Normal people scare me

If he was being fair, of course, he knew that nobody had actually intended for this to happen. Anakin – or Vader, he’d called himself now, but designations could change – had obviously intended to get back in the fighter and fly back to wherever the Emperor wanted him to go.

And Obi-Wan had clearly been quite distraught about the situation, so he simply hadn’t thought through how Anakin had arrived in the first place. While Padme was entirely incapacitated, so there wasn’t much hope of a good outcome there.

But still. R2 would have expected 3P0 to remember him, and that was a cause for indignant beeping.

He scanned the available frequencies, trying to work out where exactly he should go. Neither 3P0 nor Obi-Wan had been kind enough to notice him, so of course they hadn’t bothered to tell him where to go either, and while there was a hyperspace ring floating up there for him to use it would be pointless to take off without some idea of where to go.

R2 spun his dome around, as he pondered.

Maybe Naboo? Naboo was where he’d started out, and Jar Jar Binks was funny. That was definitely an option.

Or perhaps travelling to Tatooine would be better. C-3P0 was from Tatooine, and a bit of creative mayhem might just solve a few problems.

He’d have a much better idea of where to go if he knew where Padme, Obi-Wan and C-3P0 had gone, but he’d gone through that recently… though, then again, maybe he should take up flying around and doing deeds. Occasionally even good ones.

No, that wasn’t going to work. He was cross-linked into the starfighter systems, to the extent he could certainly operate all the individual controls, but most people weren’t happy with a droid as independent as he was. Especially after all the wars so far.

It would definitely require some thought.

Then something pinged up on his short range scanners, with a very interesting call sign.

“Luke,” Padme declared. “And this one is… Leia.”

She sighed. “I… thank you for being here, Obi-Wan.”

“You’re talking like you’re going to die,” Obi-Wan protested. “Don’t do that.”

“Ani was having dreams, about me dying,” Padme murmured.

“She’s very tired,” the Polis Massa medical droid reported. “She should make a recovery, though I will want to have stern words with her previous OB/GYN.”

Padme looked just guilty enough that Obi-Wan assumed there hadn’t been an OB/GYN, which was probably part of the problem.

Then C-3P0 ran in.

“Mistress Padme!” he said. “Jedi Master Obi-Wan, sir! I have picked up a message from R2-D2!”

“You have?” Obi-Wan asked. “Where… oh.”

His face fell. “He got left on Mustafar, didn’t he? Anakin must have got there somehow.”

“Quite correct, sir,” C-3P0 said. “At least, that he is still near Mustafar, though he has been using the hyperspace ring to broadcast to me. However, the main bulk of his message is relating to a different matter entirely.”

The protocol droid looked uncertain. “Would you be so kind as to elaborate what ‘scratch one Emperor’ means?”

Obi-Wan boggled for a moment.

“...can you confirm that?” he asked.

“I can certainly ask,” C-3P0 replied, holding up a comlink, then twittered into it in binary.

R2 beeped a reply.

“It seems a shuttle broadcasting the code Imperial One flew over to where Master Anakin was,” C-3P0 declared. “So R2 shot it down with Master Anakin’s fighter. It crashed into the lava and exploded.”

Obi-Wan glanced at Padme, who’d passed out after her stressful day.

“...well,” he said. “I think we may need to get R2-D2 a medal. Possibly another medal.”

He paused.