#droid feels

“There is no other way, my dear friend.”

R2-D2 chirps his dissent, whirling and looping in place. Dust skips up beneath his treads, accentuating his displeasure. C-3PO wishes he could smile but contents himself with bending at the waist to plant a few pat upon his companion’s head. R2 beeps again agitatedly.

“And how do you expect me to keep Master Skywalker’s younglings safe if I don’t enact the memory flush?”

R2 slows only for a moment before whirring to life again, his clamps coming out of their compartments to seize the RA-7 unit’s limbs; with a terrific rending sound, they detach from their sockets. Wires hang limply from the ends of their limbs and R2 spins to deposit the arms at C-3PO’s feet. Angrily beeping again, R2’s entire unit shakes with indignation and righteousness.

His locked joints mean that C-3PO ends up collapsing to his knees in front of his friend, but he wagers it is worth risking the myriad of infectious diseases spread throughout the ship to get closer to his only true friend. His gold fingers curl lightly upon the R2 unit’s casing; he isn’t programmed to clutch any tighter, and it pains him deeply--as deeply as his systems will allow, anyway.

“I know you would defend me to the very end of the galaxies, my little friend,” C-3PO soothes. If he were programmed to, he’d let his breath hitch now. But he is not, and so C-3PO keeps going, one measured statement at a time. “My most constant and loyal friend. How I will miss you so.”

R2 rolls quickly forward, tipping on his axis to bump against the droid’s chest cavity. C-3PO has never been designed to laugh, let alone laugh sadly, and so he does not. The other droid chirps again, agitated and loud. It echoes down the ship’s corridors.

C-3PO only shakes his head. “RA-7 was only the beginning. You know it, R2-D2. I know it. I hazard that Master Organa knows it too. Perhaps that is why he sent us on this silly quest.”

R2 whines questioningly. C-3PO lets his hand fall once, twice, three times, affectionate and damning, against his best friend’s domed head.

“I cannot be trusted with vital information.”R2’s head spins all the way around as he shrieks his dissent. “I am not saying you cannot be trusted, R2.” C-3PO continues, reasonably. He doesn’t usually have to be the reasonable one, really, but sometimes R2 can be deliberately dense, especially when it comes to the two of them splitting up in any way whatsoever. " But I am very talkative, you know this. It’s only a limited amount of time before I give up information I do not specifically wish to.”

Mistress Amidala’s family must be kept safe at all costs. C-3PO knows this. R2-D2 knows this. Even Anakin Skywalker knew this, once upon a time.

There is a moment of deadly silence in which C-3PO tries to swallow the knowledge of his fate. The R2’s light blinks, red, blue, red again before he whirs to life once more. With a ferociousness that is unbecoming of a droid, R2 rips the Ra-7 unit apart, bit by bit. C-3PO watches as his best friend deposits the cranial unit of the other droid into the Sundered Heart ’s trash chute.  When R2 is done enacting vengeance, he turns back to C-3PO. C-3PO, a clanging, resounding crash echoing in his unit where a heartbeat would be, shakes his head. “Thank you, my friend. But I still need to enact the memory flush. We both know it.”

Rolling back and forth as if rocking on non-existent heels, R2 deliberates for a moment. In the end, though, he chirps sadly and rolls into C-3PO. He goes farther forward than he has ever gone, farther than C-3PO is expecting, whirring as he knocks into his best friend’s chest cavity, creating a hollow clong . As much as his stiff joints will allow, C-3PO strives to wrap his arms around the other droid’s cylindrical bulk.  They have never held each other like this and maybe never will again. This one time has to count. Perhaps even more so because C-3PO will never remember that it has happened.  

“Thank you, my friend,” C-3PO acknowledges. “I wouldn’t be able to do this without you. I--I do not believe I could find my way in this world if you weren’t looking out for me.”

Downcast, R2 trembles in his arms.

“Now, now. I know you can do it. You’ve always been the more responsible of the two of us, and don’t try to spare my feelings now. I won’t remember you extending the courtesy anyway.”

R2-D2 beeps deploringly.  C-3PO wishes he could have been installed with a laughing sequence.

“Exactly, you'd be expending the effort to be polite for no reason at all. So. I’m going to start the memory flush sequence now. Are you ready?”

R2 beeps a question at him. C-3PO doesn’t have an answer that will satisfy either of their coding programs. “I don’t know if I am, R2. But I do know one thing; if I ever was ready, it would be because you were at my side.”

Then, before his last, most true friend, can say anything in response, C-3PO ignites the memory flush.

His eyes flicker, dark one moment and light the next. A strange alarm sounds from deep within the C-3PO unit, like an old gong struck for the first time in millennia. R2 rocks back and forth uncertainly, but does not leave the circle of his friend’s limbs.

Later, C-3PO looks up, his tone sunny and bright. “Hello. My name is C-3PO. I am a designated protocol droid. What is your name?”

R2 chirps his designation code, and then their orders.

“R2-D2.” C-3PO logs this in his blank memory banks. “We are to accompany Mistress Leia Organa on a diplomatic mission, then? We must set off, of course! She will be waiting for us!”

C-3PO gets to his feet and, taking no notice of the overly familiar position the two droids were previously in, sets off to his new task. R2-D2’s light blinks, red, blue, red, blue, and stays that way. He whines, chirps slowly, and follows at a much slower pace.