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“We’re shutting it down.”
Jyn’s face didn’t change. It wasn’t the answer she was expecting, the only one hard enough to be true.
“He was injured in the line of duty,” said Jyn, dangerously low. “Fighting for your cause.”
“Techs found nothing wrong.” Draven’s tone suggested the discussion was as arbitrary as the machine in question. “Memory and key functions all intact- report’s in the open log.”
“It doesn’t take a tech to see this isn’t a memory and key functions issue.” Jyn grimaced. It was the wrong tack. She just couldn’t think of the right one.
“No,” said Draven, shifted gears to an impartial smile. “But when a droid chooses not to cooperate, has no inbuilt loyalty protocols, and is non-responsive to all communication stimulus-”
“Is that the speech you’re giving the Council?” Jyn interjected, caustic. “It needs work.”
Draven watched her, left a deliberate silence. When he spoke again, his tone had an edge of consideration.
It hurt how much she wanted to believe it.
“K-2SO was Cassian’s droid,” Draven said quietly. “We knew that from the start. Cassian knew that. Reprograms are never a sure thing, even partnered with the right agent.”
“Give him time,” Jyn hissed, losing ground she didn’t have. “You- all of you- are only here, because-”
“-because time is what you bought us,” Draven finished, a flicker of something beyond pragmatism. “And now we have a chance. And I’ll be damned if that chance is compromised by an Imperial droid who blames us for Cassian’s loss.”
He breathed in, a fraction too vicious. She’d touched a nerve. She pressed on it.
“He doesn’t,” Jyn lied, surprisingly steady. “He’s in shock. Overloaded protocol function induces a semi-shutdown in the some of the first-gen Kx series. Not exactly something Arakyd Industries wanted to advertise, but you’ll hear it in any bar.”
Draven tightened his jaw, unreadable.
“The techs wouldn’t have picked it up, Kaytoo’s wires are all over the place as it is.”
“That’s good intel. But the result’s still the same.”
“Not once I fix it.”
Draven barked a laugh, eyes narrowed. Testing.
“So now you’re an expert on droids too?”
“There’s a lot of dead time between hyperjumps.” Jyn shrugged. Swallowed.
He wasn’t convinced. But a working K-2 was an asset, and she’d sown just enough doubt.
“Bring him round by tomorrow,” Draven snapped. Dismissed.
Cassian would have been proud.
-
“I need to find Kaytoo.”
There was a pitch of urgency beneath Jyn’s calm, threadbare exhaustion waiting to break. Bodhi had been staring listless at the ceiling, tensed upright when he heard her.
“What’s happened?”
Something in his face told her he already knew. If the pilot and droid had one thing in common, it seemed to be a habit of predicting the worst.
“I need to prove Kay’s still on our side.”
Bodhi winced, raked his hands over his face. “Last I saw of him, he’d just punched a wall in Cassian’s quarters. It left a huge dent.”
Jyn cursed under her breath. Bodhi hugged his knees.
“The north outpost,” he said abruptly, eyes bloodshot in the light. “The old one, with the backup generator. Cassian said… when he couldn’t sleep…”
His voice broke, but it didn’t matter. Jyn was already halfway out the door.
-
The wind was coarse, viciously cold. At first Jyn made herself run, arms crossed around her middle, hands clawed into her sleeves. When she couldn’t run for shivering, she gritted her head down and counted her footsteps one to four. On ‘four’ she would risk a glance ahead, note the markers and tell herself it wasn’t much further.
When she forgot to count, she started to wonder.
Was this what it felt like?
There was a prickling, far away, her skin was raw and numb. Her eyes were watering and her mouth was dry. Her lungs burned. She could feel the kyber crystal wedged against her throat, as if it had a heartbeat of its own.
Maybe it was Cassian’s.
Jyn smiled, sank to her knees. In the white, she saw a figure.
“Of all the bad ideas-” K-2 exclaimed.
She didn’t hear the rest.
-
Jyn came round to a humming, the rustle of an emergency sleeping bag at her chest. The ground was hard, gravel digging into her back. The space speckled bright when she tried to sit, but she recognised the inside of the shelter, the generator running on standby.
“Don’t move,” K-2 said crisply. “I don’t want you passing out before I have a chance to tell you how furious I am.”
“Kaytoo,” Jyn mumbled, her mouth pulling up at the corners. “You’re talking again.”
“Why are you here?” Kay intoned. “Do you have any idea what your odds of survival were, had I not found you?”
“I can make a hypothesis.” Jyn eased her head back on the floor. Kaytoo’s frame was blurring in and out of focus, and for some reason she could feel the droid’s hand in her own.
“Over one-hundred-and-eighty-seven studies have shown,” said K-2, pulling away as she noticed it. “That physical contact can be an instrumental factor in human recovery. Especially at the highly critical stage.”
Jyn’s fingers twitched without anything to hold onto, she dug her nails into her palm to make it stop.
“Coffee breaks with the medi-droids?” she tried. It was weak, but it was something.
“Core learning for working with Cassian,” the droid said briskly. “He makes as many ludicrous decisions as you.”
Whether from the relief of finding Kay or some fallout of the shock, the mention of Cassian’s name brought surprisingly quick tears to Jyn’s eyes. The word makes was enough to spill them over the edge.
“I’m sorry,” K-2 said hastily. “I’m sorry for saying that.”
“It’s true,” Jyn laughed, the echo more like a sob. “He would’ve agreed.”
Kaytoo lowered his head, flinched an arm. For a moment, Jyn thought he might take her hand again, but he hunched into himself instead.
“I heard you punched a wall today,” Jyn managed. Her voice sounded cracked and sticky, but Kay was used to reading between the lines.
Cassian’s droid.
“Yes,” K-2 said carefully, stepping over the word like a landmine. “I saw Cassian do that once, when he was very upset.”
“Did he feel any better?”
“No.”
“Do you feel any better?”
“No,” K-2 said, pointed.
Jyn twitched a nod, shuttered her eyes. She could feel the rise of her chest with each inhale, her ribs bruised and hollow.
“Keep talking to me,” K-2 said after a second, his modulation unusually pinched. “Talking significantly raises your chances of being conscious.”
Jyn couldn’t tell if he was being ironic. Don’t worry, was what she tried to say.
“Don’t go,” was what came out.
The droid looked at her, made no physical reflex. He would have accounted for the possibility. Spared her the percentage.
“I will give you the memory drive,” K-2 said after a while. Slowly, Jyn shook her head, tears leaking into her hair.
“I don’t need the memories,” she whispered. “I need someone who knows what it is to remember.”
Kaytoo turned away.
“You’re a lot like him, you know.” He paused, ran a hand over his front. It was a strange, self-conscious gesture, oddly painful.
“I told Draven you’re in some kind of technical overload,” Jyn said, her laugh dull and strangled. “All you have to do is go along with it. Say you’re fixed.”
“Luckily bluffing is my strong suit,” K-2 muttered. It wasn’t quite amused, but Jyn recognised the effort.
“Do you believe in the Force?”
Her fingers loosened the cord at her neck, the crystal suddenly heavy. She weighed it in her hand, reached for Kay’s.
“I didn’t.” The kyber glinted bright in his palm, a small, fading thing. He left his fingers outstretched, as if a single movement might cause it to break. “Now I have to.”
When Kaytoo dimmed his eyes, Jyn closed hers.
“Sometimes,” she murmured, smile coming easier now. “When I’m exhausted, hurt, or half-dead, the crystal feels warm.” She waited for the retort, but none came.
“Light it up,” Kay said softly.
Jyn reached for his hand with both of hers, closed his fingers around the necklace.
“Keep it for awhile,” she said, gently firmed her grip when Kay hesitated. “Keep it safe.”
Their hands clutched together until Jyn fell asleep, her core body temperature finally returned to normal. Then, carefully, Kaytoo wrapped the necklace next to his central processor, the empty space where his Imperial datacard had been removed.
There was an empty space by Jyn’s side.
“I’m here,” he said quietly.
-