(no subject)

[idontneedluck]

It's a long day. A long day with little to show for it, despite his best efforts. The traffic through the square has been steady, travelers passing through on their way to or from the spacedock, but...

No matter how he smiles or calls, no one seems to hear hima, no one wants their fortunes read today. His bowl, usually at least a little full, is empty.

He hopes Baze had better luck, their pantry is starting to develop echos. He sighs as he hears stalls nearby starting to shut down for the night, and slowly gets to his feet, tucking his kit away. The sand crunches under his feet as he trudges homewards, moving with the crowd.

He's nearly home, in the smaller square outside their apartment block, when the ground seems to shift under his feet. He stutter-steps, grounding his staff to keep his balance, but his stance refuses to steady. Earthquake, he thinks. Shock blast.

There's no screams, no sounds of falling masonry, no terror in the Force. There's no Force, his usual tenuous grip even weaker still and fading by the second. His knees bend without him telling them to do so. His fingers feel forever away, belonging to someone else, and he hears his staff hit the ground, the soft grinding of sand when it lands loud. Everything is too loud, and too soft.

Chirrut crumples in the middle of the square, a heap of blue and red robes.

Comments

[iprotectyou]

Baze dreads Chirrut coming home. The larger Jedhan dreads the smaller one's arrival, because then Baze will have to tell him that their water has been shut off. Again. Baze has had no luck picking up work lately, and begging has produced nothing.

His stomach growls. His stomach is always growling, a gnawing pit of emptiness, a hole in him that demands to be filled. He feels faint always, the edges of his vision threatening to close in.

He hears the growl. He also hears bells.

"Guardian Malbus!" Neri, the little girl from the next apartment with bells in her braids, is screaming at the door.

He crosses to it, feeling lightheaded, and opens it immediately. "What, Neri?"

Neri looks small and pale, her dark eyes wide in a bronze face. "It's Chirrut, sir, he fainted in the square."

Baze pushes past her and is outside before she finishes her sentence.

[idontneedluck]

When Chirrut comes back to himself, he has no idea where he is. He could be on a speeder, one out of control, the world spinning miserably around him. He could be on the desert floor, the bitter taste of sand in his mouth, the grains rough against his face. He feels uncomfortably hot and icy cold all at once.

He wants to be home, with all of his heart.

He knows he cannot be far from home, he remembers crossing into that last square, and then... and then what? Unimportant. He has to get up. Awkwardly he tries to force his limbs back into obedience, managing to get his knees underneath him, but staying curled, close - moving makes the spinning worse. He doesn't have anything in his stomach to lose, but he's pretty sure the attempt of losing it anyway would not be pleasant.

[iprotectyou]

Chirrut has gathered a small crowd by the time Baze reaches him. The larger Jedhan shoves his way through, going to his knees next to his smaller friend. Baze's fingers check, feather-light, for sources of injury; he neither sees nor smells blood, much to his relief.

But Chirrut is so, so pale, and is curled in on himself. Baze wraps his powerful--made less powerful by hunger--arms around his friend's shoulders, shielding him from view.

"What happened?" Baze whispers urgently, hoping Chirrut will be able to answer him.

It's only then that the thought registers, absurdly: Neri called him Guardian Malbus. He hasn't been a Guardian in years.

[idontneedluck]

Home.

Chirrut is so relieved he could cry, if he had strength and will enough to do it. Baze has found him. It will be alright, now. Everything is alright now.

"M'so tired." He replies, and the words come out slurred and mangled, his tongue tripping over the simple syllables. "Wanna g'home."

He frowns, discontent and wooly-headed. That... that should have come out clearer.

[iprotectyou]

"What?" Baze says quietly, thoroughly confused. He catches the word "home," in that mangled mess, and realizes his friend is too weak to make it up the stairs to their apartment. No matter. Baze still has strength in his limbs.

He lifts Chirrut, struggling under his malnourished weight only because Baze himself is weakened. He tucks Chirrut against the larger Jedhan's armored chest--with the armor itself being almost too heavy, crushing--and carts him through the murmuring crowd towards home.

By the time Baze carries Chirrut through the door the larger Jedhan had left open in his haste to get outside, he's crying. Racking sobs, full of helpless guilt, shake his frame.

He did this to his friend. Baze couldn't get work, so Chirrut starved to the point of collapse. Baze nearly drops him on his bed, sinking to the larger Jedhan's knees to cry his heart out.

[idontneedluck]

Chirrut knows that sound. His poor, tenderhearted bantha, all tied up in knots. Baze would carry the weight of all of NiJedha, if possible. Chirrut tries to reach up and wipe the tears away, his hand unaccountably shaky.

The world swoops and whirls in great, giddy spins. Chirrut grimaces, shuddering.

At least he's not in the sand.

...

He's not in the sand, when did that...? Baze?

Baze is crying. His Baze shouldn't be crying.



There's a tentative knock at the open door.

[iprotectyou]

Baze raises his head, feeling like a hole's been scraped out of him. His whole face feels puffy, and he sniffles, scrubbing at his eyes with the heel of his hand to make himself presentable.

"What?" he says, his eyes falling on Neri. It's not until she starts that he realizes she's holding something.

"Guardian Malbus, sir--"

"I'm not a Guardian," he says, trying to keep the snap out of his voice. He's worried, and weary, and torn between leaving Chirrut's side to go see what the girl wants and staying near him.

"Sir, my mother--she sent you some food," Neri says, the bells in her braids jingling as she takes two hesitant steps forward. She completes her cross to the table and sets her cloth bundle upon it.

Baze scrounges up a smile from who knows where. "Thank you, Neri."

She nods and scarpers off. Baze gets to his feet and approaches the table with the package. Unfolding the cloth reveals some small rice balls. He bites back a sob, and carries them to Chirrut.

"Eat, my friend," Baze says, pressing a ball to Chirrut's lips.

[idontneedluck]

Chirrut frowns, trying to understand where Baze went, what's going on... is it Imperials? Is Baze alright? He struggles to rise, but he's weak as a day-old loth cat.

The smell of the rice is so good, he has never understood how good rice smells before. Baze must have been making dinner, he was late for dinner, he's sure to be scolded about that later. For now, he accepts the rice, the wash of nausea at the first taste of food rapidly overcome by ravenous hunger. He swallows that mouthful, trying to listen to make sure Baze is eating as well.

[iprotectyou]

Baze isn't eating. Not yet. Not until he knows Chirrut has been fed. Baze breaks the rice balls into smaller pieces, pressing them against his friend's lips to force the food down his throat. Thankfully, Chirrut seems hungry enough to eat anything.

Baze smiles through his tears. He'll have to thank Neri's mother for saving them.

[idontneedluck]

The world is starting to settle, his location more fixed in the universe. He finds he is disgusted at himself, failing Baze, needing to be cared for like some lost babe. Before he can get too far down this road, there's another knock at the open door.

"Guardian Malbus? Um, my wife said she made too much, it will just go bad, please, this is for you..." A hesitant, stoop-shouldered man holds out a covered plate of roasted mushrooms.

[iprotectyou]

Baze sets the rice balls down next to Chirrut's shoulder, and crosses to the door. "Thank you very much," Baze says, taking the mushrooms. "But I'm not a--"

"Guardian Malbus?" a woman says as she approaches the door, holding a cloth bundle out. "Here, it's not much, but I thought we could help you."

Baze blinks at her, and takes the bundle in his free hand, tears blurring his vision. "Thank you, I... I don't know what to say."

[idontneedluck]

"It's no trouble at all." She ducks away, hurrying in case someone with less friendly intentions is watching. The man follows suit soon after, and without the sounds of their presence, Chirrut's awkward attempts to rise sound loud.

"Baze?"

[iprotectyou]

"Chirrut," Baze says, hurriedly depositing the gifts on the table and rushing to his friend.

"Don't get up. You've fainted now, a few times, from hunger. We didn't have any food, but our neighbors--"

A choked sob cuts Baze off, and he has to bite down on his knuckles before he can continue.

"Guardians Malbus and Imwe?" a Kel Dorian rasps through her mask, knocking on the door. Baze accepts a plastic box of curry from her with a grateful smile, and then returns to Chirrut.

"Our neighbors have helped us."

[idontneedluck]

Fainted? He doesn't remember fainting, but he's laid out flat anyway, and nothing feels injured - weak, impossibly weak, but that's not the bite of injury.

"You need to eat." Chirrut insists, because he knows Baze, man and boy - if there's someone to mother hen, he will do so, even if that means he collapses as well.

[iprotectyou]

"You need to eat first," Baze says, picking up the rice balls and pressing one into Chirrut's hand.

"I'll eat later, I promise. We have enough food to last us for a week."

"Guardian Malbus?" a green-skinned Twi'lek man says, pressing a hand on the door.

"Yes?" Baze says, abandoning rice balls and Chirrut once more to approach the man.

"My wife wanted you to have some of her Jeru tea," the man says, offering a small paper bag.

"Thank you, that's very kind of you both," Baze says, accepting the gift, and sending the young man on his way.

[idontneedluck]

Chirrut is beaming, not even caring about how ill he feels or how weak he is, or even that he's gone and worried Baze just because he can't do enough to support them.

Hearing 'Guardian Baze' out loud, without a grumble to match it, has made his month.

[iprotectyou]

Baze returns to Chirrut's side, feeling lighter than he has in months. The larger Jedhan notices that the smaller one still hasn't gotten around to eating the rice ball Baze left in his hand.

Baze purses his lips, and plucks the food up. He breaks it in half, and settles his armored bulk on the bed, gently pushing the rice against Chirrut's lips.

"Eat, my friend. I won't have you fainting again."

[idontneedluck]

Chirrut eats, biting at Baze's fingers as he accepts the food.

"Fainting? Really? That's... embarrassing." Mortifying, really. He can't help feel that he could have somehow tried harder, and not caused this much fuss.

[iprotectyou]

Baze shakes his fingers out. Surely Chirrut didn't mean to bite him.

"It was out of your control," Baze says, offering his friend the other half of the rice ball. The cloth bundle of them is still next to Chirrut's head, and Baze plans to feed Chirrut all of them.

"We can't make the tea, because our water was shut off. I'm sorry."

[idontneedluck]

Chirrut frowns as he chews. His thoughts chase each other around, muzzily, but he knows this is bad.

This could be very bad.

"Can we make it up? What we owe, to turn it back on?" He asks, eventually.

[iprotectyou]

Baze looks away. He knows Chirrut can't see his expression, but Baze doesn't want to be caught frowning like that.

"I... I don't know," he says, the words dropping into the space like pins in a lock.

[idontneedluck]

"We need water." He knows Baze is already aware, but he's tired enough that the words slip out, scattering to the winds. They need water, so they need funds, and here he is, more useless than ever, unable to even care for himself.

Shame burns in his belly, turning his appetite.

[iprotectyou]

Baze stops trying to force Chirrut to eat after he looks green around the gills.

The larger Jedhan sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. "We need water," he agrees, setting the rice ball aside.

"But we do have food. Here, I should put it all away."

He stands from the bed, leaving the rice balls where they lie just in case Chirrut is still hungry later, and crosses to the table. Baze finds the plate of roasted mushrooms and the plastic box of curry, and places them both in the ice box. The cloth bundle he was handed by the woman, however, clinks oddly when he picks it up.

"Chirrut," Baze says, his voice tinged with wonder.

"This is full of credits."

[idontneedluck]

"What?" Chirrut tries to sit up again, stubbornly hitching himself up bit by bit. "How much? Why didn't she say?"

[iprotectyou]

Baze sifts through the bundle with two fingers, counting up the money rapidly.

"Enough to pay the water bill and some leftover, for rent," Baze says, his awe still threading through his voice.

"I don't even know her name. I know most of our neighbors, but I've never seen her before in my life."

[idontneedluck]

"She must be a relative, a niece or cousin." Chirrut suggests, not voicing the thought loudest in his head - the Force did provide, as it always has. He doesn't want to ruin the happiness in Baze's voice.

"Track her down later - come eat, come eat."

[iprotectyou]

Baze has tried to ignore the grumbling in his stomach, tried to make sure Chirrut got fed first, but now that Chirrut insists...

Well, Baze is ravenous, there's no denying it. He's literally starving, his muscles beginning to atrophy.

He sets the credits bundle on the table and crosses to the bed. When he stuffs a rice ball in his mouth, he makes an undignified noise. Tears prick his eyes and start pouring down his cheeks.

"That's so good."

[idontneedluck]

Chirrut leans against Baze, taking one of the rice balls and nibbling on it. His poor heart, crying at the taste of rice. Chirrut resolves to do better - he must do better. Baze deserves better.

"So tomorrow we can get the water turned back on, and there will be tea, and all will be well again." This is... a little bit of a lie, but things will be as well as they can be, at the moment.

[iprotectyou]

Baze settles his armored bulk on the bed, taking the last rice ball and wrapping his free hand around Chirrut's shoulder.

Baze has found something rather disturbing: choking down the entire ball of rice made him horribly nauseated. It was the first taste of food in a while, so he stuffed his face with it, of course, but that was a terrible idea. He decides to eat his next one more slowly, and takes a small bite.

"Yes," Baze says, wanting to agree with the lie more than anything.

"And we have curry or roasted mushrooms for tomorrow. Unless you wanted to eat some of that tonight."

[idontneedluck]

"This for tonight, I think. Then we will have food for all of tomorrow, and things won't be quite so desperate." Besides, he can feel how his guts clench around the little he's given them so far, and doesn't really want to find out how upset they'd be about a large meal.

Deteriminedly he doesn't think about the feasts once held at the temple. There's... so many reasons, not to think of that.

"But I'll have another rice ball."

[iprotectyou]

Baze presses the remains of the last rice ball into Chirrut's hand, smiling at him.

"I'm glad you're eating. I don't want you to faint again; that was frightening. We'll have to pay our neighbors back somehow. When things are better."

Because they will get better, right?

[idontneedluck]

Of course they'll get better. Eventually the Empire will tire of them, steal everything worth stealing, and find other worlds to subjugate. It's a big universe. Even the Empire cannot exert heavy influence on all worlds.

"I think a thank you will suffice for now."