This was supposed to be more dark and less awkward, but then this happened.
"Cassian?" K-2 asks.
"Mmhmm?" Cassian says, not looking up from the console. The mission had been routine, if with more collateral damage than either had hoped for, and the return trip is set to be just a bunch of drifting through hyperspace. Cassian doesn't think they're being followed, exactly, so much as he's paranoid. To come all that way unscathed, then emerge into real space too early because he hit the wrong button…
"May I ask you something?"
"Of course."
"I would like your full attention."
K-2 always sounds kind of passive-aggressive when he gets formal. He doesn't see the need to use ranks, certainly not with Cassian. While most droids divide the galaxy into masters, enemies, and neutral passersby, K-2 sees Cassian as an equal. More than an equal, surely, a comrade-in-arms.
Whatever. Cassian turns away from the computer. "What's the deal?"
"I need—I would like you to memorize a double octet security code." He recites the bits and bytes, and Cassian echoes it back to him, in units of four.
"It was procedurally generated," K-2 explains. "I can randomly choose a new one, if you think this one is too hard, but you can't make it up. It can't be anything significant to you, encoding information. It needs to be random noise."
"That's as good as any other string," says Cassian. "I'll do it."
If it means that much to you, he mentally adds. This is what normal people do, have friends and do favors for them. Him, he has Dravens on the comms and K-2 by his side, presumably because no one else in the Rebellion wanted to be responsible for the droid.
He repeats it back a couple times until K-2 is satisfied. "Is this going to be on the quiz?" Cassian mutters.
K-2, being K-2, ignores the joke or more likely misses it entirely. "It would be good if you could quickly recall it in a variety of difficult situations. I may spring some on you."
Cassian certainly hopes there's nothing to count as "difficult" on the return trip, unless you count trying to use a fresher in artificial gravity. "And I suppose at some point I get to learn what this is for?"
"You didn't ask," K-2 notes. "But yes."
They hit some micrometeorites a few hours back into real space. K-2 directs the computer as to how to avoid them; he's faster, a better processor, it only makes sense. "Thanks," Cassian says, as K-2 stands up from the pilot seat.
He doesn't step away. "What's my code?"
Cassian is about to stammer what code but something in K-2's eyes catches his focus and will not relinquish him. It's coincidence, of course. K-X security units aren't built to emote. Anything he sees is just human biases. Still, he rattles off the bytes, surprising even himself.
"Thank you," says K-2, pacing across the cockpit.
"Do I get to know what this is about now?"
K-2 tilts his head. "You keep a lullaby pill sewn into your undergarments."
What, Cassian wants to blurt, does this have to do with anything? What comes out instead is "Why are you going through my underpants?"
"We're usually assigned to small ships," K-2 says. "It's not hard to be informed on all the assets we have at our disposal. I might as well."
"You're a droid. You can't make use of suicide pills, or underpants."
"Astute of you to notice, which is why I needed to program an alternate method."
"For what?" Cassian asks, trying not to think too hard about why a droid would ever need to obscure his leg-attachment area.
"For quickly destroying my mental faculties in case of capture or torture," K-2 says blandly. "You're not being very observant today."
Cassian flops into the vacated pilot seat, his legs slumping below him.
K-2 takes his silence as invitation to elaborate. "Of course my reaction times are faster than yours, but I might be compromised, or there might be safeguards to prevent internal overwriting. Here." He crouches, and his arms reach down to unfold a tiny flap in his left knee.
Cassian peers into it; whatever it is, it won't crack his top ten most disturbing sights seen in wartime. All it is is a low-res digital display with small buttons below. The Alliance's oldest bases have more modern screens.
"It'll trigger a magnetic cascade. Pure randomization to wipe the backups, not just a soft reset. I don't think it should come to that, but I want someone else to know."
Why me? Cassian wants to ask, but he knows it's a stupid question. K-2 has no one else, and neither does he. He recognizes how hard K-2's trust was to win, and he doesn't value that trust lightly.
So he simply nods. "I won't forget."
Half a year later, by the Yavin calendar, they're on the run from a drop that turned out to be not as dead as advertised. Specifically, it's alive with Imperial agents and lazy security droids.
They don't have the training, or the numbers, to mount an effective counterattack, and it's all they can do to get to the transport in one piece. Across the docking bay, K-2 staggers, buckling at the knee.
Cassian swears under his breath—it was hard enough to drag his droid partner to a transport before he knew what the joint hid. But he does it anyway, K-2 covering them with blaster fire as he runs. He's halfway up the ramp before he remembers it was K-2's left knee with the override code, and his right one that went down.
It doesn't let him breathe any easier as they make the quick jump to hyperspace. "Can I help you patch it up?"
"You are very slow," says K-2, bending it at an angle that's impossible for organics. "But it might reduce the strain."
Cassian carefully peers through the chassis, tests each wire. "Is there anything in here?"
"Some fresh blaster scorch marks. Don't poke them, they sting."
"Any—enhancements?"
"Not yet."
He's torn between curiosity and fear, but gets distracted by a stray green wire, its edges frayed. "Need to solder this back in place. Hold still."
It's a simple operation, a quick spark from his toolkit and curving it into place, but K-2 lets out an "Ah...oh...whrrrr" when he's done.
"Did that hurt?" Cassian asks anxiously.
"No," says K-2. "It was—nice."
"I should hope," he says, quickly extricating himself. "Can you stand?"
K-2 rises to his feet in a silent answer, then stares Cassian down with those featureless dark eyes. "I would not have liked that from a stranger, even a medical technician. But I hope you are aware that I appreciate being intimate with you."
"Intimate?" Cassian rolls his eyes. "Save it for the holovids."
"You touching me, aware of the power you hold over me, that we trust each other with our lives? That is not stimulating to you?"
"I mean," Cassian says. "You're a droid."
"If you are alluding to my lack of sexual organs, I am very aware of my capacities. Do organics who find pleasure from being physically restrained by a trusted partner not experience intimacy?"
"Kaytoo, are you seriously trying to justify watching handcuff films as a form of intelligence gathering?"
"I might have to break you out of them one day."
He exhales. "This is a lot to process, that's all."
"I'm sure your mind is suitable for the challenge."
When Cassian doesn't reply, K-2 wanders off to check the diagnostics. It's not a large ship, and there's not much room to avoid each other. But Cassian knows that if he turns down whatever this is, he and K-2 will be able to work together just as well. They have, in turn, collaborated with everyone from violent extremists to doomed idealists; a failed liasion is nothing.
Yet he keeps considering it, K-2's voice in his head as effective as any propaganda.
When he needs rations, he walks down to K-2 first, reaching out a hand to his knee. The droid doesn't pull away. "With everything that I do here, that we do, it's hard to justify taking time for myself. Ourselves. Whatever we are." K-2 opens his mouth, but Cassian continues. "But I've justified a lot worse things. I'd be a hypocrite if I refused just to be stubborn."
K-2 places a heavy hand on his shoulder, as if to ground him into the ship's floor, artificial gravity or none. Cassian's borne a lot of weight over the years, but this one, he thinks, is more than welcome.