Intresting drabbles
Nice to get a little bit insight in Chirrut and Baze's past and their relationship with each other. The two of them are defenetly with the most intresting characters in Rouge One, I wouldn't mind seeing maybe a novel with them and find out more about the guardians on the Whills.
Nice work.

 

Oooh, Baze and Chirrut! What a wonderful description of their path in life, from the moment they became friends to their first encounter with Jyn and Cassian. I love how you focused on Baze here, who was playing second fiddle to Chirrut in RO despite the strong hints that he had changed more than Chirrut over the course of his life. We see him evolving from a happy-go-lucky teen to a closet rulebreaker, and from there to the cynical yet secretly big-hearted man we met in RO. I'm assuming you've read Guardians of the Whills; your drabbles about how Baze and Chirrut joined the Partisans before they became disillusioned reminded me of those chapters in the book that saw them eventually return to to their own brand of not-so-legal activities. (If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it; it's a neat little novel.)

 

Thank you! They are a fascinating pair, so different and yet so clearly devoted to each other. I hope someday we discover the canon backstory, but I'm not going to hold my breath.

Thank you for your thoughtful reply! There they are, Baze and Chirrut, in the middle of nowhere and suddenly in the middle of everything. I liked the idea that Baze, the military man, would pick up on Cassian's deliberate blending in and totally miss Jyn, who is the key to everything. The blind man sees the one that matters. It is a kind of "John the Baptist" moment. Everything has been waiting for her.

Oh, Azure, such sadness should never happen to as sweet and as loving a soul as you are. I truly hope that you are feeling better physically and that your life is treating you much better.

Thank you for such a wonderful compliment. I do try to have some kind of plot with each Drabble set, even if it's only going across the different characters. I want the five pieces to be connected.

When you think about it, this is the pivotal scene in the movie. This is where everyone has to make a decision. Cassian decides to disobey orders for Jyn, Bodhi decides to trust Cassian, Baze and Chirrut take action against the empire, and Jyn loses any reason to hold back. She has nothing left to lose now.

I think that's a fascinating story that is implied here. K-2SO went from a standard security droid to an ally, a friend. In the process he had to learn how to be an individual and think for himself. What a strange idea that must have been for him!

That's a really good point. They aren't Jedi, so there are no restrictions on attachments for them. That can be very freeing when you think about it. There is nothing preventing them from acting on their heart.

Thank you! I'm glad you liked them.

Thank you! They are a very interesting pair. I agree, I bet a novel about them as younger men would be fantastic. It would be a great way to fill the reader in on the Whills too.

Thank you! Actually, no, I have not read it. I will have to take a look at it! I think they both probably started as good little guardians but then they got snarky. In particular, I think Chirrut would have fun messing with anyone who underestimated him just because he was blind, and Baze would be sitting over to the side laughing his head off at the resulting chaos. I wanted to do a set that looked more at Baze because I think he gets overlooked. He's loyal to Chirrut for a reason. I think Chirrut helps him to deal with the disillusionment of the way the rebellion (especially Saw's version of it) gets worked over for personal benefits.

 

Week 19: Goodbye

91. Banter
Galen had tried give Lyra and Jyn time to escape by delaying Orson with mindless banter, to distract them from his family by offering himself as the prize so that the troopers would not waste time looking for a geologist and a child. But Lyra had come back. He froze in horror.

Saw came to their modest farm a little while later, after Lyra had failed to check in with him. Lyra’s body lay where she had fallen. He made sure her grave was covered before he went to the hiding place for the girl. No child need see that.


92. Accuse
At first, Saw was elated that Jyn had returned to him. He’d never been easy on her, but he loved Jyn in his way.

Then he began to suspect that they were connected - Jyn, the pilot, the rebel captain — and he went so far as to accuse her of betrayal. Was he paranoid, or had she really come to destroy him?

Then the blast hit, and Saw realized the impending disaster would sweep them all away. He turned to her, his Jyn, and implored her to leave with the man who had risked everything to come back and find her.



93. Offend
Bodhi wished he could have seen Galen again to thank him for teaching him another way to live.

Galen had shown Bodhi that he could make right the wrongs he had done. Instead of submitting to the empire, bearing it as they harrass, offend and insult his people, Bodhi could rise and redeem himself. Galen taught him how even the smallest resistance mattered against evil.

There was a clatter of metal against the shuttle’s interior. Bodhi looked in disbelief at the grenade as it rolled toward him. He closed his eyes. He would see Galen again sooner than he thought.


94. Compliment
Chirrut had never asked for a thing from Baze. The lifelong friends had studied together, lived as temple guardians together, fought with Saw Guerrera together, and now they faced overwhelming odds on the battlefield together. So it was a shock to Baze to see Chirrut leave him and walk resolutely toward the switch without him.

“Come back!” Baze screamed desperately, but Chirrut kept going. Baze watched his friend fall.

Unconcerned about the relentless assault exploding around him, Baze ran over to Chirrut’s body. To die beside him would be the most sincere compliment to their friendship Baze could ever make.


95. Confide
She carried Cassian as far as she could, but eventually she could go no further. They collapsed together in the sand.

She looked at him, this man who kept coming back for her. Cassian was someone she could depend on, confide her worries to; maybe even, if fate had been kinder, someone she might have loved. But she knew their time was over before it could begin.

The ominous silver moon loomed large, ready to unleash its deadly lance of light. Jyn drew him close and kept her eyes open, determined to bear witness. She would never look down again.

 

Poignant and heart-tugging. Compliment and Confide especially.

 

Well, here you go again, ma'am, generating beautiful, poignant prose around one of the most beautiful and poignant films in the SW universe. And what a fitting theme for set no. 19 out of 20. Goodbyes of one sort and another do seem to be a recurring theme in R1, even from the start, where young Jyn has to run away from home. That goodbye is the linchpin for all the others, of course, and you illustrate that very and in this group of drabbles.

First of all, it's wonderful to see Saw's softer side here; he does indeed have his own brand of fondness for Jyn and for her family, as we say in the way he takes a moment to give Lyra a proper burial, then in the way he encourages her to escape with Cassian—even when he cannot go with her.

I love that you touch on the commonalities between Bodhi and Galen, and the friendship they could have had; I had never seen those characters in quite that way before. As the person who knows exactly why it is that the Empire is making a mess of Bodhi's beautiful homeworld, Galen was exactly the right person to teach him how to resist, and if things had gone differently, they could have been some truly kickass comrades-in-arms.

How lovely to see Chirrut and Baze's goodbyes to each other—one of the film's gutpunchingest moments—expanded on so wonderfully here. Baze's moment of doubt when Chirrut walks off toward the switch metamorphoses into the sudden resolve to join him, at all costs; it's very true to the characters, and such a wonderful compliment to both of them and their friendship.

And of course Jyn's final moment with Cassian, and with the "silver moon" in the sky, is the gutpunchingest of all. That was the moment we saw from Cassian's viewpoint in "Stardust," and we see it from hers here. She tenderly reflects on "what might have been"... and then resolutely raises her face to look her death straight in the eye... and you remind us that both wistful tenderness and dogged courage are completely true to that character, coexisting in her without contradiction.

Absolutely beautiful, and I'm almost sad to see these about to end—though I have a feeling that your no. 20 set will be the heartwrenchingest of all of them. <3

 

a very poignant set

 

Oh wow. Did you seriously decide to put all the Rogue One deaths in a single drabble set? Well, yes, you did, and now I want to go hide in a corner and cry, but I'll comment a bit first.

Like Finds I like what you did with Saw in the first two drabbles. Behind his ruthless façade he actually cares for Jyn. He cares for her when she's a little girl who shouldn't see her mother's corpse, and he cares for her when she's a grown woman and death is breathing down their necks on Jedha. In the middle of this cold-blooded struggle that he's leading against the Empire, there is one person who matters as a person, not as a soldier in the struggle, one person whom he wants to save and protect – and he does that, to the extent that he knows how. I also thought that having him pass on this mission to protect Jyn to Cassian was a nice touch. Even in the moment when Saw knows that his end has come, his reaction to Jyn is still the little girl who needs protection.

Next, Bodhi and Chirrut/Baze. Again, these two drabbles are an interesting combination. We never got to see the Galen/Bodhi duo on screen, and it would obviously be a very different type of relationship than Baze/Chirrut, but what these two pairs have in common in your drabbles is the idea that they'll be together in death.

And, lastly, Jyn/Cassian. Again, nice reference to the theme of "looking up" in this one and a nice interpretation of some details of their hug on the beach. Jyn has truly come a long way since the beginning of the story, finding the drive to bear witness but also the courage to open up to someone. But like you said, it was over before it even began

 

Adding the end of Rogue One to the list of movie scenes that always make me cry.

 

Excellent set in Week 19, divapilot! I especially enjoyed Confide and Compliment. the image of Jyn keeping her eyes open is poignant. Also, I like Baze's incredulity at Chirrut walking away without him. However, sometimes it is the sacrifices we see in others that encourage and enable to us make sacrifices ourselves.

 

Even though you summoned all the dead of Rouge One, it did not break my heart. You wrote each drabble in a considerate way, full of dignity. Well done!

 

Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed them.

Thank you for your reply! Jyn's life has been a series of goodbyes, hasn't it?

I don't know much about Saw beyond the character we see in R1 and the novelization, but he seems to love her in his own rough way. He's not a sentimental person and as he got older and more cynical and paranoid, his kinder side became even more prickly. But I do see a special affection for Jyn. I interpolated a connection between Lyra and Saw (I can't see it being between Galen and Saw). She is a rebellious soul, and defiant, so I think Saw is connected to the family through her. She may even have acted as part of his revolutionaries, if on a more peripheral way. There had to be a reason why Saw would come to Lah'mu, and I figured it was because Lyra didn't check in - a type of last-resort distress call.

They are the two that started this whole thing. It was Bodhi who Galen felt he could trust with the plans, so there had to be a reason for trusting him. I imagine that Bodhi was the pilot for Galen when he would visit Jeddha to supervise the quality of the crystals, then the two clicked as they talked during the long boring flights. Bodhi was lost, with a sense of watching his already-impoverished world being stripped of its very art and culture, and Galen gave him something to do about it.

That was a heartbreaker, wasn't it? The look on Baze's face when he realizes that Chirrut is going to walk into that firestorm --
But they are such a symbiotic pair that I can't see Baze really going on without Chirrut. Best to die at his side.

lol best for last. I've pretty much dissected that scene to death (no pun intended). I think Cassian fell for her way before she even realized that he cared for her that way, and by the time she realized it and realized that maybe she felt the same way, they were already dying. He ran into a disintegrating building for her. He disobeyed a direct order for her. And he came back for her at the tower. Even with his last words, he doesn't say what he wants or how he feels, he says what she wanted to hear. Her father was proud of her, and she is proud (finally) of herself, too. She holds her head high.

Well, we shall see. Thank you for such an insightful response!

Thank you! I appreciate your comments.

Yup, I sure did. Thank you for your thoughtful comments!

The relationship between Jyn and Saw is interesting. She was so young when she joined his forces, too young to be a soldier although that's what she eventually became. She developed the hard shell, the cold exterior, that Saw has. If there was anyone that Saw loved, it was her. And yes, I also saw that scene as Saw passing over the protection of Jyn from himself (a broken, tired old man) - a father figure - to Cassian, a young man who braved the destruction of the mountain to find her. Jyn is completely competent, but taking care of her is a privilege. Cassian has, in Saw's eyes, earned that right.

Oh my heart when the grenade went into the ship. I had so hoped Bodhi would make it. But he did "set things right," and he wouldn't have know how if it wasn't for Galen. And Baze/Chirrut, well, what can you say but .

I'm glad you caught the idea of looking up. She keeps her head low for so much of her life, even snapping back at Saw by saying it doesn't matter whose flag is flying if you never look up. But she grows, she learns, she changes. Now, at the end, she can never look down.

It's a heartbreaker, isn't it? Every time I watch it I'm like secretly hoping that the get away. Thank you for your comments!

Thank you! It's kind of true for all of them.Each sacrifice inspired the next. As individuals, the Rogue One crew were not particularly strong and had their own guilt or demons to deal with. But together, they changed the galaxy. They drew strength and inspiration from each other and were powerful.

Thank you! I didn't want to go for the cheap pull of the heart, I wanted to give them dignity. They knew this was a suicide mission from the start, and even though the hope that they might survive it was a goal to work toward, they understood that it was far more likely that they would all die here. But when you die for a cause, when your death isn't in vain, then the sacrifice is worth it.

Author's note: Thank you very much for the nomination of this work for the 2018 Fanfic Awards! I am very grateful.

 

Week 20. Ghosts

96. Outrage
The supply officer tried to stifle his outrage at the chaos of the room. Their next base would be a frozen world, and finding even the most basic supplies for the new soldiers was a challenge. He pulled a dark blue parka out of the bottom of a case. “Will this do?” he asked.

Han held the coat at arm’s length. Overall, it was in good shape. It was a little small, but he could fit into it. “Yeah, this is fine.” He examined the front detailing. “Captain’s insignia? Whose was this?”

The officer shrugged. “He doesn’t need it anymore.”


97. Outright
Wedge knew every single detail of his x-wing, from the way that it handled to the patterns of the scratches and scorches it bore from battle. Every good pilot knew their ship.

That’s why it puzzled him that whoever designed the Death Star never addressed the flaw in the exhaust system. Surely at least one person had the intelligence to understand how the components of the weapon fit together. How could the weakness in the design have gone unnoticed for so long?

Wedge shook his head. Whoever created that flaw was either a outright fool — or a brilliant genius.



98. Maps
Every droid who used the main recharger console invariably left some echo of itself behind, and this console at the Rebel headquarters at Yavin held traces of nearly every kind of droid Artoo could imagine.

Artoo couldn’t fathom how, but somehow even an imperial security droid had used this console to recharge. For some reason, the droid left behind detailed backups of maps of imperial facilities, including the passwords and the overrides to some of the main functions of the infrastructures. Artoo beeped quietly and downloaded the information to his own files. Such information might come in handy some day.


99. Keys
Luke fell onto the bunk, exhausted. The events of the last few days had drained him, and he had still not processed the losses incurred in the battle to destroy the Death Star. He put his head on the pillow and stared at the ceiling. Tiredly, he stretched his hand behind him and to his surprise he felt something.

Curious, Luke sat up. There, beneath the pillow, was something left behind by the last pilot who had slept in this bunk. Luke held the items up. Two card keys - ignition data cards - for what appeared to be an imperial shuttle.


100. Home
“At the time, I didn’t even know their names,” Leia said.

Poe tilted his head. “How did you find out?”

“We learned a little at a time. My father… I think he meant to tell me. But Alderaan…” Leia looked into the distance and sighed. So far away. So long ago.

“They must have been brave heroes,” Poe prompted.

Leia laughed abruptly. “Not at all,” she said, her voice gravelly. “A thief. A spy. A defected pilot. Temple guardians. A reprogrammed droid. Hardly heroes. None of them came home, you know.” She smiled sadly. “Such is the price of hope.”


.

 

Congratulations on completing the drabbles and so wonderfully. Things move into the future with tie-backs to the past. And we get in the last line the meaning/significance of the thread title. Leia's definition of what constitutes heroism is more bitter than sweet.

And CONGRATULATIONS on the awards nomination.

 

Everything Ny said.

Plus, I will get to this. #soon

 

Nice conclusion to the series. I like the idea of the legacy of the Rouge One team still being around with the rebel alliance for years later, even after the end of the war. They gave their lives to make a victory for the rebellion even possible though none of them would see it.
A great series of drabbles which really gave a nice insight into the different characters of Rouge One, their thoughts and motivations. Nice work

 

Congrats on finishing the series with insights in the characters that made the victory possible

 

Oh. Wowowow. I am just awed by the sheer brilliance of this set. The legacy of the Rogue One team being felt immediately by Luke, Wedge and Artoo, a little later by Han, and finally Leia telling their story – or what she knows of their story – to Poe. And that final sentence to close the cycle of these drabbles, while, at the same time, this very set runs its own cycle, from those who have already forgotten (the supply officer) to those who wonder what has been (Wedge, Artoo, Luke) to those who remember, but still wish they remembered more. Plus, as a bonus, this connection to the ST era and Leia trying to teach Poe about the delusion of hero-worship.

Congrats on your nominations, for this story and for everything else you wrote this year! They were entirely deserved and I'll be in the cheering crowd throughout!

 

Thank you, and thank YOU for being such a loyal reader! I had that last line in place for quite a while. And I wanted it to come from Leia, the only one still around who remembers. She has lost so very much in her life. She knows the pain of sacrifice.

Thanks, EP! And take your time. I know you gots lots to do. Thank you for following the story!

Thank you, @Anedon! I mentioned to @WarmNyota_SweetAyesha that I wanted Leia to be in the last set because she would remember the Rogue One team, and I wanted Poe to be there too because this happened literally before his time. It's truly history for him, and Leia is the bridge. She's the last link to them. They say that you live on as long as you are remembered, but what happens when nobody remembers you anymore? Your story gets passed down to people like Poe, and you become legend.

Thank you so much! I'm very happy that you enjoyed the story.

Thank you! Thank you for running the challenge, too!

Thank you! I wanted to have a set where we said goodbye to each of them. The gut-puncher of the movie is the fact that we get so invested in these characters and we watch them die, one by one. But the thing I loved about R1 was just that - this is a war, and people you care about die in war. It's often glossed over in the other movies. So I tried to relate their deaths as accurately and as non-romantically as possible while still holding to their characters.

It's funny, I had such a hard time with the Wedge drabble! I wrote it three different ways before settling on the final form. But it makes sense. As a seasoned pilot, he knows his ship. He has a mechanically inclined mind. He was there on the trench run. He would wonder how such a devastating flaw would have been overlooked - either it was outrageous incompetence, or it was brilliant sabotage by a hidden rebel who we would never know.

Thank you! And thank you for your continued support of the drabbles.
There really is a lot here in this last set, and I did intentionally want to indicate the passage of time. I actually wound up looking at the parkas that Han wears in TESB and that Cassian wears in R1, and they are similar enough to be the same one. Cassian wouldn't have brought the parka to Scarif, so it makes sense that when he died someone cleaned out his quarters and all his stuff was put back into circulation for new soldiers. I kind of like the idea that Han is wearing Cassian's old parka. (#newheadcanon)
Leia is the only one who remembers the events of R1. She represents the past, in a way, and Poe, who wasn't even born when the events took place, represents the future. She is passing on the story to him. (I guess in the realm of "who lives, who dies, who tells your story," Leia gets the job.) I hadn't thought about it in terms of Poe's recklessness and his hero-worship, but you're right. The hero is the one who gets the job done, regardless of whether or not they get the acclaim. If it wasn't for Leia, the identifies of the R1 crew would have been forgotten.

Thank you to everyone who congratulated me on the nominations. I am very flattered to have been recognized.

 

With your Week 19 drabbles centering around the deaths and sacrifices of the Rogue One principals, I wondered to myself, "so, what's she going to do with Week 20? What can she do with Week 20?" And of course I should know by now not to doubt you—because you've done it, and done it in a way that's all the more incredible and virtuosic for how understated it is. We get to see the familiar heroes of the Saga continuing the Rogue One group’s legacies in very quiet, understated ways: another Captain wears that dark blue parka, a talent young pilot marvels from afar at the genius of that one deliberate design flaw, Artoo becoming aware of the information Kaytoo left behind, and a very understandably battle-exhausted Hero of Yavin finding a few effects left behind by a very different pilot (and the juxtaposition of Luke and Bodhi is such a cool and unique touch; they are both “unexpected heroes” of different sorts). And as for that absolutely incredible #100… I can only echo what the others have said. I love how Leia is the link between the Rebellion and Resistance generations, passing on the legacy of the former to the latter, but also in a very understated, natural way that is true to the General Organa we’ve seen in the ST. A perfect wrapup to this series, and perfect words to end on.

Bravissima bring this masterpiece of a series to such an apropos and wonderful conclusion. And although I probably said it already, I’ll say it again: BIG CONGRATULATIONS on all of its awards nominations, all of which are immensely well deserved.

 

I cannot believe that you have finished and I have only noticed now!



Congrats for finishing and making it such fun throughout the ride. Your drabbles show that your fanfic magic works in short pieces as well.