptly exhausted. He feels old, overflowing with horrible tenderness and sorrow.
"Don't be more of a fool than you are, Îmwe. Shouldn't you be the one to know you open up for Fate when she comes knocking on your door? Come here, at least, let me check your injuries. Tomorrow we'll find somewhere better to stay."
Chirrut senses the girl before Baze sees her, for all he's the one scanning the environment for possible threats. It's not that she's that threatening as such, but she's a new face in a city with a steadily dwindling supply of them, and Baze's briefly angry with himself for the lapse, even as Chirrut tries to reel her in, and her surly companion taking her away.
"Lost the knack for it, didn't you? I don't think she wants to be friends."
That'd be enough to set up a good energetic quarrel on any other day, but today Chirrut sweeps his sarcasm away without missing a bit. He's radiant, smiling so wide his cheeks have got to hurt. "Can't you feel it, Baze, can't you? She's the catalyst, she's the one we've been waiting for."
"Oh come on. We've been sitting here for months, hunting the small fry and preaching to the passerby, and we haven't made much progress on either. This little bird is not going to tip the balance unless she came with a battleship. Have you been sitting in the sun too long again?"
He's wheedling a bit; he has been sitting in the sun for much longer than he'd prefer. Chirrut just waves a lazy hand at him instead, and keeps grinning. "Didn't you tell me to not keep Fate waiting in the doorway? This entire universe is holding its breath, listening to this little bird. Come on, we need to follow them."
He strides down the street, almost bouncing with energy, and Baze gets up and goes after him, grumbling under his breath.
Later Chirrut saves her and Baze saves him, and Chirrut turns out to have been right and Baze wrong about her bringing change to Jedha. But when they're fleeing in Cassian's stolen ship, Jedha splintering into dust and ashes around them, Chirrut isn't smiling anymore.
"Little sister had them all fired up," Baze says, mildly. He's sitting on one of the crates in the rear end, away from the milling Rebels, with Chirrut sitting on the floor between his legs, leaning his head against Baze's knee. The stolen shuttle is approaching Sharif.
"That she did. Do you think any of the children realize that none of us will leave this place?"
Baze snorts. "Do we? We're also here, after all."
Chirrut smiles up at him, serene and soft. "Down there," he says, "all the suffering will be made holy. All the stones and towers and voices of Jedha, finally laid to rest. We'll bury all of it on this shore, and grow hope out of it."
The Last Guardians, Baze thinks, whether I wanted this name or not, and finds satisfaction in the thought instead of his habitual anger. "You foolish old martyr," he says, "you've never been happier, have you?"
"A foolish old man, and a selfish one, too. I can't be sorry to meet this day with you."
"You'd better not be," Baze says, and strokes his palm down Chirrut's bristly hair, gently, slowly, sure. "May the Force be with us, Îmwe."
The gates of Sharif finally open, and they begin their descent.