"This is illegal."
Artoo let out a loud whistle, followed by a grinding noise.
"Swearing about it won't help." Bail chided. "It has to be uninstalled."
Artoo had only been on board the Tantive III long enough to undergo standard clean up and maintenance, which had been long enough to reveal some very non-standard upgrades. The maintenance crew had expressed some concerns, which Captain Antilles forwarded to him, given the circumstances behind this particular droid. That in turn lead to Bail sitting on the ship's gleaming deck, having a conversation with a R2 unit that was proving to be as vulgar as he was stubborn.
"Most of these adjustments you've had break one galactic law or another, and I don't just mean since the Empire."
Artoo gave a rapid stream of noises that displayed not only a shockingly expansive vocabulary for a mechanical, but an equal disregard for the law. It wasn't Padmé who had taught him those attitudes, though the droid had come to Bail's possession through her. He could think of someone near her who might of had some beliefs in common with the droid, or more likely, taught them to R2 in the first place.
"We aren't at war anymore," Bail said. Could a droid understand the pain in those words? Did Artoo share his feelings on the bad old days when they thought things would change for the better, when they could still fight not knowing the war was nothing but a power grab? The war may have ended for it to all turn out for the worse, but to fight now would be worse than suicide, it would be devastation. Winning and losing had become one and the same.
He wanted to believe there was commiseration in Artoo's low warble. The droid had lost too, and not just some after-factory installations, but the war, a place in the galaxy, a friend who had made these upgrades with his own hand. If a droid felt sentimental attachment to components, Artoo had plenty of reason for sentiment.
Sentiment was something no one could afford. Skywalker was a name you didn't speak, one on a long list of names. More than the legality around these components, having any traceable attachment to the Jedi was a danger. With reluctance, he signed his permission to have Artoo modified. "In some form or another, we've all had to accept a downgrade."