A.N. This is a short-ish chapter, but next chapter is going to be a lot longer :)
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Twin blue orbs of light appear in the droid's face, indicating Cassian has successfully restored power to its system, but beyond its initial twitch, it continues to lie motionless on the floor.
Cassian frowns and steps forward, leaning over the hulking figure in order to tap the droid's chest with his blaster. "Hey," he calls warily, "are you on?"
"Yes," comes the immediate reply.
"Then why aren't you moving?"
"Because there's an unidentified hostile leaning over me with a gun pointed in my direction and I would very much like to avoid antagonizing said hostile."
Cassian huffs in amusement. Who knew a droid could be so snarky? "Do you have the overwhelming desire to kill me?"
"Asks the man with the gun threatening my own existence," the droid points out accusingly.
Cassian rolls his eyes, stepping back and lowering his weapon. Surely the Empire would have decommissioned him if this is how the droid behaved while under Imperial control. He couldn't see the Empire putting up with such sass. "Okay, how about this. I don't kill you and you don't kill me. Deal?"
There's a long pause. "Deal."
Cassian grins in relief and lets his aching body sink slowly to the ground, muffling a groan as he leans against a wall.
The droid sits up, demanding, "What happened? Who are you? And why in the galaxy don't I want to rip you apart?"
Cassian snorts at that. "You attacked me and I was forced to short circuit you. And the reason you don't feel the need to kill me is because I overrode most of the Imperial programming and protocols in your system. You are no longer the agent of an evil, corrupt system. You're welcome."
The droid stares at him. "Oh. Well that explains a lot," he murmurs, accented voice thoughtful. "I suppose an introduction is in order, then. I'm K-2SO, Imperial—uh, ex-Imperial security droid."
"K-2SO?" Cassian repeats. "That's much too long and impersonal. No… I will call you Kay, if that's acceptable to you?"
The droid pauses as if to think about it, before replying, "That would indeed be acceptable." The droid then tries to rise to his feet, but does so by using his right arm, the one that Cassian had shoved the cable into in order to short circuit him. Apparently, while the rest of Kay has come back online, that limb of his hasn't. Kay's gaze snaps to his non-functioning arm, snaps to Cassian, then back to his own arm, before finally whipping back to settle on the young man. "My arm won't work. What did you do to my arm?! You killed it!" Kay exclaims in outrage
"Huh. Well," he chuckles humorlessly, nodding to the arm cradled in his jacket, "you broke mine first, so I'd say we're even. Plus, yours is a lot easier to fix."
"True," Kay concedes, somewhat mollified by the fact that Cassian's right arm also isn't working. "You humans are such a fragile species."
"Fragile?" Cassian echoes in disbelief. "Was I fragile when I completely overpowered you?"
"That's a terrible pun," Kay admonishes disdainfully. "And 'fragile' doesn't mean 'weak,'" the droid clarifies. "Certainly in your case, I don't think there's anything weak about you—evidenced by the fact that you were able to take me down," Kay states primly. "And, if you're the rebel the Empire has been so desperate to get their hands on, the one disrupting their operations, whose face has yet to be seen, then you are most definitely not weak." Kay pauses before giving Cassian a hard look. "Though my sensors are telling me that you are not faring well at this moment."
Cassian could swear he detects a note of admiration in his new partner's voice, which morphs to concern towards the end, but Cassian dismisses it. I must be hearing things. Leaning his head back against the wall as fatigue begins to pull at him, he mumbles, "Yeah, broken bones and blood loss tend to do that to me."
Kay nods sagely. "You currently have a sixty-three percent chance of dying within the next hour. Factoring in the likelihood of discovery and capture by the Empire ups the percentage to ninety-two."
Cassian closes his eyes, and half smiles. "That's not so bad. That means there's a thirty-seven percent chance that I make it. I can live with that."
Kay scoffs. "Well you're just full of puns. And very bad ones, at that. But I think you misunderstood me. I said there's a sixty-three percent chance you die, not a thirty-seven percent chance that you live. And you completely ignored the latter half of my sentence! Did you not hear the 'ninety-two!?'" he demands indignantly.
Leaning against the wall with his eyes closed, adrenaline rapidly fading and bone deep fatigue and pain setting in, Cassian finds himself smiling fully as he banters with Kay—I like this droid. "I prefer to look on the bright side of things," he replies quietly, feeling his body relax further and further. Maybe if I just go to sleep, I won't wake up again and then all of the pain I've been carrying around for twelve years, everything I've done, it will all be gone. Maybe I've done enough good for my lifetime…
"Hey," a voice calls from somewhere far away. "Hey! Rebel!" the voice shouts, accompanied by a not so gentle poke to his side.
He startles back into focus, eyes snapping open as a wave of pain shoots through his arm and leg. "Ack," he hisses, biting his lip to stop any further sound of pain from escaping. "What was that for?" he growls angrily.
The droid stares at him with unblinking blue orbs. "While there's a high likelihood of your death within the next hour, I'd much prefer it if you delayed that for as long as you can, because I need you in order to get out of here."
"You'd be fine even if the Empire caught me. You're an Imperial droid, after all," he counters, mind beginning to feel sluggish.
Kay's eyes move in a strange way and Cassian suspects he just tried to roll them. "Ex-Imperial droid, thanks to you," he reminds the rebel in exasperation. "Whatever you did to me makes me have the incredibly strong urge to speak my mind and, no matter what I do, I can't keep my mouth shut. Figuratively," he adds, gesturing to his lack of an actual mouth. "Do you know how long I would last in the hands of the Empire? Because I do. There is a one-hundred percent certainty that I would be decommissioned within five minutes."
Cassian eyes the droid. He'd hoped they could work together, but he'd been fully prepared for the possibility that the droid would flat out refuse—or just kill him and be done with it. Willing cooperation is something of which he hadn't dared to dream. "So you're saying you want to escape with me."
The droid's eyes shift to the right, before returning to Cassian's face. "Well, if you want to put it that way in order to make you feel better, then yes. In reality, if you help in my escape it significantly raises the chances of success. Plus, I wouldn't know where to go once I did escape, and I assume you, as a rebel, would."
"Your loyalty is incredible," Cassian remarks sarcastically.
"Why should I be loyal to you?" Kay retorts. "All you've done is cause me nothing but trouble! For all I know you just want to use me selfishly for your own personal gain! I figure you're going to abandon me the minute you're able, so I might as well capitalize on you while I have the chance and ensure my own survival by escaping!"
Cassian sighs, recognizing the droid has a point. "Fair enough, I suppose I haven't done anything to earn your trust," he concedes. "But I'm a rebel and so are you—willingly or not—and a true rebel doesn't leave a fellow rebel behind. So no, I'm not going to 'use you for my own personal gain' only to leave you rusting somewhere," Cassian promises earnestly. "But, if we're going to make it out of here, you're going to have to find me something else to wear," he informs the droid, gesturing to the ruined Stormtrooper uniform he discarded earlier.
Kay glances at the pile of armor, before looking around the room—there's nothing here to work as an outfit, Cassian checked already—and finally returning his gaze to Cassian. He appears thoughtful, as if analyzing the sincerity of Cassian's words, before uttering "I'll be right back," rising to his full height and walking out of the room.
Cassian is so surprised that he doesn't even have time to hiss at the droid to stop. Did he change his mind? Is he going to find someone in order to tell them of my presence? It seems unlikely, and really it doesn't matter because Cassian can't do anything about it even if he tries. While he's trying to stay optimistic, he is no longer sure of his ability to stand, much less walk out of the base.
He must have drifted off to sleep again because the next thing he knows, a thud jerks him awake. It's Kay dropping a Deathtrooper suit at his feet. "Where… where the hell did you get that?"
The droid looks guiltily to the side. "It's probably better if you don't know. I figured it would be even better than a regular Trooper, as even those guys are afraid of the Deathtroopers and are less likely to stop us and ask questions. You're a little small, though, so I tried to get the shortest one I could find, but these guys mostly come in tall and taller."
Cassian nods his thanks and wordlessly begins struggling to put the suit on, finding it difficult with only one functioning hand. He's surprised and proud when he even manages to makes it to his feet, pushing through his body's fatigue until he only has one piece of armor left except for the helmet: the right forearm. Gingerly, he slips it over his hand and slowly shifts it up his arm, graying as it repositions his bones and puts pressure on the already swollen limb. He attempts to fasten the clasp to hold it in place, but his less dexterous left hand fumbles and smacks his right arm. The world explodes in stars and he feels himself falling, on a collision course with the ground and certain unconsciousness if his head strikes the floor, but then something reaches out and catches his left arm just above the elbow. He cries out in pain as it pulls on his wounded shoulder, but is grateful because it slows his descent and halts his one way trip to oblivion, and instead he feels himself lowered to sit gently on the floor.
When his vision returns and he manages to get his breathing under control, suppressing the nausea as best he can, he sees Kay's hand still clasped around his left arm. He looks up at the droid with gratitude. "Thank you," he whispers hoarsely, voice rough with pain.
"No need for thanks. Like I said, my chances of survival are much higher if you're still alive," he states dismissively, and if there is a note of worry in his voice, Cassian doesn't have the energy to call him out on it.
He is about to attempt to clasp the armguard again—he is not looking forward to the experience—when Kay lets go of his elbow and moves to his right forearm, finishing attaching it without causing much additional pain. Cassian blinks. Huh, he muses, didn't know a droid could be so gentle.
"All right, Rebel," Kay addresses him briskly, rising to his full hulking height, "what do we do to get out of this mess?"
Cassian takes a moment to organize his thoughts and try to get his brain back into high gear; it still feels fuzzy. "We find a hangar," he starts, "make our way there and hope to the Force that we can commandeer a ship without being stopped or shot down."
"And how do you propose we do that," Kay demands skeptically.
"Well, ideally we walk right through the halls in our 'disguises' and no one stops us."
"I'm not sure we can hope on 'ideally,' because 'ideally' we wouldn't be in this situation in the first place," Kay snaps snarkily. "And can you even walk? You nearly passed out a moment ago from a poke in the arm."
Cassian clenches his jaw in order to prevent himself from shouting at the droid. "I have a broken arm, Kay. You might not be familiar with the concept of pain or broken bones, but I can assure you that they are agony. And in answer to your question, I have no choice but to walk. I think we would draw too much attention if a droid was spotted carrying a Deathtrooper, no?" he fires back, unable to resist confronting the droid's sarcasm with some of his own. "But I'll probably have to hold onto your arm for support," he admits grudgingly.
"You want to hold my hand," the droid states incredulously.
"Arm," Cassian emphasizes through gritted teeth.
"It sounds to me like you want to hold my hand," Kay points out and this time Cassian's sure there's a smugness to his tone.
"Kay!" he hisses exasperatedly, rolling his eyes.
"Rebel!" the droid throws back at him. "How do you like it when someone snaps your name?"
Well this is going to be interesting. This is either going to be the shortest escape attempt I've ever tried or the beginning of a long ride home in the company of an infuriating—admittedly amusing—droid. He dearly hopes for the latter.
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A.N.2. The pronoun shift from "it" to "he" in regards to K-2SO was intentional. In the first chapter, K2 was just an Imperial droid, and now Cassian's getting to know him.
And of course, I know there's a huge debate as to how humanoid droids are, whether they have feelings and/or free will and all of that, so my take on it is that droids absolutely have feelings. It's pretty evident in TFA that BB-8 grieved when he thought Poe was dead and C-3PO is always panicking and coming up with the worst outcomes, and various other hints that indicate droids can feel. And as to free will, well that's a tougher issue. But I'm saying that Kay at least has free will (perhaps due to less than perfect reprogramming), because after all, if I remember correctly, he decides to disobey an order and joins Jyn and Cassian in Jedha because he was bored and the order was stupid... so... yeah.