#baze finding conviction in chirrut's prayer??

[bethanyeliseart]

I finally read the Rogue One novelization, and I'd like to have words with Mr. Alexander Freed about my emotional well-being after finishing this book.

[a-non-sequitur]

rogue one: passing fanmeta: baze’s faith

mfw i realize that i have been (partially!) misinterpreting baze’s reaction to chirrut’s death scene for months

Chirrut: Look for the Force and you will always find me.

When I first saw the film, my thought process was: “Baze has seen Chirrut accomplish an impossibility through the Force, and Chirrut asks Baze to believe in the Force one more time, and Baze believes, and thus Baze prays.”

And, like... the individual phrases of that are true, but it's just slightly out of order. And I kind of recognized that because I read the novel, and I HIGHLIGHTED (highlighted! meaning I told myself: this is important!) the following two bits (p292-293):

“The Force is with me,” [Baze] repeated. “And I am with the Force.” 

Did he believe the words? Did it matter? Had it ever mattered? [emphasis mine]

and

[Baze] spoke the words, and in them he found not comfort but conviction—or the memory of conviction, as if the words were a key to the forgotten faith of his youth. The unlocked memory strangled him, wracking and intense. He knew again the significance of the Force in every breath and action, knew all he had forsaken in years past; saw the vast gulf between the Guardian he had been and the man he was now, and wept in his heart for both. [emphasis mine]

And YET I STILL DIDN’T MAKE THE CONNECTION. So it is only now, five - FIVE! - months after the movie and inundating myself in RO fandom that I realize:

Baze doesn’t start the partner half of the mantra because he rediscovers his faith, but because the idea of a life - or a death or an afterlife - without Chirrut is so impossible for him to accept that he will pray to a Force that he still doesn’t believe in and has openly mocked for years JUST on the off-chance that he will be reunited with Chirrut in doing so. 

That very first repetition was a “fake it till you make it” attempt.

Baze DOES regain his faith - and ow, ow, ow, what painful inner monologue - but he regains it AFTER he starts praying, not before.

I mean, okay, this is a long-ass post for tiny-ass detail, but this switch from “Baze believes, and thus Baze prays” to “Baze prays, and thus Baze believes” adds a whole additional layer of pain to that scene for me.

Slightly-but-not-really unrelatedly, the Sunset Prayer is placed immediately before the chapter where Chirrut, Baze, and Bodhi die and the Hammerhead Corvette does the suicide run that destroys the shield gate.

In darkness, cold. In light, cold. The old sun brings no heat. But there is heat in breath and life. In life, there is the Force. In the Force, there is life. And the Force is eternal.

Honestly embarrassed by myself right now.