So...this isn't really a fill so much as a stream of consciousness that got away from me. If someone with more talent than I feels inspired by it, if they want to take some or all of it and run with it then I bid them go forth! _______ Maybe… …maybe it’s Jyn who starts it. Who makes the first crack. She doesn’t realize, doesn’t know and neither does he. Not really. It isn’t on Jedha, where responsibility sends him after her in Saw’s tunnels, or Eadu, where he stares through his scope into her father’s eyes (her eyes) and lowers his rifle. It’s not on Yavin, where he gathers those with stains on their souls and blood on their hands and fierce, desperate hope in every beat of their hearts and calls on them to do what must be done. And it isn’t on Scarif, not really, where his ribs grind against themselves and his spine screams, where her leg threatens to buckle with every step and they hobble away from the body of her oldest demon. It’s after, as Bodhi races away from the burning sea, when they collapse on the deck. There’s blood on his tongue and ringing in his ears and darkness creeping at the edge of his vision and what few parts of him don’t hurt are frozen except...except the hand that she is clinging too, her thumb sweeping across his wrist, so warm it sears his skin and Force, has he always been so cold? But it’s Chirrut who realizes. Later, much later, when they’re healed and rested and have chosen to remain with the Rebellion. When Cassian has convinced the brass to let them remain as a unit and found them a ship (Rogue One always, no matter what alias she may bear, always Rogue One) and led them on missions. It’s Chirrut, the troll, who plays up his blindness and pretends to be helpless, who realizes. When he puts on his act and takes Cassian’s arm to sell it and feels the tension in the man. It isn’t obvious, he’s too good a spy for that (such reaction was trained out of him long ago) but a blind man with the Force in his heart and a hand on his arm, he sees. He feels that wary tension, the fight or flight in coiled muscle and presses his thumb into it, willing calm, willing friend, willing trust me until something in Cassian unwinds, something in him leans towards Chirrut like a loth-cat seeking the sun. Subtle, unconscious, buried deep, but Chirrut has never needed his eyes to see the important things. He doesn’t say anything, not to Cassian, but goes to Baze and murmurs watch him, bids tell me what you see for he has always trusted his partner’s eyes and his judgement (does he look like a killer/he has the face of a friend) before he reaches out again. And so Baze watches. He watches the Captain on their missions and in the ship that begins to feel like home and he watches in the halls of whichever Rebellion base they stop at and what he sees…he sees Rebel eyes dismiss him, pass through him. Most don’t seem know what he does (Alliance spies don’t advertise, he notices, pretending to be analyst/salvager/code breaker/recruiter/anything but the truth) and those few that do either avoid him or are confrontational, like they have to prove they’re not afraid. Some of the generals make his trigger finger itch, the way they invade Cassian’s space, looming, smothering, controlling. Their hands say tool, say weapon, say I own and Baze returns to Chirrut with judgement in his eyes and curses trapped behind his teeth and Chirrut smiles a wolf’s smile. He was theirs now, their Captain, the man with death behind his eyes and scars on his soul and so many masks he’d forgotten which version of himself was real. But they know. They know the man who leads them, who fights beside them and bleeds for them. They know the man who trades away pieces of himself, who drowns himself in blood so others don’t have to. Who gives Bodhi calm and Jyn faith. Who leans against K-2 like the droid isn’t seven feet of murderous durasteel, who yearns towards the living warmth of the four human Rogues but always, always draws himself up short. Maybe the Rebellion didn’t break him but they didn’t help him either. They didn’t hesitate to use him and barely bothered to count the cost. But the Rogues have him now, they’ll win him fair if they can (for his own peace of mind if nothing else) but if it comes to it they’ll steal him clean from those who’d use him till there’s nothing left. They won’t use him and they’re not arrogant enough to think to try and fix him. They’re going to heal.