The Importance of Health Insurance

[idontneedluck]

Chirrut sits on the stoop he tends to favor these days, his bowl in front of him. His position here keeps him out of the path of the main patrols, but here he can hear trouble before it comes (or find it before it can hurt more of those he considers under his protection). It's been a long few days - the colder snap of winter came sooner than usual, catching all of Jedha unprepared.

"May the Force of others be with you." He calls, keeping the words alive at least, hopefully giving some comfort to those walking by. "May the Force of others..."

He stops.

Stills.

The Force asks, and he obeys, as he always will. The coins go in his purse, that is tucked into his robes, and he scoops up his staff to venture forth. It doesn't take him long to find what has roused him from his place.

The children are terrified, and small, their young pleading voices countered by the harsh tones of troopers. Something about market thieves. Something about making an example.

Chirrut takes a breath, centers, and smashes his staff into the face of the nearest trooper before they can get around to carrying out their plan.

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[iprotectyou]

Baze was in another corner of the market, begging in a separate place from Chirrut, when something--possibly the wind, possibly something else--shifts, alerting him to trouble. Possibly it's the contingent of stormtroopers converging on a part of the market they don't normally converge on. The large man draws his repeater cannon out of its holster, beating a hasty retreat from the trooper-infested market.

He itches to go check on his friend, and heads to where he left Chirrut this morning--only to not find him there. Outcries and blaster fire draw his attention, and he runs.

[idontneedluck]

Chirrut moves like chain lightening, leaving troopers in the dust, knowing that any false move on his part will be the death of him. Years of training and the song of the Force keep him moving, keeps him whole as blasterfire and shouts echo around him.

Someone cries.

A young voice, impossibly frightened.

One of the children, too terrified to run when the fighting broke out.

The Force roils darkly, to his left, and Chirrut makes a choice.

A shot rings out, one of many, but this one Chirrut places himself in front of, shoving the child away, hearing tiny feet scamper across he dusty ground even as fire chews into his side, driving him to his knees.

[iprotectyou]

"Noooo!" Baze cries, arriving just in time to see Chirrut fall.

The Force has failed him. Baze will not.

A burst of fire from his repeater cannon takes out three, four, five stormtroopers, none of whom were expecting the hefty man on the warpath. He drops to his knees next to Chirrut once the immediate danger has passed, tossing his gun to the ground to face this new danger.

Blood flows thickly from Chirrut's wounds, and Baze tries to apply pressure to them, cursing his filthy hands which might lead to infection. "Chirrut! Stay with me," Baze says desperately, clinging to his friend.

[idontneedluck]

Chirrut contains his initial impulse to bat Baze's hands away, grimacing as pain flares, bright and insistent. He curls his hands into the ridges of Baze's armor instead to keep them still, to give himself something to hold on to. Training allows him to ignore the pain, eventually, let it be somewhere over there and stop stealing his breath with each wave.

"We need to go." He insists, his voice thin and strained. "There will be more."

[iprotectyou]

Baze scoops his friend up into his arms almost effortlessly, his thin frame made even thinner by hard times and lack of food lately. The larger man and former Guardian holsters his gun before standing up, pressing Chirrut's chest to Baze's.

"Sarai will help us," he says, running as fast as he can without jostling Chirrut. Baze bites his lower lip, ducking into an alcove to avoid a patrol of stormtroopers sent to investigate the altercation in the market. "Hang on, Chirrut. Just hang on."

Baze makes his way to the Blue Rose, shouldering the door open and calling for Sarai. "I need bacta patches, now!"

[idontneedluck]

The world is a whirling maelstrom, the Force no longer offering a clear path and his senses upended by impending shock. He clings to Baze, his rock in this chaos, and mourns yet again Baze's choice to wear armor. He can't hear Baze's heartbeat nearly as well like this.

He focuses on that instead of the growing pain, the worry that this time he might have gotten himself into too much trouble to fix.

"Baze, you can't be here." Sarai, pale and scared and resolute, stands her ground despite Baze's dramatic entry.

[iprotectyou]

"But Sarai," Baze says, grasping at straws, "we need your help."

Sarai glances from Baze's strained face to Chirrut's, and shakes her head. "I'm sorry, but I can't. The Imperials are breathing down my neck as we speak, and I can't risk it. You have to leave."

Baze stares at her for a few moments. His eyes harden. "I see," he says, and turns his back on her without another word.

"I'm sorry, Baze," Sarai says to his back, as he carts Chirrut outside.

"Chirrut," Baze says, holding his friend close. "You'll be all right. Do you have any money? We can buy some bacta..."

[idontneedluck]

Chirrut frowns at that, because... no, no they can't, he doesn't even know what Baze means by that. But argument isn't what Baze asked from him, so he reaches inside his robes and tugs free the purse he placed there earlier. The bottom of the bag is scored from the blaster bolt, dark blood staining the fabric.

The movement makes his senses wobble, and he hisses at vertigo sending the world spinning out of control.

[iprotectyou]

Baze leans heavily against a wall, holding Chirrut in one arm while taking the purse in his free hand. The older man shakes the purse, trying to count how much is inside without actually opening it. He decides from the jingling of credits that it's enough, and he has a bit of money of his own from his earlier begging, so he shifts his grip on Chirrut and starts running to a black market store in an alley across town.

Baze purposefully doesn't look at Chirrut's face, at how pale he is. The large man hauls his friend to the niche store, pushing aside the red curtain blocking the door way with Baze's shoulder. "I need bacta," he says to the shopkeeper behind the counter, panic and worry tightening his voice.

[idontneedluck]

"You can't have him in here!" The shopkeeper, a heavy-set species with enormous tusks, shakes his head furiously. "I can't have a death inquest!"

Chirrut is praying, softly, his strained breathing making the chant rough and uneven. He lost his grip on Baze's armor somewhere across town, his hands too cold and seemingly too far away to be effective.

[iprotectyou]

"Help me, and he won't die," Baze snarls, throwing Chirrut's purse onto the counter. "Bacta. Now."

The shopkeeper grumbles something about insolence, but fishes around behind the counter for a couple of bacta patches, which he sets down before Baze. The black market seller counts the money laboriously slow, causing Baze to want to throttle him.

Baze trembles with barely repressed fury, focusing on the shopkeeper's grunts rather than on Chirrut's mantra about the Force. The large man sets Chirrut down on the counter against the shopkeeper's protests, ripping open a bacta patch. Baze carefully prods the wound, lifting Chirrut's robes with a breathless apology, and expertly applying the medicinal applique.

[idontneedluck]

Chirrut fights, briefly, against losing contact with Baze, fights a little longer when Baze's touch makes his wound impossible to ignore. Then the smell of bacta assaults his nose, and the fire tamps down into something survivable, something he can almost ignore if he doesn't move.

Dazed and exhausted, he reaches out to try and find Baze, utterly disoriented.

[iprotectyou]

Baze picks Chirrut up again, whispering assurances in his ear, imploring him to hang on just a little longer. The older man takes the second bacta patch from the shopkeeper, leaving the blood-stained purse behind. Baze clutches Chirrut under the legs and around the back, trying to hold him in a position that's comfortable.

The massive man pushes the curtain aside to exit the shop, hoping he never has to see that particular shopkeeper again. Baze walks at a sedate pace to the apartment that he and Chirrut are staying at, trying not to shake his injured friend.

[idontneedluck]

As Baze walks the bacta works. It's really too little bacta for too much damage, but at least Chirrut can breathe without fire, can pick up the whirling threads of the world and start making sense of them again. His exhaustion makes him an easy passenger. He notes with an odd sort of apathy the noises of their apartment block, the smells that grow rank in the stairwell, the way the building echos with the creaks and groans of age.

Their room is tidy, if somewhat spartan. Chirrut makes a dissatisfied noise as the jostling of getting through the doorway breaks through his daze.

[iprotectyou]

"Sorry," Baze says absently, kicking the door shut. He hauls Chirrut to his bed, laying him down as gently as he can. Then Baze kneels by the beside, taking Chirrut's hand. "You idiot. What were you thinking, putting yourself at risk like that?"

[idontneedluck]

Chirrut sighs, gingerly settling. He knew this would come, but he really didn't see a way around it.

"They would have died." He goes for simplicity - both because it is the truth, and it means less talking. "I could stop them."

Simple.

Baze's hands are fantastically warm in comparison to his own, a wonderful point of pleasure away from the pain.

[iprotectyou]

Chirrut's hands are cold. Too cold. Baze chafes them, trying to warm him up, and presses a hand to his friend's clammy forehead to check for fever. "You shouldn't have done it," Baze says, sourness marring his tone. "You could have died. What would you have done had I not been there? Laid down in the dirt and waited for death? I won't leave you again. You clearly can't take care of yourself."

Baze looks away, focusing on warming Chirrut's hands. Tears sting the older man's eyes, and for once, he's glad Chirrut can't see his face.

[idontneedluck]

"The Force would protect me." Chirrut protests. He's not a fool, he knows that one of the potential outcomes of his actions today was death... but he does not fear that. Death is only rejoining the Force, and he has lived a long, good life.

...

At least, he does not fear death for himself. The prospect of a universe without Baze, however...

He leans into Baze's hand, the rest of him unnaturally still as he tries to not aggravate his injuries. He contemplates the catch in Baze's voice, the anger and pain there, and wishes he knew a way to alleviate them.

[iprotectyou]

Baze gives him an explosive scoff. "The Force!" the older man says, straightening his shoulders and leaning back to get a better look at Chirrut's face. "The Force failed you. I don't know when you'll stop relying on a symbol of a failed religion, but that day can't come too soon."

Baze almost lets go of Chirrut's hand during the tirade. The larger man reels in his expansive gestures, clinging to Chirrut.

[idontneedluck]

It grieves Chirrut every time Baze says something like this - Baze, who was once the most devoted of them all. He can only repeat his assurances and hope, however. You can't force someone to believe... even when that someone is as close to you as Baze is to him.

"The Force did not fail me." His retort is tired and worn, grief tugging at his words and slowing them. When the heat of Baze's hands returns, he clings, unwilling to lose that warmth again. "I will be alright. I may never be a model again, but..."

[iprotectyou]

Baze barks out a surprised, relieved laugh. That Chirrut can joke around is a solace; it means his friend isn't nearly as bad off as Baze thinks he is. "You were never suited to be a model," Baze says, scrubbing a gentle hand over Chirrut's hair. "You're pretty, but not that pretty."

The older man shifts by the bedside, trying to make his knees more comfortable as he kneels. "Are you hungry? Do you need water, or tea?" The offer is made out of concern, but also the slightest amount of guilt. Baze knows that he hurts Chirrut with the larger man's unbelief, and he would rather do anything else than hurt his friend.

[idontneedluck]

"Water." He wants tea, honestly. However, he's not sure he'd stay awake to drink a properly brewed cup, and it would be a tragedy to waste their limited resources. Water it is, then.

He doesn't ask for food, because he knows their stores are painfully low. Maybe, when he's less tired, he can properly appreciate a meal...

There's a knock at the door. Chirrut tightens his hand around Baze's while he listens, adrenaline letting him focus.

"Not Imperials."

[iprotectyou]

Baze squeezes his friend's hand, and release him, standing from the bedside. The larger man's hands drift to his gun as he crosses to the door. He opens it a crack, peeking through.

"Guardian Malbus?" A timid girl stands at the doorway, holding up a cloth-wrapped package. "This is for you."

"Thank you," Baze says, reaching through the door to take the gift that she presents. "But I'm not a Guardian anymore. Is that all?"

"Yes, sir," she says, and turns away to leave. Baze shuts the door and crosses to the table to unwrap the package.

"Seems that the neighbors provided food for us," he says, knowing that Chirrut will probably attribute the stroke of good fortune to the Force.

[idontneedluck]

It's like Baze knows him or something. Chirrut makes a triumphant sound, a smile finding a home on his face.

"She sees you better than you see yourself." He notes, his tone cheerful if strained. It was almost shocking, how good it was to hear Baze called 'Guardian' again. "See, the Force does provide. It is all interconnected." His gestures are quickly aborted in favor of lying still again.

This, he feels, is going to be a very frustrating recovery.

[iprotectyou]

Baze lets his grunt of displeasure speak for him. He removes the rice balls from the steamy wrap and brings one to Chirrut.

"The Force didn't provide. The neighbors did," Baze says, biting into one of the delicious balls. "And she sees me incorrectly. I haven't been a Guardian in years. Too many, really. She has no right to call me that."