If Your Heart Wears Thin (I Will Hold You Up)

by Anath Tsurugi

"Heh, you are strong, Guardian...but we will break you." What does it take to shatter the faith of the most devoted Guardian of them all? When the Temple of the Kyber falls, Chirrut and Baze are put to the ultimate test. After all, it's well known that Baze Malbus has only one weakness.

4. I Will Hide You

If Your Heart Wears Thin (I Will Hold You Up)

Chapter 4: I Will Hide You

Baze was no longer a young man when Saw Gerrera sought him out. He and Chirrut did their stints in NiJedha, resisting the Empire where they could and seeing that Asana was still doing well, but they did still mostly live in Revna. So far as Baze knew, only Asana, Trance, and Jerrin knew their location, so the rebel extremist must have gotten it from one of them, Asana being the least likely. Whatever the case may have been, it was all that was going through his mind as he went to meet Gerrera in the outpost's main sanctuary.

The rebel leader was accompanied by what could only be described as an entourage, consisting of humans both local and not, and of several other beings. As jarring as it was to watch the man struggle for movement in what was left of his body, all of his followers showed him a distinct awe and loyalty. Baze didn't say anything as he watched them approach, just surveyed the small band as they moved through the chamber.

"My, but this seems like a lot of people," Chirrut commented as he entered from the grove, moving to take his normal place a few steps in front of Baze. "And all just to see two old hermits."

"Which of you is Baze Malbus?" Gerrera rasped out, gaze shifting between the pair of them.

"What would you want with Baze Malbus?" Chirrut asked when Baze remained silent. "I can promise you would find him very poor company. He chews with his mouth open and he cannot be bothered to pick up after himself. Do you know how many times I've tripped over stripped blasters?"

"You, then," Gerrera said as his eyes focused on Baze. The former Guardian kept his silence, though, just sizing the rebel leader up.

"You still have not said what it is that you want of Baze Malbus," Chirrut said pointedly, giving a forceful thump of his staff against the stone floor.

"To talk of- combining our forces," the rebel leader finally said, still keeping his focus on Baze.

"And what forces are those? Do you think we are hiding an army in this small outpost?" Chirrut asked, sweeping an arm to indicate the empty space around them. "Though I suppose Baze when he hasn't bathed could be counted as an army all on its own."

Baze's lip curled minutely at that, a gesture no one but Chirrut would've been able to pick up on. Resisting the urge to engage in his husband's typical back and forth, he remained silent, continuing to take the measure of this infamous rebel.

"It is not so much…physical forces I speak of," Gerrera said, still looking at Baze as if he expected a response. "Tales are told across hundreds of rebel cells, tales of the Empire's onslaught against the Guardians of the Whills, and of the Guardian who made his last stand against them, almost single-handedly."

"Greatly exaggerated," Baze finally spoke up, always willing to disparage himself. He was more than a little pleased to see the rebel leader's eyebrows rise at this.

"Not so much," Chirrut said before either of them could say anything more. "Baze Malbus defended the essence of the Guardians that night…and he did not surrender," the blind Guardian said, and Baze was sure he was the only one to hear the hitch in his partner's voice on the last part of the sentence. "I mean to ensure that they sing songs about his victories for millennia to come."

"That is what I seek," Gerrera declared loudly. "That status. Your story has spread, Baze Malbus. The people of Jedha remember your name. Surely you've heard the Empire has begun to strip your temple of its kyber stores."

"We have heard," Baze responded gruffly, but gave no more than that.

"I don't know what, but it's for a purpose. It isn't just about the Empire secularizing everything. They're building something, and it ends here with Jedha. The Alliance won't listen, so I have no choice but to take matters into my own hands."

"So again, what is it that you want Baze Malbus for?" Baze pressed, now much more than a little pleased at Gerrera's confusion over his use of the third person.

"To rally the people of Jedha to this cause. If the lost hero of the Whills returns alive after eighteen years, the people will flock to you. The Empire cannot put down an entire moon," the man declared, and his followers quickly began to shift and mutter to each other in excitement, clearly prepared for their fearless leader's rhetoric to sway yet another doubter.

But Baze was unmoved.

"You think so? You think we did not fight when the Republic fell? Do you think we held something back that night? Something that will make them tremble in fear? No. Perhaps things work differently in this larger galaxy you come from, but the Empire has already put down this whole moon."

"So get back up again! The moment we cease to get back to our feet is the moment the Empire has truly beaten us," Gerrera threw at him.

"So what?" Baze challenged, moving up to stand in front of Chirrut. "You would have me call out innocent folk to fight your battles for you? To die for you? Or die anyway when they cannot get out of your way fast enough? I know you, Saw Gerrera. You do not care who lives or who dies, so long as you can destroy what you hate. I? I can never be like that."

"You know nothing about me, Guardian," the rebel leader ground out, glaring fiercely at him.

"Don't call me Guardian!" Baze snarled, barely resisting the urge to reach for a blaster. "I am no Guardian. You say they tell stories, but they can never know the truth of what happened that night. If they tell stories, it is because they need them, not because they reflect anything true about a man who fought his last battle. There is no Guardian Malbus. He died…in NiJedha…beneath a crumbling temple…failing to protect what was most precious to him," he said, voice slowly falling off. He didn't realize that he was trembling, be it from anger or sorrow or both, until he felt Chirrut's steadying hand against his back. At the very last, he whispered, "I cannot give you what you seek."

Gerrera sighed, shaking his head. "If that is your decision, there is nothing I can do to change your mind, but know that the offer stands, should you ever change it. I believe you will know where to find us if the time comes," the rebel leader said before turning and leading his followers from the outpost. It wasn't until after they'd gone that Baze slowly dropped to the floor, Chirrut not far behind him, easily slipping his arms around Baze's body to hold him against his chest.

"So…what do you think?" Baze asked him after several minutes of this tender contact.

"I think that you are far gone indeed if you feel you actually need to ask me what I think," Chirrut said softly, pressing a gentle kiss just behind his left ear.

"Do I disappoint you? That I am not the man I was before that night?" he asked, clutching one of Chirrut's hands tightly in his.

"Neither of us are, Xino'ai. I am not even the man I was last night. Nor are you the man you were last month. Time goes on," Chirrut said sagely as he reached his other hand up to trace the familiar lines of Baze's Mark through the coarse fabric of his flight suit. "We must go on with it."

"Then you think we should help."

"I think…it is time we returned to NiJedha. I have had you to myself long enough. I have been selfish. I know it, but I have needed you. Our city needs you now," his husband said, his hold on him tightening briefly.

"Heh, if they need anyone, it's the unshakeable Guardian. You can be the folk hero they need, protect the weak, defend the innocent," Baze found himself extolling, bringing Chirrut's hand up to his lips and pressing a kiss to each fingertip, taking pleasure in the way his husband shivered against his back, his sensitive fingers set alight by the intimate contact. "As for myself, I will do what I failed to do eighteen years ago. I will protect you."

"As you will, my love, but whatever we do, we will do it together."

XxX

Baze was fairly confident he recognized a few of Gerrera's rebels the day Chirrut stepped in to help Jyn Erso, and of course they recognized him and Chirrut, so if he had to guess, he would say they immensely enjoyed putting bags over their heads, hauling them off to Gerrera's base and throwing them in a cell.

He was worried at first how Chirrut might react to being imprisoned. As many times as it had happened over the last nineteen years, his reactions had varied just as many. Much as Chirrut's mantra annoyed him, he also breathed a sigh of relief upon hearing the chanted words. The fact that Chirrut could speak them at all meant he wasn't completely lost to a fit of panic.

"I am one with the Force. The Force is with me. I am one with the Force. The Force is with me. I am one with the Force. The Force is with me."

"You pray?" he asked, keeping up his typical put-upon demeanor because Chirrut needed him to at this stage, though he found himself grinning wryly the entire time. "Really? He's praying for the door to open," he complained to their rebel cellmate. At least he assumed the man was rebel. Frankly, it was more effort than he wanted to put in to follow the politics of the Alliance these days. Whoever he was, he was only half-listening to them, focused instead on trying to figure out how to pick the lock.

"It bothers him because he knows it's possible," Chirrut shot back serenely, his panic mostly worked through. So now he would keep to banter. "Baze Malbus was once the most devoted Guardian of us all."

"Now he's just your guardian?" the rebel tried to jibe back, though neither of them rose to take his bait.

That is a truer statement than you are ever likely to know, boy, Baze thought as he watched the rebel roll his eyes, immediately going back to work.

"I'm beginning to think the Force and I have different priorities," the young rebel ground out.

"Relax, Captain," Chirrut responded. "We've been in worse cages than this one." Also far truer than this boy would ever know.

"Yeah? Well, this is a first for me," the captain tried to snap back, though the lie was plain even to Baze.

"There is more than one sort of prison, Captain," Chirrut told him. "I sense that you carry yours wherever you go."

The boy stared at Chirrut mistrustfully for a moment before turning away from them. Baze gave an ugly, hollow-sounding laugh at the exchange, because really, who would know better than the pair of them about carrying their prisons with them?

For a long while, Baze just stood leaning against the cell wall, focus shifting between the captain's intent work and the mirth moving across Chirrut's face at whatever emotion he was picking up from the boy. But Baze gradually found his focus staying more and more on Chirrut as his husband's demeanor passed from amusement into unease. The shadows on his face grew deeper as his thoughts turned darker and his head began to bob more noticeably from side to side, something clearly troubling him. Baze had to tamp down the urge to ask him what was wrong. They trusted one another – had grown fully confident in their love and their marriage. Years together had taught him that when Chirrut needed him to know what was going through his head, he would tell him. The days of shutting each other out were long behind them.

And indeed, Chirrut did let him know what was happening when he finally leaned his head back against the cell wall and asked, "Who's the one in the next cell?"

"What?" Baze asked as he glanced up at the bars that separated the two cells, now thoroughly unnerved by whatever had been troubling his husband. Moving quickly toward the divide, he looked into the shadows of the next cell over, just barely making out the outlines of a human figure. He didn't take note of anything about this figure, though. The only piece of information that filtered into his brain was the Imperial insignia that adorned the man's sleeve.

"An Imperial pilot!" he snarled, beginning to understand what must have been chipping away at his husband's composure. No doubt this scum was just as evil as the rest. "I will kill him!" he shouted, reaching through the bars to get his hands around the man's neck.

"No. Wait! Back off!" the captain tried to stop him, but Baze was intent on choking the life from the pilot. After all, he was not in the habit of allowing Imperials to cross his path and live. It wasn't until Chirrut spoke again that he began to understand what was happening.

"What's wrong with him?" the blind Guardian asked, and it was the faint tremor in his voice that made Baze begin to realize…

…the pilot wasn't fighting back. He was just hanging in Baze's death grip, no more in control of his body than a doll might be, and when the former Guardian looked into his intended victim's eyes, he knew exactly where he'd seen that blank, broken expression before.

Nineteen years ago…on Chirrut's face…after Niner had broken so violently into his mind…

Baze released the Imperial with a shocked gasp, and it was his shock more than anything else that so easily allowed the rebel captain to push him back from the bars. Unthinkingly, he moved back to his husband's side, fingers seeking out Chirrut's as he moved to his knees beside him. It wouldn't be visible to anyone who didn't know him, but Baze could feel the slight shake of Chirrut's hand in his – a sure sign that he still might be overwhelmed.

It had never been the fact that their cellmate was an Imperial that had bothered Chirrut. No. It was the fact that in him, he'd sensed the same pain, the same horrifying knowledge that his body and mind were helpless, and there was nothing he could do to protect them.

Whatever it was Gerrera and his insurgents had actually done to him, this pilot had been raped.

XxX

Though Chirrut managed to keep his thoughts on the events at hand, Bodhi Rook remained at the front of his mind, keeping him right on the verge of a panic. Granted, he had not had them as often since rescuing Baze from Tigrin, but they did still happen, and now would be an exceedingly poor time to have one. So he kept himself very tightly in check, even as the ground began to shake beneath them and the air began to resound with the roar of a thousand sand storms.

He was really starting to think he might work through this one, serving as a friendly guide to the Imperial pilot and keeping him from falling into a panic of his own, but then they actually made it out of the monastery.

While he couldn't see anything that was happening, he could certainly feel Baze's horror at the sight of it. It wasn't often that Baze was truly afraid, but now was such a time.

What have they done? What have they done?! The fear and anger pulsed so strongly through his husband's thoughts, Chirrut could almost hear them aloud. Those monsters!

And it was Baze's emotions, more than anything else, that finally sent him over the edge. His breath began to come in the short, painful bursts that signified the onset of a panic attack, his limbs seizing up as he began to tremble uncontrollably.

"Baze," he rasped out, reaching to grip his husband's hand tightly in his, telling him without words what was happening to him.

Baze swore roundly in Jedhan when he realized, both of them knowing they had only moments to act. "Come on!" Baze shouted, keeping a hold of Chirrut's hand as he began to run, mindless of the protest of Chirrut's traitorous body. Baze actually had to pick him up and throw him the final distance onto the boarding ramp of some kind of craft.

Once inside, the pair immediately dropped to their knees, Baze holding Chirrut tightly in his arms while Chirrut fought to control his breathing. He could sense it now – the gaping wound in the Living Force. The pain and terror that had once been their home…the place where the Force had brought them together…

I am one with the Force. The Force is with me. I am one with the Force. The Force is with me. I am one with the Force. The Force is with me.

He pushed the words through his ragged mind, unable to speak them aloud. Clinging tightly to Baze, he just breathed in his familiar scent, letting each individual nuance move through his thoughts. It was better than allowing himself to become lost in the agony that surrounded them.

It had been some time since either of them had seen any kind of refresher, so there was the scent of sweat and dirt. There was the vaguely musky scent of the blaster lubricant Baze used, a custom blend he always made sure to have on hand to avoid having to worry about the scent of standard lubricant. There was the strange scent of ozone that always seemed to cling to the repeater cannon. Then there was the scent of miru and fresh bread leftover from their breakfast – the single thread of sweetness that ran through his beloved's otherwise coarse exterior.

The walkthrough of everything familiar helped him to get his breath again, these scents that lingered between them – now the only things that remained of their home, save for each other. And they did still have each other. That was the truly important thing in all this.

"Are you all right?" Baze whispered to him in a voice only his own sensitive ears would catch.

"I will be fine," he whispered back, in much better control of his own body now.

He could feel some of the tension ease from Baze's arms as his husband released him. No doubt Baze hoped not to draw attention to the embrace, perhaps thinking to pass it off as two friends attempting to help each other through a trying escape. They were not as openly affectionate with each other in public as they had been before the temple fell and they both knew it. They never talked about it, but it was a distinct scar that Niner had left on the both of them – a desire to conceal how much they meant to each other, to keep their one true weakness hidden from anyone who would use it against them…because it had been once before and they both knew they wouldn't survive it if it were to happen again. Though Chirrut didn't believe anyone aboard this ship meant them any harm, it was still too soon to say for certain, and now that they were safe away from Jedha, their new companions' attention would more than likely be turning to more immediate things. Before Baze could pull away entirely, though, Chirrut reached out to grip his hand.

"Baze…tell me," he choked out painfully, knowing what he'd felt die behind them…what he'd felt in his husband's heart, but still needing to hear it from him. "All of it? The whole city?"

Even though he knew none of the others would see it in the former Guardian's stiff and angry countenance, Chirrut could feel the pain that ran through him – the shocked disbelief that whatever he'd seen had actually been real. Painful as it was, he knew they both needed that confirmation now before they'd have any chance of healing from this.

"Tell me," he pleaded, voice desperate, but still firm.

"All of it," Baze finally bit out, squeezing Chirrut's hand for a moment before finally pulling away, leaving the others to think what they might. It wasn't much, but as they all turned their energies toward other things, this small moment of acknowledgement would be enough. They both knew quite well how this process worked.

Healing happened in small moments.

XxX

If Baze didn't love Chirrut so damn much, if he didn't need the blind fool in order to live, he honestly might have killed him for the insane chase Jyn Erso's "clear path" led them on. First in a much needed skirmish against the Empire, then to the central base of the rebellion they'd turned away from so long ago, and now to a heavily guarded world under Imperial control – more than likely to their deaths. Even so, Chirrut would follow the path that the Force illuminated before him, and Baze would follow wherever he led.

That didn't mean, however, that they couldn't take a moment out of this famous destiny for themselves; and Chirrut took the opportunity to do just that while the other rebels gathered their gear for the run on Scarif. Baze would admit to some confusion when his husband took him by the hand and led him to an out of the way alcove in the hangar, but Chirrut's intentions became clear when he reached out a hand to rest it upon Baze's heart – over the Mark. For several moments, he just stood still, eyes drifting between Chirrut's hand and his face.

"Praise," Chirrut began softly, "for out of the all that is one there has been raised a soul like no other. He calls to me in the darkness and my soul shines the brighter. Praise, for he is my heart, my soul, my Beloved. He is the one that was made for me, as I was made for him," he intoned gently, echoing the words of their wedding vows so many years before – one final reaffirmation.

When Chirrut stood on tiptoe, Baze leaned his face down closer to allow him to press a kiss to his forehead, then a kiss to his eyes, then a longer, more lingering kiss to his lips.

"With these lines, I bind myself unto you, my blood mingled with yours, forever bound throughout the strands of the Force," Chirrut whispered against his lips. "Let nothing living doubt how I love you." Then, at the last, he lowered his head to drop a loving kiss onto the Mark.

Gazing solemnly down at his husband for several moments, Baze pulled away from him for just a second in order to take Chirrut's staff and lean it against the wall. Then he twined his fingers together with Chirrut's, raising his lover's hands up to his face in order to press a kiss to each fingertip, drawing a tremulous sigh of contentment from his lips with every point of contact. Then Baze released Chirrut's left hand, raising his own now free one to rest it over his husband's twin Mark.

"Praise," he returned gruffly, though he knew Chirrut could hear the tenderness in his words, "for out of the all that is one there has been raised a heart like no other. He guides my steps when I have lost my way and my heart sings with joy at his approach. Praise, for he is my heart, my soul, my Beloved. He is the one that was made for me, as I was made for him." Then he retraced the same line of kisses down Chirrut's face – a kiss of respect to his forehead, a kiss of adoration to his sightless eyes, and a kiss of love to his lips. This kiss he held even longer than Chirrut had, taking a moment to just feel the other man in his arms before he allowed time to start moving away from them again.

"With these lines, I bind myself unto you, my blood mingled with yours, forever bound throughout the strands of time," he vowed anew, pressing one more quick kiss to Chirrut's lips and drawing a small but joyful laugh from his throat. "Let nothing living doubt how I love you," he finished before lowering his head to Chirrut's chest to leave his own vow against the other man's Mark. There were no masters anymore to solemnize their promises to each other, but they needed no one else to tell an unfeeling galaxy how they loved each other. This moment was only for them…and it was interrupted all too soon.

"Baze, Chirrut, we're nearly rea- oh. Oh!" Bodhi's voice abruptly died in his throat when the pilot saw what he'd interrupted. Bowing as low as he could without completely tripping over himself, he struggled to apologize while also trying to escape.

"Oh, I- I'm so s- sorry. Please- please forgive me," Bodhi begged. "I didn't realize…that…"

"That what, Bodhi?" Chirrut asked him languidly, a small, secretive smile moving easily across his face.

"That you…that the two of you are…Xino'ai," he said quietly, voice stumbling over the word. He was the only member of this small band who might really understand what that meant.

"Yes, we are," Chirrut returned, reaching out to grab his staff before making his way over to the young pilot. "And not even your clumsiest interruptions can change that fact, so cease your worrying," he said as he placed a hand on Bodhi's shoulder. "After all, I sense that one day soon you will understand just how deep such a bond can run."

At this, Bodhi smiled hesitantly, something like hope coming awake in his eyes, and in that expression, Baze suddenly saw the face of an old friend looing back at them. In Bodhi's face, he saw the eyes of Asana shining out – Asana…who had burned with Jedha, but who still somehow lived within this scrappy former Imperial. He didn't know how they might share blood, but it was plain to be seen that they did, and it was comforting to him in some way – that even one more small piece of home had survived the devastation.

"You…you really think so?" Bodhi asked.

"I know it. So keep it in mind should you find yourself facing death. There is still someone out there waiting to meet you. So go. We will be along."

"Y- yes," Bodhi stuttered out, still smiling as he moved to head back to the ship.

"Not like you to offer false hope in your predictions," Baze said once the boy had gone. "Especially not with something like that."

"Nothing false about it. There is a great light awaiting him beyond the darkness ahead of us. He only needs to survive long enough to reach it. No different from how we survived long enough to reach each other," Chirrut said as they began to move back toward the stolen ship.

Baze snorted. "Only to end up here?"

"Does the ending make what has come before it any less?" Chirrut returned. "Does it give the love we have lived any less value?"

"No," Baze answered, gaze following adoringly and protectively after his love as he moved confidently through the bustling hangar. "I- only wish that…"

"Yes?" Chirrut prompted when he didn't continue.

Baze shook his head. "No. Nothing. It is done. No sense in foolish wishing."

"Ah, but as you are so fond of pointing out, you fell in love with the greatest fool of them all. So I ask you: who is the more foolish? The fool or the fool who loves him?"

Baze let out a proper laugh at that one, grinning to himself as they moved into the shadows cast by the Imperial ship. "Damn your eyes, Chirrut Imwe, but you have me there."

"As I will always have you," Chirrut said as he spun gracefully about to face him, a look of warm affection smoothing the lines of his face.

"Yes. Always," Baze said tenderly as he pulled his husband to him in the shadow of the cargo ship. "Let nothing living doubt," he whispered before claiming Chirrut's lips one last time. They lingered for as long as they could, both aching to spin the moment out into eternity, but knowing just how ephemeral it truly was. Even so, they held fast to each other, giving of themselves one last time.

When they finally had to break the kiss, they kept their foreheads pressed together, cleaving tightly to every moment as time slipped away from them.

"I love you," Baze breathed against Chirrut's lips, knowing these words were not enough to contain everything he felt for the man who had stolen his heart, but that they would have to suffice just the same. Those words had loomed so large the first time he'd spoken them in the pools beneath the temple. When had they become so small in the face of what his heart was truly capable of feeling?

"And I love you, my Baze. Husband, friend, protector," Chirrut returned just as softly, hands reaching up to trace the already familiar contours of Baze's face, ultimately coming to tangle in his unkempt hair.

It was a moment they would share forever…however long that happened to be.

XxX

At first, Baze didn't know what it was that had drawn his attention. It would have to be something urgent to pull his focus away from the battle at hand. It wasn't something he heard or saw, nor anything he smelt or tasted on the heavily ionized air. It was something he knew, at the very core of his being – something that drew his gaze to the citadel that had swallowed Jyn, Cassian, and K-2.

Niner.

TK-199.

He really had no idea how, but as surely as he knew his own name, he knew. The Imperial creature that called himself Niner was somewhere in that tower. The one he'd never been able to track down – the one that had slipped through his grasp. The only one he hadn't managed to kill, and the one who had hurt Chirrut most of all…and he was only a few hundred yards away from them now…

Baze didn't have much time to consider this notion, though, as that was also the moment the beach near-exploded beneath the onslaught of the death troopers, forcing the rebels back and away from the objective Bodhi needed them to accomplish. When only four of them made it to cover, Baze's only thought became protecting Chirrut.

Unfortunately, the blind man didn't seem to share the same priority.

In all his years of knowing and loving Chirrut, Baze had very much come to expect the unexpected from his husband, but of all the crazy things Chirrut could have done in this most dire of straits, the one thing Baze really had not expected him to do was to walk directly out from his cover and straight into the hail of heavy blaster fire with his bloody prayer on his lips.

"CHIRRUT!" Baze screamed in anguish as he watched, nearly choking on his own fear every time a blaster bolt struck the sand not even an inch from his husband's feet. "Chirrut! COME BACK!"

But Chirrut did not. Ignoring Baze's desperate cries, he continued on through the hotbed of blaster fire, moving steadily toward the control console. Baze wanted to track his husband's impossible trek, but realized that the only thing he could do for Chirrut now was to lessen the amount of enemies firing on him, so he continued to fire back into the hail.

Somehow, against all possible odds, Chirrut reached the console and managed to flip that cursed master switch. But then he turned to make the return walk and Baze saw something shift in his face.

This was it – their end. Chirrut had known they were never making it off Scarif, and he'd accepted it.

But Baze…

…Baze could not!

"NO!" he shouted, the intensity in his voice stopping Chirrut dead in his tracks with a look of confusion on his face. Thinking of nothing except Chirrut, Baze flung himself out into the line of fire, barely feeling the nick of a single bolt to his side as he ran to his husband. Crashing headlong into the blind man, he wrapped his arms around him as he sent them both to the ground. He made certain he was completely covering Chirrut's body with his own when the detonator exploded overhead.

Baze couldn't at first deal with all the disparate pieces of sensory input he was receiving from his battered body, so he ended up tackling each piece one by one.

First came the fact that his hearing was gone, consumed in the violence of the blast. All that remained to him was the pounding of his own blood in his ears – a harsh and never-ending drumbeat that picked up in speed as his system was flooded with adrenaline.

The next thing to come to his attention was the dull and muted sense of pain from the fire searing down through his flight suit and into his skin, burning through several layers of tissue. His armor kept him alive, protected the most vital parts, but he knew it was only the adrenaline that was keeping him from feeling how hideously painful this must be. The scent of burnt hair and cloth attacked his nose and the taste settled in his mouth like ash.

Actually, it probably really was ash, he found himself thinking with an ugly croak of a laugh.

Aren't you forgetting something?

Chirrut! Chirrut?! Is he all right? Is he alive? Husband!

He tried to call out, couldn't make his voice work, his throat badly damaged from inhaling super-heated air.

Chirrut…Chirrut, please…

Reaching out with desperate hands, Baze suddenly realized he was lying on his back, and it was that revelation that finally seemed to jog his vision back into working order. He could see Chirrut crouching above him, face pinched in misery as his mouth twisted, screaming words that Baze couldn't hear. Managing a weak smile, he reached up to touch his husband's face. The first sound to return to his ears was Chirrut's pain-filled voice.

"Baze! Baze! No! Not like this! Please!"

"It's…all right," he forced himself to croak out in a voice that was barely recognizable as anything human. "I'm going- to protect you…always."

"Xino'ai…hold on. Just hold on," Chirrut pleaded with him as tears poured down his face.

Baze tried to stay awake. He really did, but consciousness was quickly slipping through his fingers. The last thing to register in his mind before he was lost to the darkness was the sound of Chirrut's desperate cry.

"Baze! Baze!"

XxX

Rebels and Resistance fighters for generations to come would tell stories about the Battle of Scarif. They would talk about the Imperial pilot who'd lit the way, the Alliance captain who'd rallied the troops, and the young, newly-appointed sergeant who'd led them all, doing everything in her power to see her father's final mission through.

But whenever the talk turned to Scarif, one story in particular always seemed to come to the front, told in hushed whispers of awe…and no doubt with a tiny breath of fear, as well.

That was the story of the force of nature that had rampaged the beach after former Guardian of the Whills Baze Malbus had shielded his husband from a detonator blast. The stories always told of how Chirrut Imwe had always been a power to be reckoned with, but when faced with the very real possibility of losing his husband, he'd become a truly unstoppable force. Eyewitnesses reported seeing a whirlwind of red and black sweep the blood-soaked sand, mowing down troopers like a vibro-scythe. Chirrut would always try to insist that there really hadn't been that many Imperials left, but the tales of a man outnumbered a hundred to one still persisted.

Of his original companions, the only one to actually see Chirrut in this state was Bodhi, and he never really said anything to add to or detract from the stories, but there was always something fearful and unsettled in his eyes whenever talk of that last onslaught came up.

Certainly, he could never have claimed to have known Chirrut well before Scarif, but when he'd staggered from the shuttle to try and help the few remaining survivors, he'd beheld something frightening and completely unknown – some sort of demon from out of his nightmares. Seeing the enraged warrior monk destroy his former compatriots had made the pilot guiltily glad not to be an Imperial anymore. He'd even found himself risking destruction when he'd approached Baze's unconscious form to try and move him.

Chirrut had been standing between them in no more than a minute, weapon aimed at Bodhi's head.

"Chirrut!" he'd shouted to be heard over the roar of distant explosions, throwing his hands in the air without even thinking. "It's Bodhi! It's me!"

Bodhi had been amazed at how quickly the Guardian had been able to cage the beast he'd glimpsed. One more moment and Chirrut really might have shot him. As he would say ever after, he had not known Chirrut Imwe well in those days, but it would always linger just at the back of his mind how vastly different the two halves of the Guardian's heart were – one the gentle, fun-loving monk, and the other…the merciless warrior, the berserker who could kill completely without conscience.

XxX

As Chirrut sat alone outside the bacta tank that held his life and his heart, he found himself wondering if maybe he wasn't playing out a scene he knew had happened many years ago – Baze waiting anxiously outside another tank, battered body barely held together while he himself hung suspended in bacta, helpless, broken in both body and spirit. Only now their positions were reversed. Now he was the one left to wait while Baze floated, insulated by the healing fluid.

At the very least, Baze was free of pain now, and Chirrut drew some measure of comfort from that, but the emotions he could still sense clinging to his husband's unconscious thoughts were just as unquiet as his own. He didn't fully understand what Baze had experienced in that moment, but whatever it was, it had left him without peace…and it had been enough to alter their fate.

Chirrut had known going forward that they were not meant to make it off Scarif. For a long while, he had sensed their lives turning in that direction. There had been hope for the others, but he and his husband had been meant to leave their lives on that sand. He had known and accepted it. It was why he'd insisted on renewing their vows one last time. But in that small moment between flipping the switch and turning back to Baze, that destiny had changed. The Force had surged from his husband, bursting outward like a star going supernova. Whether or not Baze would ever believe it, the Force had brought them together yet again. The only trouble was that Chirrut couldn't understand why their causality had shifted so suddenly.

It wasn't so much that he was arrogant enough to believe he could understand the Force's every twist and turn. More that it had seemed to him in the madness of that moment that his own life was to be spared…at the cost of Baze's, and he'd been unable to accept that.

To die together, to follow him quickly into death, even to die and await their reunion, those he would've accepted. But to only be alive because Baze was not? That he could not endure. They'd sacrificed so much already. He refused to be the justification for Baze's death. So, for only the second time in his life, Chirrut Imwe was selfish, giving in to the rage he knew his heart was capable of and taking what he wanted for no other reason than that he wanted it – taking life not to protect Jyn's cause, but for his own selfish need for Baze to be alive. He'd kept nothing back, using every technique he'd ever learned to demolish his enemies. And it was that monstrous creature that Bodhi Rook had faced down on the beaches of Scarif.

He was satisfied, but he had no idea if he'd done the right thing.

Xino'ai…you've always done foolish things for my sake. Now I fear I may have done something foolish. You always said you would be lost without me. I…I'm afraid it might be the other way around. I thought I was ready, but I'm not. I'm afraid. I'm so afraid. Just…please…

"Don't leave me," he pleaded softly, grip tightening around his staff, which lay at rest across his lap.

"Chirrut?" Jyn's voice came to him from the far side of the chamber. As she approached him, he picked up the sound of a second set of footsteps right on her heels, too shuffling and whisper-light to be Cassian, but moving too close to be anyone not already familiar with her. Bodhi, then.

"Hello, Jyn," he returned quietly, not shifting from his place before the tank. Really, he was too tired to even turn his head in her direction. "Recovering well?"

"Hardly even scratched me," she said as she sat down beside him, reaching out to take his hand, as he'd once done for her. "How are you holding up?"

"Nothing more than a few burns…thanks to him," Chirrut answered, nodding toward the tank.

"That isn't- so much what I meant. I heard the medics talking. Baze is your husband?"

"Can you think of another reason why a man like him would protect an old blind fool such as myself?" he tried to joke, painfully aware of the absence of his husband's response to such a statement. Baze either would have laughed or fired back with a jibe of his own.

Jyn let out a sound that was caught somewhere between a sob and a laugh. "It isn't…it's not…I knew you two were close, I just didn't…"

"You do not need to feel bad for not knowing. It is not a state we wear openly, for more reasons than I care to explain. It is enough that it exists between us," he said, gripping Jyn's hand tighter for just a moment.

"Will he…is he going to be all right?" Bodhi finally spoke up.

"The will to survive is strong within him. It always has been. And it has carried him this far. Heh…did you know he was born on a prison ship?"

"No. I didn't know that," Jyn answered.

"I will tell you the story sometime. Only…will you tell me…what does he look like right now?" Chirrut found himself asking.

Both young people were silent for several moments at this. Bodhi was the one to finally break the silence with the quietly murmured response of, "Well…most of his hair's gone."

Chirrut chuckled quietly at this. "I can guarantee you it will have grown back within the week. His hair grows faster than a Wookiee's."

"The burns look like they're healing," Jyn picked up, and the Guardian was pleased to hear the tiny smile in her voice. "I remember when…when you picked me and Cassian up, they looked very bad. New skin's growing in now, though. I guess- the best way to describe it is that it looks like a new baby's skin. Everything's raw and pink," Jyn finished, and the displacement of the air beside him told Chirrut of the way she shrugged helplessly.

The thought of Baze as a newborn did bring a small smile to his face, though. It chased away his own dark phantoms and left him feeling charitable enough to ask, "How is Captain Andor fairing?"

"Still in surgery," the young woman responded, knowing that Chirrut was perfectly aware of the way she'd stiffened upon being asked. "We won't know anything for a few more hours."

"Then I suppose you wouldn't find any harm in joining an old man in his meditations. I don't know if anyone told you this, Bodhi, but you are permitted to sit. Join us," he said, patting the empty spot on his other side.

"Oh, r- right," Bodhi started upon being singled out. He stood uncertainly for several moments before finally taking Chirrut up on his offer, moving out from beside Jyn to come and sit beside him. It wasn't long at all before Chirrut was spinning out the old prayer, seeking the calm that had once come so easily to him.

"I am one with the Force. The Force is with me. I am one with the Force. The Force is with me. I am one with the Force. The Force is with me."

Jyn never really joined in with the chanting, but Chirrut could feel her constantly reaching up to grip her mother's pendant. It took Bodhi awhile, but he would occasionally join in with the callback, no doubt remembered from days long ago when the streets of NiJedha resounded with the call and response of the ancient prayer.

"The Force is with me, and I am one with the Force. The Force is with me, and I am one with the Force."

They continued like this long into the night, until both Jyn and Bodhi had fallen asleep around him. Chirrut himself did not sleep, though. Between his bouts of prayer, he continued to guard his husband's rest, ever vigilant. It seemed to him that the world was holding its breath, and he had every intention of being prepared when that tension finally broke.

XxX

The galaxy continued to spin around the Rogue One survivors as they waited for their missing pieces to be returned to them.

Cassian was the first to rejoin them, broken parts cobbled back together, but still as fired with the rebellion as ever. He kept them as informed of the goings on as he was able. First the courier had been captured and the stolen plans lost, then a planet actually destroyed by the Death Star, but Chirrut hadn't needed Cassian to tell him that. Though much less immediate to him than the destruction of NiJedha, the Guardian had still felt the devastation of Alderaan's loss within the fabric of the Living Force. It left him reeling, barely clinging to hope as he waited for Baze to come back to him.

It was only as word was coming to them of Princess Leia's rescue and the recovery of the plans that the med droids were finally releasing Baze from the bacta tank. Chirrut could tell how much their younger companions wanted to be present for Baze's awakening, but he also knew how anxious they were to attend the mission briefing for the Alliance's run on the Death Star.

"Go," he told them as the droids prepared to drain the tank. "Nothing will happen while you're gone."

I will keep him safe.

All three of them hesitated, but they ended up agreeing in the end, unable to wait for Baze's emergence for fear of missing the briefing. By the time the droids pulled him from the tank, it was just Chirrut there to greet him.

The infirmary had clean robes on hand, but Chirrut instead draped his own robe around his husband's shoulders, as Baze had done for him so many years ago. As the two of them embraced, never really having expected to do so again in life, Baze rested his head heavily on Chirrut's shoulder. The Guardian knew they hadn't embraced this tightly or this desperately since Tigrin, so he just let the moment be, holding his husband against him, savoring the feel of his breath against his skin.

"Come on, you great hairless bantha," Chirrut said after a time, pressing a kiss to Baze's ear before shifting their positions so that the larger man could lean against him while they walked. "We need to get you lying down. They said you might still be tired."

"Not tired," Baze grumbled as they began the slow trek from the infirmary. "Hungry, maybe."

"That will keep until later, I think. The base is on high alert at the moment. The others are all attending a mission briefing," Chirrut explained.

"Why? What's happening?" Baze pressed.

"You slept through a lot, my dear little monkey lizard, but the short of it is that the Alliance is about to make its run on the Death Star even as we speak."

"That is good," Baze spat out in a voice that was anything but. "NiJedha will have her vengeance."

"Yes," Chirrut agreed, choosing not to mention the fact that the Imperial superweapon was currently en route to their location, and that if the Alliance failed now, they would all die anyway. It wouldn't do to trouble his husband over those thoughts when Chirrut already had such faith in the rebel pilots. The Force was with them. He had no doubt they would see their mission through.

"But they are all right? Jyn and Bodhi? The captain?" Baze asked, already leaning heavier as they moved.

"They are all right. Not many of the recruits made it, but we five came through, and Cassian says he will be able to retrieve the droid's data."

"How?"

"You need me to tell you about data retrieval, Baze? You will have had a great deal of your brain burnt away if you think I know any more about it than you do."

"You know what I meant, Chirrut," Baze scolded affectionately. "How did we make it out of there?"

"Jyn, Cassian, and K-2 were able to reprogram some of the base's other K-2 units. They helped to turn the tide of battle long enough to allow us to escape. But it started before that, I think," Chirrut said pointedly, and he could tell from the way Baze tensed against him that his husband knew exactly what he was talking about, but rather than address his veiled question, Baze turned the conversation in a different direction.

"Do you even know where we're going, old fool? How does a blind man find his way around an unfamiliar base?"

"As a matter of fact, I do know. Cassian told me where to go. You would be the one who was lost if I decided to up and leave you here. Perhaps I should, just to teach you a lesson," Chirrut suggested coyly.

Baze sighed at this, a sound that somehow managed to be both annoyed and affectionate in one go. "No. Don't do that. I would be lost without you, Chirrut Imwe."

"And I without you, Baze Malbus," Chirrut returned, his usual teasing tone slipping for just a moment. But before Baze could call him on it, Chirrut nodded his head to the side. "It wouldn't do much good to teach you a lesson now anyway. We're already here," he said as he walked Baze over to the door in the center of the corridor, taking a moment to feel for the access pad.

When the door slid open, the pair moved into the room as quickly as they were able. The input from the echo-box told Chirrut just where in the small room the bed was located and he helped Baze walk to it. His husband had barely settled before he was pulling Chirrut onto the bed with him, and there was barely enough room for the two of them, but that had never exactly been a stop to them before and Chirrut didn't imagine it would be now. Baze had pressed several slow, tender kisses to his face before asking him, "Have you slept since Scarif? How long has it been?"

"Four days, by the standard count," he returned, pressing a kiss to the corner of Baze's mouth. "I have had my moments."

"Which means, 'No. I'm a foolish old Guardian who won't admit I need sleep like all the other mortals'," Baze ground out.

"That's an interesting translation of the phrase. You will have to refer me to your dictionary of Galactic Basic."

"Chirrut-"

"Don't worry. I have napped. Besides, there's nothing more to worry about tonight. We have time. We have time," he repeated, drawing a hand up to trace the lines of Baze's face, taking the time to feel every hard edge and soft hollow. He lingered longest over the scar beneath his left eye, mind fluttering just on the edges of memories of that night. "For my part, I would know what happened to you on that beach."

Again, he felt his love tense beneath his fingertips. He could feel something dark roiling at Baze's very core and the words for it were tangled horribly between his heart and his throat.

"We are alive, my love. We survived when we should not have. Isn't that enough? What more do you want of me?"

"Baze…tell me," he pleaded quietly.

Baze sighed heavily at the request, pressing their foreheads together before finally answering with, "It was him."

Chirrut knew whom he meant. Of course he did. For them, there was only one him. Just the same, he found himself asking, "You…you mean-"

"Niner. He was on Scarif. I don't know how I knew. I just did."

"On the beach?"

"No. The tower. He was there. I know he was."

"And I suppose it's too much to hope that he didn't escape Scarif?"

"He's still out there. He must be. I don't- really know what happened back there, but when I saw you just accept our fate like that…I just couldn't stand the thought of him being alive when we'd both died. Even if it was just one of us…I couldn't let you die. I couldn't," he hissed, holding Chirrut just that little bit more tightly before smashing their lips together, holding him in that desperate, bruising kiss for several long moments.

Chirrut clung back just as desperately, returning the kiss with no less fervor, but the passionate embrace did not progress any further than that. When they finally separated, they were left simply lying on the bed, Chirrut with his arms wrapped around Baze and Baze cradling Chirrut's face tenderly between his hands. Ultimately, all Chirrut could seem to manage was a small, pained laugh.

"Somehow I have trouble believing our lives were spared for the sake of a revenge vendetta, but it would be strange of me not to believe that all is as the Force wills it. I'd like to say I'm not bothered by the fact that he's still alive-"

"But we'd both be able to taste that lie on your lips," Baze pointed out.

"And I'd like to tell you not to go after him-"

"But you know I can't do that," Baze finished, running a gentle thumb over his cheek.

"Baze…the last one you went after…I nearly lost you," Chirrut choked out, uncertain if it was worse to remember the night the temple fell or all those long months spent without Baze. Really, he was no longer young enough to wonder what he would do if his husband didn't come back this time, but that didn't make the thought any less painful.

"But you didn't. You saved me," Baze reminded him, running those same gentle thumbs in circles over his temples as he kissed his forehead. "Every moment, you save me. You are everything that is sacred to me…and I cannot let that beast go unpunished for what he did. You know that."

"I know it," Chirrut said quietly, taking one of Baze's hands in his and drawing it up to his lips, carefully pressing a kiss to each knuckle, wanting his husband to know how much he appreciated his strong hands. "You will go. I know I cannot stop you, but…for now…can't we just be alive? Can't I just have you for myself a little longer?"

Baze's only response was to kiss him again, cradling him easily against his rejuvenated body.

Neither had the energy to do much more than that, so they simply lay together, kissing and caressing until they fell asleep in each other's arms, little realizing that the Death Star was burning itself out in the atmosphere over their heads, or exactly how close they'd come, yet again, to total destruction.

XxX

He's sitting alone on the beaches of Scarif.

At first, he only knows this because of the humidity of the air and the damp quality of the sand beneath his fingertips. Sand he's familiar with, but the sand of his home was constantly dry. There was nothing damp or humid about Jedha. This isn't home. It's also not the stale, recycled taste of air that's been processed by a ship's artificial atmosphere scrubbers. It's true air, carrying the scents of mud, salt, and something faintly floral as it moves past him, warm but still balmy.

The new information comes to him in bits and pieces. First the darker color of the sand as the beach spreads out before his eyes. Then the intense green haze of Scarif's plant life. It takes him a few moments to identify these things as trees and bushes and undergrowth. His only experience with plants had been the groves in the temple complex, and the groves had always been carefully manicured and managed, nothing like the literal explosion of life he sees here.

And opposite the sandy mass of the beach is an even greater expanse, a seemingly endless stretch of shifting color and form, both light and dark by turns. He's so overwhelmed by the sight that it takes him even longer to understand that it's an ocean. The only seas he's ever seen are seas of sand. He knows, of course, that there are entire planets covered by oceans, but being from a desert moon, it still amazes him to see so much water all in one place.

For several minutes, each one a moment spinning out into its own little eternity in this dreamlike state, he just takes in the sights, amazed at this new wealth of visual information that will now line his dream worlds side by side with the familiar sights of his home. There is no sign of the Empire in this place, only the shifting tides of the Light and the Dark within the Force as they ebb and flow throughout his mind, pulling apart to become distinct in some places while swirling together in others to create eddies of life and moment. As the meditation continues, the distinction becomes the feel of Light within the jungle at his back, and the Dark that looms large upon the horizon that forms above the ocean ahead of him – the uncertainty of the future.

"I have never seen a beach before," he says quietly when the mind that supplied all this imagery makes itself known to him in the figure of a young man in careworn Jedi robes. "Had you thought to make an impression?"

The man chuckles quietly as he sits down beside him. "I'm aware. I thought it might be of use to you to have some clearer sense of the place where your path diverged."

"It isn't- just so Baze can carry out this vengeance of his…is it?" he asks as he leans forward, beginning to trace shapes in the sand with his fingers, enjoying the combined feel of the wet grit against his skin with the ability to actually see what he's creating.

"I doubt it, though that is certainly the mechanism that spurred the divergence. From where I stand, you have been saved because there is a boy who is in need of guidance. I can no longer help him, and he needs a teacher to show him the ways of the Force."

"If you will forgive me, my friend, you are not standing. You are sitting," he can't seem to help pointing out, and the Jedi has enough of a sense of humor to laugh at the tiny joke.

"Maybe so, but allow an old fool the pleasure of just sitting on a beach after a lifetime of fighting. I've earned this. Besides, it illustrates the point quite well, if I do say so myself. What is my own standing worth if it can change so easily? I don't see why it can't be both things that caused your path to diverge. For your husband, it was the need to see justice done. For you, it will be the desire to nurture a young soul, to equip him with the tools he needs to hold back the Darkness."

"I am no Jedi, my friend, no Force-user. I only feel its presence and follow where it leads. Forgive me, but it seems unlike you Jedi to acknowledge any way but your own. What help would I be to a boy wishing to be a Jedi?" he asks, stopping to admire his work – his and Baze's names, written out in beautiful Jedhan script and joined by the Mark of the Xino'ai. Stars, but it's been so long since he's seen something written out.

"We Jedi? We Jedi who were completely wiped out by an enemy we were arrogant enough not to see coming? It seems to me it would be better for the next generation to broaden their horizons, to widen their point of view and not fall prey to outdated modes of thinking. It will serve Luke well, I think, to see more than just the ways of the Jedi. You may not be a Jedi, Chirrut Imwe, but you know the Force. That is all he needs. That and…family," the master says, voice breaking off at the end. It seems to Chirrut that while the man's been talking, he's been aging right before his eyes.

"Family? Are you sure you're a Jedi?" he can't quite help teasing.

"I have seen the Jedi Code succeed…and I have seen it fail. I will not see it fail Luke where it failed his father."

With that, the Jedi reaches across and rests a hand on his shoulder and Chirrut sees what his life has been – Obi-Wan Kenobi – his power, his pride, his failings, the mistakes he's made, their culmination in a lost student and brother, a galaxy fallen, and two children without a home. Chirrut sighs heavily, offering up a weary smile as he lives everything with him.

"I am an interesting choice to act as your confessor, Kenobi, given what I endured when the Republic fell. Would you really leave this Last Hope of yours in the hands of such a destroyed creature as this?" he asks, slowly climbing to his feet.

"You are not destroyed," the old man says, looking up at him from where he still sits on the sand. "Far from it. That which was once broken can be remade stronger than ever it was before. Who better to teach such a lesson? You are not obligated to take on this challenge, Guardian Imwe, but know that the galaxy can turn upon the mercy of a single being. You ought to remember that going forward," he says, shifting up onto his knees so that he's kneeling before Chirrut. The monk shakes his head, letting a touch more humor into his smile.

"You don't need to beg, you know. I would never turn away from a student in need of a teacher. I just can't be sure if this is as the Force wills or as you will." Really, he's only been undeniably certain of the difference four times in his life, and he's not yet sure if this is going to be the fifth.

"Well, I will let you be the judge of that when you meet Luke Skywalker for yourself. Don't let me influence you," the old Jedi says with a shrug, though he remains on his knees. As he fades away, a smile – a true smile – moves across his face. "Whatever the case may be, I know Anakin's son is in good hands."

Then he's gone and Chirrut finds himself alone on the beach. Already the sky's growing darker overhead and the wind is whipping harshly up from the ocean, stirring the water up into white-capped waves and billowing the Guardian's robes fiercely about his compact frame.

Swallowing heavily, Chirrut looks down at the sand to try and make out the words he traced out earlier, but he can't read them anymore. The lines are twisting away from him like smoke curling away from a flame. This is no longer Obi-Wan communing with him through the Force. This is his own mind.

His own nightmare.

The darkness is encroaching faster now, swallowing up the sky, the horizon, the ocean. Soon even the beach itself is beginning to crumble and break off, quickly falling away into the darkness. Briefly, he thinks about running, but really, where's he going to go? Everything is disappearing into the dark – just like it always has. So he waits patiently upon the sand until it falls from beneath him, sending him tumbling into the familiar abyss.

Strangely, this drop isn't like falling through air. It's more like being plunged into water, or being submerged in bacta. Either way, he's robbed of his sense of up from down and there's nowhere he can go.

He knows it's coming, but that doesn't stop his blood from turning to ice in his veins when it finally does.

The voice at his ear…the whisper in the dark…

"You are strong, Guardian…but we will break you."

There is no face for this darkest of terrors. There never has been – only hands on his body, moving past every defense and exploiting every weakness, stripping away each layer of strength to reveal the raw, naked soul inside.

The memory of the other five has faded with time, the ghost of pain haunting much less down through the years. What has never faded or softened is his own feeling of self-disgust – the revulsion that crawls just beneath his skin that one man can tear through him so easily. Niner's voice has never faded.

"What good are you to the galaxy…if someone like me can break you so easily?" that voice hisses in his ear as the hands pin him down. "What good will you be against the Empire? In the end, we will always destroy you – destroy him."

The Force is with me and I am with the Force…and I fear nothing. I fear nothing. I fear nothing. I fear nothing!

"Nothing, Chirrut?" Niner asks in that gentle, condescending tone, lips tracing along Chirrut's neck. "I think we both know that's not quite true. There is one thing you fear, and it isn't me – is it. It's what I've done that you fear – what I've destroyed. You cannot escape it. You're afraid I really might have destroyed what you are, and nothing you do can ever mend that."

"That…it's not true," he chokes the words out, again knowing what's coming, but powerless to stop it.

"Oh, no? Poor, poor Chirrut. You've fought for such a long time, but now your skills won't save you," Niner half-croons, echoing the words from that night as his hands trace all over Chirrut's body. "What will you do? Will you pray to your Force…even though you know it won't answer?"

The words that broke him.

"NOOOO!"

Baze was jolted awake by the sound of Chirrut screaming.

Most people probably would've reacted to being woken by their husband's screams by reaching for a weapon, any weapon, but Baze knew better. No enemy of flesh and blood could cause his Beloved to cry out like that. There was only one thing in all the galaxy that could make Chirrut scream, and Baze couldn't protect him from it. Not really. All he could do was cradle Chirrut tightly in his arms, holding him close as the horrors of his dream world slowly unraveled around him.

"It's all right. It's all right. It's over now," he insisted through the last of Chirrut's cries, helping him find his way out of the nightmare. "I'm here. I'm here."

Chirrut didn't say anything this time. He just clung to Baze. Neither of them even looked up at the sound of someone practically smashing the security override on their door. The moment it slid open, Jyn, Cassian, and Bodhi all spilled into the room, each on the lookout for some sort of danger.

"What happened?" Cassian demanded, eyes still darting around the space, clearly surprised not to find an assassin lurking.

"Nothing happened," Baze growled quietly, sadly. "Nothing happened today, at least. It was only a nightmare."

"A- about Scarif?" Bodhi asked, something clearly unsettled in his expression that Baze knew he would need to ask him about later.

"No. Believe it or not, this is not the first time we've tangled with the Empire," he barely kept himself from snapping at their three new companions, dividing his attention between them and his husband.

"We thought- you'd been attacked," Jyn admitted haltingly, and much as Baze hated to acknowledge it, the vulnerability in her voice struck something in him.

"It's okay," Chirrut whispered to him, face still buried in his chest, his death grip on Baze lessening by inches. "They should know."

"You are sure?" Baze whispered into his husband's hair as he ran his hands soothingly up and down his back. For all they had been through together in the past week, they didn't know these three young people. Not really. And yet…Chirrut had always seemed to know better than he ever had who was trustworthy.

"Yes. For better or worse…our fates have been tied together. They may know. Tell them," Chirrut finished quietly. He was no longer clinging to Baze, but he made no move to disentangle himself from the larger man's embrace. So, holding his husband easily against his chest, Baze began to give voice to their lives as he never had before.

"Do any of you know…how long Jedha was under Imperial occupation?"

"Nearly- as long as the Empire has existed," Bodhi was the one to supply, voice growing distant as he remembered. Jyn and Cassian both looked back at him in surprise when he continued. "I was six years old. I…barely remember a time before the occupation."

Baze nodded. "Not that the Empire needs an excuse to wantonly destroy, but they had it in the Guardians. Chirrut and I were present when the order to kill the Jedi went out. We attempted to protect the Jedi commander serving on Jedha, but we failed. Chirrut lost his sight that night and our order was declared a band of traitors for daring to protect a Jedi. It brought them down on us without warning…without mercy. They besieged our home for months," he recounted.

"I remember," Bodhi said quietly when Baze trailed off, almost as if he were amazed that he did. "Mama was so worried. My cousin was a Guardian in those days."

Baze gave a small laugh at this. So that was the answer. "Asana Rook."

At this, Bodhi's eyes widened. "You- you knew her?"

"Yes. She was one of the defenders who stood on the outer wall with me on the final night of the siege. She never ran. She was a good woman. Brave. She was helping the last of the injured to escape the temple that night. I drew the stormtroopers off to allow them time to escape with the rebel cell that had been helping us. Chirrut and I were captured."

Cassian inhaled sharply at this and when Baze looked to him, he could see the small pinprick of horror in the captain's dark eyes. Clearly, he was no stranger to the efficacy of Imperial interrogation. "What happened?" the young spy asked.

"They wanted to know where the insurgents were hiding. They threatened to…to rape Chirrut in front of me…if we did not give them what they demanded," he said, barely able to tear the word from his throat, even after all this time. But he could not have them mistake his meaning here. It didn't help to just say that their enemies had threatened to hurt his husband. Their companions needed to understand the full meaning of what had happened to them. He didn't look them in the eye when he spoke, but he could feel the realization and the pity within them, especially when Jyn spoke up.

"Then…what did happen?"

"We did not give in to them," he answered simply, voice a quiet growl in his throat as Chirrut's grip on him briefly tightened. No doubt he could feel exactly what it was they were all feeling at Baze's words.

For a long while, no one seemed to know what to say. Baze continued to hold Chirrut while the other three stood in shocked silence. Baze knew he would have to be the one to bring it all full circle, but he didn't track how long that silence stretched before he spoke again.

"We protected them, but we did not remain with the rebellion in those days. I did not want to put Chirrut through that after what he'd already been through. He still wakes in the night sometimes…screaming. It hadn't happened for a few years- before this, but with everything that's happened, well…" That thought he let hang, thinking the meaning to be quite plain. Cassian was the one to speak up after the silence had gone on too long the second time around.

"It doesn't seem…quite enough…to say we're sorry for what happened to you."

Chirrut gave a small, pained laugh against Baze's chest before raising his head. "It doesn't, does it. But I made my choice then and I stand by it now. You don't need to grieve for that. But…you all were celebrating, weren't you. You should return to your revelry. Don't worry about me."

All three young rebels looked a little shocked by the statement, as if they'd even be able to consider such a thing after hearing about what had happened. Baze was left wondering, though.

"Celebrating?" he asked.

"Yes. We were just coming to tell you," Cassian started.

"They did it," Jyn put in, a tired smile moving across her face. "The Alliance squadrons, they- they flew against the Death Star. It was just like my father said. They destroyed it. It's gone. It's gone."

"That is good news," Chirrut said, some of the tension easing from him as he settled a little more easily in Baze's embrace. "Skywalker."

"What?" Baze asked, looking down at him.

"The pilot who fired the shot, the one who destroyed the Death Star…his name is Skywalker," he said, another of his strange knowing little smiles taking up residence about the corners of his mouth.

"That's right," Bodhi said, tilting his head sideways curiously as he looked at them. "How did you know that?"

"The Force is strong with him," was all the answer Chirrut gave before giving a more full-bodied laugh as he sat up in bed. "Méiyǒu, méiyǒu, young ones. Return to your celebration. Leave these old men be for a night. We will do our own celebrating, and I cannot imagine you will want to be present for it," he teased.

Bodhi immediately turned bright red, trying to babble out several things at once before giving up and retreating backward out of the small room. Cassian blushed only mildly, shrugging as he half-smiled, half-grimaced. Jyn laughed out loud, offering the pair a wink and a thumb's up. "Enjoy," she said before joining hands with Cassian and heading out of the room with him, being sure to seal the door behind them.

Baze chuckled as Chirrut rolled him onto his back, shifting to straddle him. "I get the feeling they'll be doing some celebrating of their own before the night is over," he said, feeling the familiar heat flare in his belly when his husband splayed his fingers along the skin just above his groin. "But…how did you know about the pilot?" he asked against his better judgment, and of course, Chirrut laughed in response.

"Allow an old fortuneteller some secrets. But I surely hope, my dear, that you are prepared to be a teacher again. It seems we are not finished raising little ones just yet."

Baze rolled his eyes as Chirrut leaned down to kiss him. He had no idea what the man was talking about, but their years together had taught him that things would begin to sort themselves out eventually. When Chirrut broke the kiss, his lips twitched into a smile against Baze's. Then he gently began to push the robes from Baze's shoulders.

"This is a joyous night. Come. Make love to me, Xino'ai. There will be time enough for the rest of the galaxy later."

Baze was only too happy to comply with his husband's wishes.

XxX

(A/N) So apparently I keep lying to myself about what the last chapter of this story is going to be. I could have sworn this one was going to be the end of it, but it looks like we need at least one more chapter to wrap things up.