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A normal droid would focus on the mission. Its circuits would be blind to everything else until the crew would be back safely and every detail documented in the mission log. A normal droid would compute the shortest course to where it can plug in the space station’s central computer and, with efficient and tidy bits of intervening code, tinker its way into helping the organic crew navigate their way through. And after saving the crew from an acute death in a trash compactor, it would stay plugged in, neatly in position, waiting for further requests from the organics.
But Artoo is not a normal droid.
He has flown too much with Anakin Skywalker. Too many mission-inconsistent orders and improvised manoeuvres have left their mark in his programming. As have too many caring words, too many soft touches and friendly slaps on his dome. Too many of those loving gestures that organics tend to reserve only for their peers.
Artoo hates it when his circuits do this. He has no other name for it, only the clumsy one organics use: feelings. He hates it when his programming produces feelings out of the blue, making him just as cheesy as organic beings with watery eyes. Just as vulnerable to softness - to longing.
No matter what the mission, he cannot stay in this position. Not as long as he knows, deep in his core processor, that his former master and friend has to be close, somewhere on this very space station.
So Artoo leaves Threepio panicking in the control room and rolls out into an unknown corridor. He has no data to compute his way, so he follows what organics would probably call a hunch - tiny, instinctual movements of bits in his leg circuits giving direction to his rolling when he leaves computing out of the game. After a few turns and one elevator ride, this hunch brings him to a black door with a heavy lock system beside it.
Artoo has yet to encounter a lock that would be too much for him to crack. This one puts up a real fight, turn after turn, encoding after encoding. Finally, after the last mechanism ticks, the lock still opens up a screen above itself, asking for a five-digit password.
Artoo rolls his optical sensor. His dome has gone grey from all the hours he spent trying to lecture Anakin about cybersecurity. He might as well have talked to a deaf Jedi. Over and over again, Anakin would always use the same, ridiculously weak password for everything. Artoo does not even have to dig deep into his archives. He reaches for the screen, types in PADME, and the door slides open with a pneumatic hiss.
At first glance, the large room behind the door looks nothing like Anakin Skywalker. Every surface is glossy; ceiling high; black, white, and silver the only colours. A large bacta tank system dominates the back of the room. But here and there, little details give away whose quarters it is: a box of Anakin’s favourite ration bars on a shelf; a white noise machine next to a bed - similar to the one Anakin used to use to calm nightmares down; and an Imperial probe droid on a desk, with its dome open and wires pointing out of the unfinished upgrade project.
Artoo rolls to the desk, scans the probe droid and the tools lying around it. A tiny trace of body heat is left on the handle of the oil brush dropped on the left side of the droid. Darth Vader must still have his organic left hand. The same left hand that used to brush Artoo’s top laurels with warm, scented oil whenever he had a bad cough.
He lets out a deep, binary sigh and opens a desk drawer. The top one is only filled with more tools, but the second one contains a more interesting object: a book with black leather covers. Inside, its pages are no cheap flimsiplast but actual paper. Artoo gasps in awe as he turns them, careful not to fold or rip. He has only ever handled paper a few times. Most of his career, he has spent with the Jedi Order or the Rebellion - neither of which could ever afford such vanity. No wonder Anakin would latch on to a luxury item like this as soon as having the Imperial resources to buy it. To buy it - or to exploit a planet with rich enough plant resources for papermaking.
Soon, Artoo’s attention is drawn from the mere sight and sound of the paper pages into what is written on them in Anakin’s handwriting. On one page in particular, Artoo can no longer fight the oil droplets welling up in his optical sensor. He scans and stores the poem in his archive:
To Mom
I’d want you to know
that I failed what you deem the most important
I failed good
I failed light
I’d want you to know
and still take me in your arms
and still forgive
Yours is the greatest capacity for compassion this universe has ever known
I wish it as a flood over me
over this failed being
for me to drown in until I float again
The book is thick. There are more pages. But Luke’s voice is already back on the comm, out of breath like he is running for his life, emphasising how urgently they need to meet back at the ship. That is a direct command that even Artoo’s programming cannot override. So with a heavy core processor, he closes the book and the drawer again, rolls out, slides the door shut and hurries to the humans who are presently in his crew, leaving behind the one who once was.