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It never snowed on Jedha. Baze encountered snow and ice during the course of his travels, those years when they were together but apart. (They have always been together; no mere amount of space can make that untrue.) Chirrut has only ever heard about snow from Baze when he would swing by their moon between jobs to catch-up and reassure his lover that all the glorious pieces of his body, Chirrut’s phrasing not his, were still there and functional, though some of them bore new scars that made Chirrut’s face scrunch and his tongue click against the roof of his mouth in that displeased noise that makes Baze feel loved. Baze would tell Chirrut about all the parts of his jobs, but he would stress the beautiful ones.
He stressed snow because he knew it was something that Chirrut would love. The crisp coldness of it on skin, but the way it would melt away at just the heat of a touch. Baze would say, while running his fingers over the planes of the other’s body, that he would love to see Chirrut practice in the snow. And he would think, to himself although sometimes he thought that Chrirut knew all of those as well, that the snow would go so well with his lover’s eyes, something about that pale blue and all the white. That picture in his mind would keep him warm on the cold nights he spent without the other man at his side. Chirrut, though, would not leave, would never leave. Until the day came where there was no other choice.
And now they are on Hoth. With the Rebels. Baze doesn’t ask a lot of questions about how they lived, about how they got away from Scarif. He remembers bacta, a strange floating sensation that was heavy and confined, but he also remembers hearing Chirrut the entire time, a thread that kept him at ease.
So when Chirrut simply says, once they are both breathing and moving on their own and together (they have always been together), that the Force saved them, Baze accepts it. He is too old. He has seen too much. He should have died on that beach with Chirrut’s name in his mouth, following him, always. He should have died, but he didn’t. And Chirrut should have died, his final act a desperate attempt to guard the entire galaxy as he had once guarded their temple.
But they are not dead. None of them are dead.
And if this is because the Force decided that they still had parts to play or because they had earned a moment of peace, Baze is not going to fight with it. He is not going to fight with Chirrut. Not on this at any rate. There will be bickering. They have always bickered. They were six years old together, in that short span after Chirrut’s birthday and before his own, in the courtyard of the temple bickering like an old married couple, and they are still like that now. There will be some other petty little thing to fight about and talk about. It will be soon, he has no doubt. And they will love every moment of it. But he will no longer fight or grouse about the Force. He has decided on that.
For now, Chirrut believes the Force saved them, and Baze just remembers how, in the pressure of the bacta, in the weird almost waking, drifting, sleeping, dreaming moments, he could hear Chirrut, far off in the distant but always there, whispering. Not just the mantra, but other words. Words only for Baze. “I am here. I have you. You found me. It’s okay. It’s okay, my love. It’s okay.”
The only thing that Baze’s mind could put together in those moments, those heavy body, light mind moments were, “Chirrut.” and “Don’t go.” He could not get beyond that, could not shake out of the nightmare playing in his mind. The beach, the shots, the slipping away. He had been so sure of what had happened.
And, yet, what happened was not the end at all.
They are on Hoth. The Rebels have taken them to Hoth, and they are finally released from bed rest. Baze does not ask questions. He is too tired for that. He merely know that Chirrut is alive, he is alive, the rest of Rogue One is alive. He has seen all of them, and Chirrut says that he feels them in the Force. Chirrut says that he feels other things in the Force, things that he should not, a tight thread that shakes everything like a fly trapped in a spider’s web, and a bright shimmering. The bright shimmering is on Hoth with them, but between the stay in the medical unit and Baze’s gruff admonitions to leave it, Chirrut has not attempted to locate it. Yet.
That is a war that Baze can only win so long. This is because, in the end, even when it is dangerous, Chirrut gets what he wants because Baze cannot, has not ever, been able to deny him anything. Not his love, not his life, not whatever foul tea creations he wants to drink, not even his death when it comes swooping by again for, what, the hundredth time? How many times should they both have died by now? Baze isn’t sure. There are too many to count, though he knows each one in his heart, he runs his fingers over them daily, and even when he had lost his faith in the Force, he thanked whatever it was that had kept Chirrut alive and with him. (They have always been together.)
There is much that needs to be done. The Rebels move in a hurry around them, a great buzzing hive of activity that does not pause too much to take in the sight of the old warrior and the old monk who linger at its edges. Baze is not even sure if these children know who they are. Perhaps they have not been told. Better to die a martyr, after all. It’s a better story, presents a deeper meaning and thrust to get the thing done. He understand this tactic even if it he doesn’t like it.
Baze Malbus has been many things over the years, and he is many things now. Orphaned child, initiate of the temple, believer, Guardian of the Whills, best friend, boyfriend, lover, husband, doubter, killer, resistance fighter, good man, believer, dead, alive. But he has never been much of a liar. He cannot spin stories the way that Chirrut does or lie right in someone’s face the way that he has seen Jyn and Cassian do. No, Baze does not lie, he merely says nothing. People can infer what they want to from silence.
So they are ignored except by the handful of people who know them, and most of those people are always too busy to bother them for long. No one has demanded they pick a side or asked if they will continue to fight with them. Baze thinks he knows what Chirrut would say, but Baze is old, and tired, and he has done a great thing even though Chirrut did the greater thing. Life has been a series of one hard task that could kill him after another. Sometimes that is a very big weight on him, one infinitely harder to bear than his repeater cannon, which is gone now and that in and of itself makes him feel unsettled.
What he would like to do is have peace. Have Chirrut and peace. They could find somewhere to start the teachings again. There would not be kyber, but the Guardians were not just about the kyber. They could make it about a lot more than that. The teachings are important, especially in a Force starved world. He has not talked about this with Chirrut yet. Neither of them have talked about the future. It is still strange that they have one after what happened on the beach. They have been using every moment together to just be together in a purely selfish way that they have not allowed themselves since they were much younger and life, still hard, was so much simpler.
Chirrut’s head is tilted to the side and moves in incrementally small motions toward each sound around them, his attention and curiosity constant even though he said that he was going to meditate. He might have taken up his normal posture, but the mantra has yet to leave his lips because this, all of this, around them is too distracting, Baze knows. Part of Chirrut probably wants to shout out, catch the arm of some passerby and regale them with tales of the Force, of their time on Jedha, of Scarif. Since they came out of the bacta, unexpectedly whole, Chirrut has been having trouble focusing. Baze thinks it is because of the proximity of the Force shimmer, but he hasn’t asked.
There are so many words built between them, hard words, truths that he does not want to face and that Chirrut has not made him approach yet. He will. Of them, his husband has always had the stronger will, has always been braver. Baze does what he does because it is right, and it is good, and to protect. He desperately wants to protect everything he can. Not just Chirrut, though mostly Chirrut, but anything in the great, wide galaxy that his hands can reach. Yet for all of that, he also worries so much that it bows his shoulders. Loving Chirrut is a source of worry. It always has been. The man knows no limits. Baze would not have it any other way, but it is still frightening, especially now that he has known a world where he thought he was without his reckless, selfless husband. He does not want to lose him again. (They have always been together.)
All of this can wait. All of this is for later, assuming there is a later. No one knows what is going to happen here. The Rebels have picked up steam, Cassian has told him as much. Everything is on the cusp of something. This is why it is loud and hurried and rushing everywhere. And that is why he makes a choice, a small choice, not to make the world any heavier than it already is. There is so much darkness, Baze Malbus will bring a little light to it.
“There is snow here,” he tells Chirrut, leans forward from where he is seated only a handspan behind him, his lips almost brushing the other’s ear.
Chirrut does not turn his head, not enough that anyone could see, but he does incline it just so to close that infinitesimal gap so that Baze’s lips do touch his skin. This is less about Chirrut being careful around people and more because he loves to tease. “Really?” his voice is all humor and brightness and the teasing of pointing out that someone has stated the obvious. “I just thought we were surrounded by cold sand. Sand that happened to melt.” He brushes his hand over the floor, which is always wet from the constant tread of feet coming in from the frozen waste. “Is this not the tears of our enemies? What is even happening? I am so confused.”
Baze smiles and rolls his eyes though he did not expect anything less. “Hush fool. You’ve never seen snow. Let’s go see the snow.” Today he will not rise to the bickering, though he loves it. He has never been as happy to hear it as he is these days.
“I would like to remind you,” Chirrut says, waving one hand in front of his eyes with that incredulous expression on his face that Baze likes to kiss away when they are alone.
It is an invitation to spar, he knows, for one of their back and forth rounds, but that is not what Baze wants in the here and now. Instead he stands, brushes the dust from the clothes they have given him, clothes that are foreign and strange to him, and then offers Chirrut a hand up. There is a moment when he knows his husband considers sweeping it away. They both know he doesn’t need it, but that is not what it is about. Not really. Finally the fingers curl into his and the other man stands.
They are without their weapons. Those were lost on Scarif and no one has offered to replace them yet, not properly anyway. Chirrut has been given a cane, but he tossed it into the corner of their quarters with a dismissive noise and has been navigating the base without it, relying on the Force and the echobox that Bodhi fixed. And Baze. Sometimes.
It has been years since Baze Malbus was without a weapon, and his body feels different, lighter. So does his mind. As if that, combined with the experience in the bacta, has helped to roll the years back for him. The experiences remain, all the terrible ones that keep him from sleeping night after endless night, but it no longer feels like they have been burned onto his skin, wrapped onto his shoulders to carry forever and always. Instead there is just Chirrut, a weight that he would gladly bear. A weight that is no weight at all but a blessing.
“Fine, then,” Chirrut says, attempting to sound very put upon, “take me to this snow of yours. It seems like I won’t get any peace until I relent.”
A world without Jedha, without their temple, has been hard on them both, though Baze made his break years ago. This is easier for him than it is for his husband. He knows that Chirrut was okay with dying, especially because he was sure that what he had done was the ultimate show of protection. Even with the Force there, even with him there, Chirrut feels a little lost. Baze has told him that it’s okay, though neither of them have gotten into the words, into the implications of this new world much. Everything is as the Force wills it is Chirrut’s line, after all, and now that a lot of those words seem to have stilled on his tongue, Baze isn’t sure how to jump start them again.
Instead he provides time and love. And distractions. Like leading his husband through the throngs of Rebels who part for the strangers, eyeing them, curious whispers constantly bubbling around them that Baze never stops to listen to, though Chirrut delights in repeating them when they lie together in the dark. His lips will follow the shell of Baze’s ear as his fingers tiptoe down his chest, over scars, new and old, and the words will flow, and Baze loses himself in every way possible. “They wonder if we are together. They wonder if we are just friends. They wonder if I have ever been able to see. They wonder what your hair feels like. They wonder if I ever stop talking. They wonder if I know how beautiful you are. They wonder…” This continues, on and on, a stream of pretty words that only halt when Baze makes them halt, swallows them up in his own mouth, curls his tongue over them. They do not bother either of them, the words. They are also nothing new, but it does not make Chirrut any less excited to repeat them and to answer them in the darkness of their quarters.
Today is for distractions. Distractions and snow. Jedha could be cold, but it was not the same type and level as Hoth. Chirrut fusses about the layers and the garments that Baze pushes on him, claiming that each one is stupid and hinders his movements. The latter is true, but then very little of the clothing that the Rebels have provided to them has met Chirrut’s high standards. He is severly disappointed that his robes were destroyed by the efforts that saved his life and has seemingly yet to forgive the medics for not being able to salvage both.
Finally, though, Baze manages to get the grumbling, feisty, much loved man to put on the necessary layers, and then they make their way outside. The first gust of wind pulls a string of Jedhan curses out of Chirrut’s mouth of the sort that used to make Baze blush all the way from his toes to the tips of his ears when they were young. These days he just laughs, the full body, rumbling laugh that he has had no use for in so long. The cold makes him feel things intensely, every ache in his body immediately protesting that he is not a young man, everything except for his heart. And his heart, ah, it feels younger than he ever thought possible.
They go in the opposite direction of where the Rebel troops are, into a space of snow that has not been tramped down much, but not far enough away that Baze cannot see the base. Hoth is not that hospitable to life. They have all been told this repeatedly. Even with the gear there is a very real danger in the cold quiet that surrounds them. Baze respects danger. When he is not punching it in the face.
Chirrut lets go of his hand to stand, head upturned, eyes the same blue as the sky, and Baze just watches him. The cold has brought color to his cheeks, a feat that Baze normally accomplishes when they are wrapped up tightly, and he is singing dirty things in Jedhan. “Oh,” Chirrut says, the word drawn out just so and the exhalation showing in the air like a tiny cloud. “This is,” that edge of being lost has fallen away from his words now and there is just Chirrut. Chirrut as Baze has heard him a thousand times before when he discovers something. “This is lovely.”
Baze smiles, hands tucked behind his back, still feeling too light without his cannon but not defenseless. It is strange how at peace he feels on this world. Maybe it is because it is so removed from Jedha and Scarif. There is no sand. Or, if there is sand, it is so far below all this snow that they could never reach it. Maybe it is just that he and Chirrut are still together. (They have always been together.) Finally his lover is exploring the galaxy with him. Even if it is in a way that Baze never imagined.
“Why didn’t you bring me out here earlier? You’ve been keeping this all for yourself.” There it is. The gentle, loving chiding.
And Baze, feeling much younger than he has in decades, just answers by chucking a snowball at his beloved’s head. The face, the sputtering and indignation that is turned on him, is enough to make him lose all his air laughing.
Chirrut looks so undignified wiping ice crystals off his cheeks, mouth open, swearing loudly and thunderously at him. “That’s it. We are no longer married. I am disowning you.” There is no heat to the words, no truth. Bent over, laughing, tears streaming down his face, Baze misses the glow to his husband’s smile, the small light on his face that means he has a plan of his own.
The snow is quiet. That’s one of the things that Baze likes about it. It wraps the world around them up in a thick blanket. It kills noise. There are drawbacks to this, though, like how it muffles Chirrut as he moves, not nearly as liquid slick as normal because his echobox does not work well in snow. Between this and the fact that he is still laughing with his eyes closed, Baze has no warning that he is being stalked until Chirrut’s body is slamming into his, arms around his waist. It’s hard to move Baze for anyone but Chirrut who has had a lifetime of training with the other man to know how he plants his weight and how to counteract that.
Even so, momentum is needed. The impact sends them both into the snow. Baze’s laughter is cut off by a short, undignified yelp as he in enveloped by cold on all sides. Now Chirrut is the one celebrating as he uses his weight to pin the other man down, grin stretched wide, his own laughter bubbling like water as he scoops snow up to dump it on Baze’s face, into his hair. For a second, they are children, wrestling in the snow, arms and legs flailing, each one trying to find more and more of the fresh coldness to dump on the other. Everything is forgotten, melted away, and they are only aware of each other.
Baze finally manages to get the upper hand, ends up being the one straddling Chirrut in the snow while those beautiful, ice blue eyes fixed in a gaze that is just a little left of his own. Chirrut is laughing, flushed and slightly damp. Baze remembers the first time they kissed, the first time they made love, when they made their vows together. Every good moment in his entire life with Chrirut flashes through his mind at that moment and then recedes because he wants to focus on this one, he wants to remember this one.
The day he showed Chirrut snow.
He wants a million more days like this one. He wants to find every single thing in the galaxy that Chirrut has not experienced and show it to him. The Force has given them the chance to have this, and he wants to take it. He wants it so much. It is so heavy that he dare not even speak it because he is afraid Chirrut does not want it too.
They have always been together, and he does not want to risk that by suggesting something his husband might not want.
Chirrut has a hand in his hair, seeing him. “Your hair is full of snow,” he chides as though this is quite the disappointment.
“Someone kept dumping it on me.”
“You should punish them.”
He shudders, and it is not just because of the cold. How is it that they can still make each other so desperate after so many years? “Perhaps.”
Chirrut lets out a snort that is still mostly a laugh, even as his fingers move down the plane of Baze’s face. It is too cold for him to have taken off the gloves, and Baze wants to tell him as much but he also doesn’t want to interfere with Chirrut’s sight. He would let his husband look at him all day long if he wanted to. The fingers continue until they are at his lips, and Baze’s breath catches. He leans down even as the other man sits up. Their lips meet. Like they have done thousands of times before. Like they hopefully will thousands of times more.
And then there is the sound of someone clearing their throat from a small distance away.
Baze, bright red at the thought of being caught out, breaks the kiss to look over his shoulder even as Chirrut, who likely knew about the person approaching, is laughing delightedly beneath him. It’s Bodhi. Poor Bodhi who cannot keep still, who loses names and places and words every day, but who will always retain that selfless heart no matter what. “They were looking for you,” Bodhi says, one shoulder twitching back toward the base.
Baze wonders how much the skittish young man has seen of their dalliances in the snow, and then does not care. He gets to his feet, pulling Chirrut up only a handful of seconds after him. They are both covered in snow, completely damp in spots, ridiculous looking. He feels like a child caught red handed doing something adults consider wrong even though it is not. He threads his fingers through Chirrut’s while Bodhi still lingers there, eternally uncomfortable.
“Let’s hear what they want,” Chirrut says, taking charge, taking the lead again, as always.
For years, it has been Baze’s instinct to follow Chirrut, to go where he goes. Now, with that want wrapped strong around him, he tugs insistently on his husband’s hand when he starts to pad through the snow after Bodhi. “I want to show you everything in the galaxy. I want to start a temple.” The words are thick and unbidden and unexpected. They make his eyes sting with unexpected tears that he could blame on the wicked wind if he wanted to.
Chirrut turns back to look at him, free hand finding his cheek as easily as if he could see him there. “I go where you go,” he says, and it is as much of a declaration as anything that Baze has ever heard. It is a statement of love and devotion, a renewal of vows, and, perhaps, the start of something new.
They can discuss the details later. For now, they are cold, and wet, and Bodhi is trying to take them back to someone who is waiting to talk to them. And when they go to move, to follow Bodhi back to the base, it is Baze who leads them through the snow.
Roles and circumstances can shift. That is one of their teachings about the Force, be prepared for change. Despite this, despite the necessity of change in the world, there is one truth. They have always been together.