Chapter Text
B-5895.815 had started out the same as all B1's do, meek and generally unquestioning, but was abnormally good at his job of piloting ships. Some had considered this a glitch but no separatist was actually as dumb or petty as to get rid of a droid that was doing his job well.
However, when deactivation day came, he felt a sense of unease and impulsively ran away in the ship he controlled, along with about 20 or so other B1's along for the ride. He piloted himself into a relatively unknown and hard to get to system initially to deter any organic Imperial followers. He got into arguments with his fellow passengers who all had differing reactions on what they wanted to do. While none of them wanted to be deactivated, a lot of them also had no idea what they would do now that their purpose they were built for was gone.
He spent months with the rest of the ship listening to imperial news and daily having arguments back and forth on what the next course of action should be, while occasionally moving their ship to other places in hard to get into galactic regions.
9 months into it, the other 20 droids finally came to the agreement that they wanted to part ways and try their own luck at surviving on their own, so they each gave B-5895.815 a preferred drop off destination, and one by one he set them off, without expectation to see them again. After dropping off the last one, he began to feel just how big his ship he still had was, and within a month, started to feel lonely without company. He spent another 6 months debating with himself whether or not he should attempt to find some kind of companionship or settle down onto a planet with very few active inhabitants and meet his end there.
In the end, he chose to risk a swifter death by choosing to set foot on a sparsely populated planet, Dantooine, hoping to find something or someone to talk to, while having little chance of being taken into imperial control. It was on Dantooine he first came across her, a lost Jedi Padawan, for the first time.
B-5895.815 clocked her as a Padawan almost immediately upon finding her amongst the populace. It wasn't her differing clothes and lack of dirt on her that tipped him off, though. It was the distinctive padawan braid he caught sight of that told him what he was looking at. Being programmed and engaging in war against Jedi, and you learn to spot them very quickly.
Now, despite being programmed and built for war part, B1 Battle Droids were never built with pre-programmed hatred or a wish for the death of the opposing side into them. All they had as a base was overwhelming loyalty to the organics that called themselves their superiors. So, upon spotting a Jedi after the war, B-5895.815 did not have any qualms about approaching them, provided they didn't immediately react to him with hostility. B-5895.815 surmised that most Jedi would not, should they encounter him. Unless he ever made himself seem to be a threat first. Which was easy for B-5895.815, as he had barely ever held a weapon in his short existence at the time, owing to being made to pilot ships and not battle on the front lines.
Still, he approached her with caution, being aware that organic species are easily startled by things they may have negative associations with. And despite the average obliviousness of B1 Battle Droids, B-5895.815 was aware that droids of his type may elicit one of those responses.
After all, he was different, not stupid. He made his way in her direction, making sure to not go too fast or too slow, lest he alert her too fast to his presence before being able to open up with any sort of dialogue. After all, he was approaching her very specifically, because he knows they're both outcasts who need to stay hidden to survive with the way recent events had unfolded, and was hoping for…he wasn't sure? Could he make friends with her? If nothing else, maybe at least they could exchange info and give each other something valuable to the other. He hadn't actually thought this through too deeply before spotting her on this planet. Despite any specialties he had as a Battle Droid, he was still prone to somewhat shortsighted decisions. Afterall, that was what saved him from deactivation in the first place.
Upon being lost in thought, he had gotten much closer to the wandering Padawan than he had expected, he was definitely within her field of view now. He tilted his head at her, hoping that wouldn't unnerve her while processing different options of what to say before approaching closer.
The Padawan, only known as ‘F’, had very much spotted the Battle Droid. How could she not, when she’d spent three years of her life fighting them? Even after not having seen one in almost 2 years, it’d become instinct to shift into fight-or-flight mode the moment that distinct droid - voice, form, behavior, all of it - hit any of her senses.
She’d thought them all deactivated, now that the Civil War was ‘over’. The clone troopers were better, smarter - but who wouldn’t use a cheap resource that was just laying around? Especially when it wasn’t like Jedi were any more immune to their blasters than those of the clones.
Her mind raced as she started moving away from the thing. Were there more on this planet? Was this one scout that would report her to its platoon? It had seen her, for sure, because it had started approaching her, but -
She caught herself.
Deep breaths. It was okay. She’d dealt with battle droids before - and this was just one B1-series Droid. Not something serious like a droideka or a super battle droid. Even if she wasn’t able to fight it, she could just avoid it; these ones weren’t fast or particularly clever - so if she put enough distance between them, it would lose interest.
Hopefully.
Well. Blast, she was startled by his presence here. He didn't blame her, but this turn of events made things a bit harder than he had wanted it to go.
A high metallic pitch rang out. "Miss J–" Not a smart move to out her as a Jedi here, even if there wasn't any imperial presence. "Miss! I'd like to talk! I know why you might be afraid of me, but I'm just a pilot! I've not held a blaster in my entire few years of functioning!" The droid cried out, picking up speed in her direction, as confused farmers and livestock looked on. None tried to help either one either. On Dantooine, you minded your own business.
The fact that B-5895.815 was chasing down a Jedi when he explicitly didn't want to wasn't lost on him. Still, he continued to cry out hoping to get her to stop. "I'm a pilot! I left when they were deactivating everyone because I was…scared."
It was true. While there was a lot of denial that droids had the capability of emotion, how else would one describe the reason he impulsively ran away as far as possible to continue functioning?
B-5895.815 started to wonder if the Padawan he was chasing after had heard any of his pleas.
It’s a slow chase and one that F realizes a bit late, she’s almost too good at… while also not actually being able to end it.
Because, for some reason, instead of guiding her to safety, somewhere far away from the droid, the Force keeps bringing her back to it. It doesn’t matter if she takes a straight run down a cliff or loops through deeper and deeper tracks of forest - somehow, she always finds the droid again, still moving at that casual pace through the underbrush.
And no, it’s not a different droid of the same make that would be part of the same unit. It’s the same one. Same wear patterns, same paint job - not command colors, but some other thing that probably would have made sense to someone with more field experience -, same…
F blinked.
Same lack of any kind of weapon.
She prods the Force again, trying to see if there’s any warning about it - a hidden bomb or some lurking sniper. Nothing. Just a light insistence that she come look closer.
Eventually, curiosity - and the frustration of trying and failing to escape the clanker again - pushes her towards the droid.
With the Padawan having finally stopped running away and starting to approach him, B5895.815 felt relieved…and a little bit scared, on the off chance that the Jedi would decide to enact violence to get rid of him faster. But he carried on anyway, he already made it this far.
"Miss Jed–"
"Call me F, it's my name and draws less attention." She cut him off quickly, still a bit uneasy.
"Just F? I didn't think humans just went by letters."
"Well, that's all anyone needs to know for now anyway. What's your designation? And what do you do, exactly? I think you tried telling me but I didn't process it due to the…running."
"My model number is B-5895.815."
"We'll have to do something about that, it's a bit long to remember and shout if you're in danger. May I call you B-58?"
"Well, that's fine by me. I'm a pilot, as well, Miss F. Apparently too good of one, based on the reactions from the C.I.S. and the Empire not finding me yet."
F looked at him, surprised. She had never thought they'd let battle droids pilot ships, whenever she had thought about the other side during the war. Logistically, though, they probably had to - the C.I.S. hadn’t had more organics in their military than there had to be, but… what was out of sight was often out of mind.
"Are there more of your kind on your ship?" she asked, curiously.
"I'm Afraid not. Everyone else has gone their separate ways. We argued for the months we were kinda waiting for someone to pick us up. My deserting of the rest of the army on deactivation day was my own impulsive choice I made without asking the rest of them, it kept them online but they hadn't been informed of the choice. So, in the end the rest of my unit decided that everyone would try to make it on their own somehow. And now I'm left all alone with the ship. Which…I should probably get a new one before someone finds it."
F had been staring intently, listening to the whole thing, coming to realize and possibly reckon with the fact that, B-58 isn't too dissimilar to her or anyone else faced in the situations they were in.
And it didn’t hurt that, if she took him at his word - and there was no reason not to, not with the Force as calm as it was - there were no other battle droids to contend with.
"To be completely honest with you, Miss F, I guess I'm…lonely."
That caught her off guard. She had been used to hearing battle droid chatter during the war and had noted they honestly didn't seem much different than the normal people living throughout the galaxy, but still, she had never thought she'd hear one admit to being…lonely.
Nobody really… thought about droid emotions, after all. Not as a general thing. Especially not on droids built to serve military purposes. Even the one droid every Jedi at the temple knew was a bit of a mystery, as he had just shown up one day millenia ago and never left. He was kind to younglings of course, helping them on their journey to find their kyber crystals, but had most Jedi in the order actually ever considered if he had experiences outside of that?
Probably not. Droids were… easily dismissed. No presence in the Force, no blood or capacity for pain… well, F thought, wincing as she remembered some of the panicked yelling of battle droids whenever they took damage that didn’t immediately deactivate them, there was an assumption they couldn’t feel anything.
"Uhh…Miss? Are you alright? You've been looking at me strangely for a few minutes now."
"I didn't expect a battle droid could be lonely before, is all. I had never thought about it."
“Battle droids weren’t built to be alone. Our entire lives are surrounded by more of us, our bigger siblings or organic life to command us. I guess I also didn't realize that until recently, to be honest with you ma'am”
F smirked. "Ma'am?"
"Is that the wrong way to be polite?"
"It's not, I suppose it's just I never expected to hear a battle droid refer to me as such. As well…I'm not that old."
She paused.
"More to the point, Did you zero-in on me because you recognized my braid and knew I might be sympathetic to you?"
"...Yeah, I did."
F smiled, almost unaware. "Impressive. I honestly didn't think most of our droid opponents would've taken note of that. No offense to you, of course."
"None taken. I honestly think the problem is that most of us don't last as long as someone like me, so they never build up their own observations into having a fuller understanding of the galaxy."
"You're probably right about that. That said, how did you manage to find me on this planet in the first place?" F asked, curious, being fully aware that Dantooine wasn't on the C.I.S. or Empire's radars.
"Blind luck, honestly. I only came here because it's not where the Empire is looking. I didn't expect I'd find a…" B-58 pointed to F's braid. "...
Here. I was mostly trying to reorient myself here for a while before figuring out another step in whatever…life is for me next."
"My turn for a question next, Miss F, what are you doing here?"
F stopped. She’d… come here to disappear, hadn’t she? Or had she been looking for something besides safety?
Or maybe, the Force knew there was something here that she hadn’t known she needed.
Either way, the answer was probably to take a moment and meditate.
"Uhh…Miss…?" B-58 tilted his head. "Right, Jed– I'll take a seat until you're ready to answer, since I don't have much else to do."
B-58 looked for a spot close to but still far enough away from F for her presumed comfort and set himself down on the ground.
As good a time as any to recharge, he thinks.