Chapter Text
Things were alright now.
They were not good, but they were level. Baze wasn’t being shot at. He wasn’t running with dust in his eyes and sand in his throat. No one bled out over his shaking hands. That wet thing he might step on in an alley was a dead rat or a deflated ball, not half of someone’s brain (although, for the rest of Baze’s life, that image would flash before his eyes whenever his foot sank in where he expected hard ground).
It had been quite the experience, getting to the point where ‘it could be worse’ no longer applied. When he’d come back from the war, after a bullet to the right knee had left it just a bit too stiff to pass inspection again, Baze’s days had been spent desperately avoiding that edge of reason. It was the only line he still knew, that very end of the road. All other degrees before it had vanished and so there was no motivation to keep his apartment or a job after his honourable discharge. His nightmares kept him up whether he tried to sleep in a bed or on the ground. There was persistent fear clawing the back of his skull whether he was aimlessly wandering by the side of the highway or stuck in a warehouse unloading crates.
Without responsibilities and people to answer to, he could at least avoid the startled gazes when he jumped and reached for a gun he didn’t have when someone dropped their glass or slammed a door. He also didn’t have to pretend to care about fair shift distribution, weekly profit margins and workplace gossip, which seemed impossible after looking death in the eye so many times he’d gotten acquainted to his face.
There was no one important enough to pretend he was normal for, either, because he didn’t enjoy talking to people anymore. Usually, strangers had an urge to thank him for his service, but, homeless, scarred and feeling achient at thirty-seven, he was not what they imagined and the comment usually just made him sarcastic. He could spare everyone the awkward moment by avoiding it entirely. His family had been dead before he’d entered the military; his friends, all made there, were dead by the time he’d left. The few distant contacts who remained from childhood were ashamed for him now. Their condescension made Baze want to punch their faces in, so he stopped speaking to them, too.
But things were alright. Baze had always been a realist. In life, you got what you put in and he hadn’t kept it together well enough, so he was here, on the streets, and that was fair enough. He was too big and mean-looking for most people to think about starting shit with him, and he could still make an argument with his fists if he needed to. The Holy City had enough nooks and crannies to vanish into. The weather was always cold, but you got used to it.
He never begged and he never went to any charity. He looked for food in the trash. With a little trial and error, you soon found out what was edible. He scavenged landfills for clothes. He washed in the river and drank rain water. Being no one’s burden was the one thing still important to him. No one should suffer for his own foolishness.
At night, Baze liked climbing on the ruins of the old temple nestled against the city walls. The place had once belonged to the Guardian of the Whills, some long-dead cult that Baze knew nothing about but for the fact that they had sure known how to carve some weird statues. Some of those creatures, even though their odd features had been washed smooth by centuries of rain and hail and snow beating down on them, could never have been human. It was a restricted area, battleground of petty local politics since ages forgotten, too dangerous to let people go sightseeing on it, but too much of a landmark to simple smash it all and build some pretty apartment houses in its place.
In a silly way, its state in eternal useless broken limbo reminded Baze of himself. He’d sit on the toppled statues and hide from storms behind collapsed archways and crumbling walls and he felt rather welcome. There were no expectations here. Everything was already over, all the cards played, and now they waited for what was to come without any hope left to be crushed.
Since the ruins, with their falling stones and occasional police patrols, really weren’t the place you actually wanted to sleep at, Baze had built himself a small shack in an alley about half an hour by foot away from the old temple. It was made of three chipboards with a torn shower curtain for a door. The ceiling was a plastic plane he’d managed to attach with rusty nails beaten in with a stone. For the nights, which were heralded by freezing winds in winter, it was shelter enough.
The wall it was up against was the left-hand side of the West Jedha City Tai Chi Centre. A squat, two-story building with a flat roof, which might have once been a garage or storage facility, it couldn’t exactly be called beautiful, but he’d guess it made decent business. People came for classes all day into the evening, filtering in and out of the glass doors in the front in regular intervals. Through the entrance, Baze had seen into a small anteroom bathed in comfortably soft, dimmed light. It illuminated, at the centre of the back wall, a juniper bonsai tree on a wooden table. Its tiny stem was wound like a snake.
The owner had to live above the studio, for Baze never noticed him come in the morning or leave in the evening. He had seen him tape paper signs on the inside of the glass doors before, though, usually printed messages about changed class times. The man was blind, it didn’t take a genius to notice. His walking stick was wooden and longer than the usual varieties, with metal ends but no handle. When Baze saw him stride out the door by chance, he always noticed how brisk his pace was, without the hesitation one might think a blind person would be better off showing. Not like he didn’t know these streets, Baze supposed. Not that it really mattered to him. It was just one of the many things that went through his head during the day.
Generally, he only noticed the what happened at the Tai Chi Centre because he was around a lot and it wasn’t like he had anything better to do; but sometimes, when the dark of the night hid him, he would throw a quick, deliberate glance into the window that went out onto the alley his hut was in. The class room was arranged so that he had a view on the backs of the students, but was looking straight at their instructor who, of course, saw nothing in return. He was fascinating to watch, Baze would admit, especially having gone through combat training himself. There was a fluidity to his movements paired with a pointed precision and force that belied the imagined fragility his blindness bestowed on him.
Baze always tore himself away quickly. He didn’t want to get in trouble by looking like a voyeur, just in case anyone noticed him. This alley was an okay deal so far.
-
Obviously good things never lasted, though. One Wednesday morning, Baze was busy repairing a crack in a chipboard with some extra wood and nails he’d broken off from an old armchair he’d found out on the sidewalk when he heard the twin sound of steps and the tapping of a stick.
“You have been here for a while,” a voice said. It was mild but firm, impossible to read.
Baze got to his feet and came to stand before the Tai Chi Centre’s owner. Baze was taller than the man, broader in the shoulders, wild-haired and with an expression that seemed displeased even when he felt neutral. However, he wasn’t going to have much luck intimidating a blind man with his looks. He was briefly distracted by his, though: Baze had never before seen eyes like that, with no pupils at all, just milky white like the full moon.
“How would you know?” he asked, unkindly. It was too brash, but he’d never been a fan of beating around the bush. “Did your students complain about me?”
“No, but you have been here long enough for me to learn your footsteps. Something is wrong with your leg.”
The answer was coupled with a smile. It was a little too impish to hide that the man seemed to be satisfied he could confound Baze. He really had, to his credit. Baze didn’t like it.
“My receptionist pointed you out to me first, though,” Chirrut admitted, after a moment, still bemused.
“You want me to go?” Baze asked. He supposed that was the end of this conversation, anyway, and he might as well skip to it. They both knew the man could call the police and have Baze evicted on grounds of disturbing his flow of business, even if he didn’t.
“No,” the blind man said, simply. “Would you like something to eat?”
It took Baze a moment to shift gears. He’d braved himself for accusations, not offers.
“I can take care of myself,” he answered. No gifts. He was not a beggar.
“Very well. Have a good day and may the Force of others protect you…”
It had been such a long time that anyone had cared what his name was that Baze was startled into an answer by the questioning tone.
“Baze,” he said, before he could amend his words to ‘who’s asking?’, like he should have. Inwardly, he cursed himself.
“Baze,” the man repeated, completing his sentence. “My name is Chirrut.”
Chirrut pulled the lapels of his long black coat a little tighter around his neck as he turned and left the alleyway, moving out of Baze’s view around the corner of the building.
-
The day after, Baze had already boxed himself into his shack for the night when he heard the sound of metal scraping against metal. Like a rabbit suspecting a fox in the bushes, he found himself sitting still, not breathing, to pinpoint where the noise originated. It took him a moment to place it, but it came from down the alleyway, and he realised that the only thing metallic in the smooth concrete wall was the frame of the window that he sometimes peeked through.
At first, Baze wanted to ignore it. It was nothing, he told himself, just some rat or bird playing with a loose screw on the ground. However, the hair on his arms was standing. Could be some asshole was trying to break into the studio. They might try his shack next. No locks, and usually it was a low risk to try and steal something from a sleeping homeless guy, too.
Crouching down, Baze pushed aside the dotted curtain and looked out, his hand tight around a thick metal rod he kept under his moth-eaten pillow. However, there was no two-bit thug trying to get in, but rather Chirrut himself leaning out of the open window, fumbling with the hinges used to tilt it.
“What’s wrong?” Baze asked, dropping the rod on the blanket so it wouldn’t make a noise. He got up.
“Ah,” Chirrut said, straightening. His head turned vaguely in the direction of Baze’s voice as he kept running his fingers over the hinge. “I’m not sure. The window won’t close properly.”
That sounded decidedly like not his problem, so Baze should leave him to it and try to sleep before it got so cold he’d be distracted by the temperature. However, even from where he stood, he already saw what was wrong.
“The latch is loose. You’ve got to tighten it. Got a screwdriver small enough?”
“I think I do. I’m not much of an engineer.”
It was only a matter of a minute and it couldn’t hurt to give the man whose property he slept on a reason to think well of him, Baze thought. He hadn’t exactly shown himself from his sweet side yesterday – and he’d always been better at repairing things than being nice, so this was a good opportunity. Being helpful was of more use than friendly words, anyway.
“Bring your toolbox if you’ve got one. I’ll see what I can do,” he told him.
Chirrut nodded his head and stepped away from the window. Baze saw him walk through the door leading out of the wide practice room. He wore a simple black silk uniform, the kind Baze remembered his teacher in from when he’d practiced kung fu as a child, composed of a shirt with a Mandarin collar and wide trousers which sat loose but were not so big they got in the way. His feet were bare.
Chirrut returned moments later. When he opened the toolbox, Baze saw that the instruments laid out in perfect order.
“Do you keep them in line like that so you know which is which, or did you just never use them before?” Baze asked.
Chirrut’s smile was open, not at all bothered by the mocking tone. “The latter. I make up for much of my lost sight with my other senses, but putting my hands into any sort of complicated machinery seems to be asking for trouble.”
While he surveyed the tools, Baze found himself dwelling on that word, ‘lost’. Chirrut hadn’t been born blind, then. He picked out screwdrivers one after the other, trying them out until he had found the one that fit perfectly. With his other hand, he held the loose parts together so that they lined up as he tightened the latch.
His father had been an adept at this sort of DIY stuff. Though he’d not stuck around past Baze’s twelfth birthday, hadn’t paid much attention to him before that, either, he’d let him hold the tools when Baze streaked around the garage hoping for some attention. The bastard had never taught him anything else useful, but Baze had at least taken care not to forget these accidental lessons.
“Should work now,” he told Chirrut, putting the screw drivers back in their proper order. Chirrut ran his fingertip gently over the tightened latch. Baze could feel warmth from inside. The radiator was probably under the window sill.
“Thank you for your help,” Chirrut said.
“It’s nothing.”
Baze felt a sudden surge of something he hadn’t in a long time: accomplishment. Stupid, really. Wasn’t like he had done anything huge here.
Still, he backed off before Chirrut could ruin his moment by offering him something in return, like Baze was a dog who’d performed a trick. Pity came very easy these days and he didn’t handle it well.
“Well, night,” he muttered.
“Sleep well, Baze,” Chirrut answered, smiling once more before he pulled the window shut.