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K-2SO’s audio sensors could capture and analyse organic speech within a 300 foot radius, give or take white noise or topographical obstruction. In a rebel base less than four times that size, thin walls and several humans he knew rather well, this wasn’t always a welcome skill.
Other times, he couldn’t move fast enough when it was.
“I gave it to them, I came here, myself, my choice. I gave it to them-”
Ignoring the disgruntled mutters as he chased past, the droid recognised the rising note of panic in Bodhi’s whisper.
“Move, move, move,” he intoned, oculars calculating ahead for the path of least resistance. Despite towering a decent half-armslength above, most of the rebels barely acknowledged K-2’s presence, didn’t shift an inch until he made clear that it wasn’t a negotiation.
“I defected, no, no, I’m telling the truth, I swear it-”
K-2 pushed into the repair hanger, no longer needing to track the origin of the sound. In the middle of the work area Bodhi had cornered himself against one of the carriers, a wrench clutched in his mechanical hand and the human one wrapped around his chest. Several ground crew members had noted the behaviour, a concerned circle closing in. Bodhi’s words came quick and tangled, and Kay doubted the group could decipher the phrases, let alone understand their meaning.
Bodhi wasn’t with them in the hangar at all.
“I’m here,” said K-2, loud enough for the rebels to glance around. The pilot stared at him, his metal hand twitching as it received multiple conflicting signals.
“Bodhi, it’s me,” Kay tried again, injecting more significance in his modulation. “K-2SO. I am… a reprogrammed Imperial droid.”
There was a silence.
“Oh, well thank goodness for that,” one of the resistance fighters rolled his eyes, pulled a comlink from his pocket. “I’m calling medical.”
At the word medical, Bodhi’s head snapped up in alarm, breath catching in his throat and pupils dilating too quickly for the humans to see. K-2 required physical contact to confirm his heart rate, but the draining colour at his cheeks left little margin for doubt. He broke forward, snatched an arm around Bodhi’s middle, the artificial wrist caught gently in K-2’s hand. Bodhi’s knees gave out a moment later and he sank, the wrench slipping from his fingers and clattering to the ground.
“It’s Kay-Tu,” the droid said quietly, realising he was doing the very thing he often admonished his organic colleagues for. Hoping. “You… you are the pilot.”
Bodhi wasn’t as light as he looked, and his violent shivering was putting him at risk of injury if he fell. Carefully, Kay switched his hold to the one he used for restraining hostiles. Contrary to popular belief, the Empire more often wanted prisoners delivered to questioning in one piece.
“I, I am-” Bodhi sucked a lungful of air, made a small, aching sound as he let it out. His muscles went slack, and when he turned to face Kay, his eyes were no longer watering.
“Kaytu,” he murmured. Slowly, he blinked, regained his footing. “No medical,” he said under his breath, cleared his throat and said it again.
None of the rebels answered. When the man with the commlink raised it regardless, Kay loomed forward and plucked the device from his fingers.
“You are experiencing a communication error,” he said briskly. “He said no medical.”
-
It was several hours later when Bodhi asked if they could discuss it. It was a very Cassian question, really, gearing up to speak as one would for battle. K-2 knew what the pilot meant was, will you stand by my side when I do.
“I will,” Kay said quietly, caught himself a second too late. “I mean, yes. We can talk.”
Bodhi exhaled, unwrapped the blanket from his shoulders. He was sitting cross-legged on the Captain’s bunk, placed down the pack of cards he had been shuffling. His pallor had mostly returned to normal, the shadows beneath his eyes no more than standard alliance-issue.
“I’m worried I might offend you though,” he murmured, tugged self-consciously at his metal fingers.
“I understand. I will retrieve Baze or Chirrut,” K-2 straightened, turned to the door. Were he human, there was at least a 60 percent probability a Kx enforcer droid wouldn’t be his first choice for debriefing emotions either.
“Oh, I didn’t mean to say you should leave-” Bodhi moved as if to get up. K-2 paused, reassessed the series of verbal and physical cues.
“No,” the droid said slowly, and the realisation surprised him. “You didn’t say that. I believe I made a mistake.”
Which was Cassian for, I know I did and I’m sorry.
Bodhi gave a weak smile. Kay, who had been standing stiffly over him, lowered himself so that Bodhi could view him on ocular level. It was a gesture he typically made only for Cassian, and both he and Cassian were highly accomplished in the art of not acknowledging such things.
“I’m just going to come out and say it then.” Bodhi sighed, swallowed. “I… don’t know if I’m used to this modification yet. I feel like I should be okay, but sometimes it frightens me. Especially when...”
He took a breath to continue, clenched his jaw instead. Slowly, as if Kay were the one who might startle, Bodhi raised the mechanical arm, gently turned it palm-up. He stretched and relaxed the joints of his fingers, then the bend of his elbow. The material was carbonplaster, lightweight and durable, charcoal in colour and similar in design to K-2’s. It joined with his organic arm several inches down from the right shoulder, replicated the function of a human limb on almost all accounts.
“When you forget,” K-2 offered, soft as his intonation would allow. The glitches in the pilot’s memory happened less and less frequently now, Cassian ever close at hand when they did.
“Yes,” Bodhi muttered, gave a husky laugh and pressed his sleeve to the corner of one eye. “Sorry. This always happens after I remember again. It’s so embarrassing.”
“I have also had modifications installed,” K-2 said after a moment. Bodhi’s other eye was leaking too now, but he nodded determinedly at the sound of Kay’s voice. “They were not always quick to adapt to. Or… straightforward.”
Seeing Bodhi sniffling into his wrist, K-2 reached for one of Cassian’s old shirts and held it out to him.
“I don’t think Cassian would appreciate that,” Bodhi mumbled.
“I have seen the Captain use this shirt as a tourniquet for several gruesome injuries, as well as a stopper on more than one engine leak,” K-2 replied. He felt like adding, also, it is you.
Bodhi laughed again, grateful.
“What were they?” he asked, shakily accepted the shirt. “The modifications. Only if you feel like telling me, sorry, I don’t want to-”
“You are not making me,” K-2 interrupted, and though his tone was blunt, Bodhi seemed to hear the intention behind it. He smiled.
“Well, the most significant. The one you already know,” K-2 hesitated. The admission was not one that made him seem more trustworthy by most rebel’s standards.
The pilot was not most rebels.
“-was my reprogram,” he finished, redirected his stare to the wall instead of Bodhi’s face. “Cassian informed his colleagues that I was reprogrammed in support of the alliance. This is inaccurate. Cassian simply modified my protocols to give me a choice.”
“You’re not hardwired to the resistance?” Bodhi blurted, his mouth falling ajar in surprise.
“No I am not,” said K-2, a fraction tetchily. “And at first, making that choice was difficult. Once I had made it, I did not always believe it was the correct one. And when I convinced myself that it was, all that followed were more choices, each as problematic as the last.”
K-2 stopped, feeling a light pressure at his elbow. Glancing down, he saw Bodhi had reached for him with his mechanical hand, the way humans often touched to reassure each other. Bodhi drew back as he realised, shyly tucked the arm around his waist.
“I had to adjust, or rather learn, how to live with a part of me that was human,” K-2 said quietly. The gesture had been comforting, however brief. “And I do not mean to infer that is the same as gaining a non-human arm. Only that-”
The pilot shifted closer when Kay struggled to find the right words.
“That change isn’t easy,” Bodhi murmured.
“At the best of times,” K-2 agreed, relieved.
They sat without speaking, Kay deactivating the protocol that would track for how long. If Bodhi was lost- in thoughts or in memories- K-2 had promised he would stand by his side.
“I’m glad you’re here, Kaytu,” Bodhi said softly. When he drew a breath, his inhale no longer trembled. “I’m glad you brought me back. And that it was your choice.”
“I’m glad you’re here too Bodhi,” said Kay. “You, Cassian. Jyn, Baze, Chirrut…”
Bodhi smiled, Cassian’s jumper still tucked against his chest.
“You are all how I know it was the right one.”
-