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[Open] This Was Your Choice

CHARACTERS: Leia Organa and Various
LOCATION: Lockers, the Gardens, Comms and other places on the ship
WARNINGS: Princesses swearing
SUMMARY: Leia gets some surprises, some good, some bad.
NOTES: Luke's gone, and this is set after the jump.

Lockers - after the jump
Instead of going to hand out the flower crowns as Leia normally did every jump with her dear friend Lúthien, she spent time with her father near his locker, talking. Somehow, talking about home had become harder and easier the more she did it. But the discussion left her feeling more melancholy than interested in trying to be genial and welcoming. Her attitude wasn't helped much by the loss of her twin, a loss that was much more palpable than that of Han Solo so many jumps before.

So, she headed to her own locker, intent on getting the crowns to hand to Lúthien before going for a swim. However, there was something wrong. Behind the dull, ugly jumpsuit that she kept in the back of her locker there was a flash of something metallic. Shoving the icy queasiness down, Leia pushed the jumpsuit to reveal a familiar outfit, replete with the damnable jewelry and the boots on the bottom of her locker. However, before she can shut (slam really) the door, the light reflects from a large glass jar on the shelf where the flowers should be.

And inside the jar is sand. And a tiny, eyeless, gaping-mouthed flesh eating worm. A sarlacc. Just for her.

"WHO THOUGHT THIS WAS FUNNY?"

Gardens
After the lovely surprise in her locker, Leia's footsteps couldn't take her fast enough to the only place on the whole kriffing ship that made her feel steady, the Oxygen Gardens. But instead of heading to the stream near Lúthien and Galadriel's flets, she went to the second floor and sat in a relatively unused corner.

Her mind was a jumble of thoughts about Tatooine, Han, Luke, and him, Jabba the Hutt. The fact that she had killed the disgusting crime lord before she and Luke allowed his pleasure barge to fall into the sarlacc pit wasn't really a comfort at that point. She missed her brother. She missed Han. She missed everyone back home and having that humiliation shoved in her face after two relatively decent jumps (aside from the killer hounds before the jump) was too much.

But before she could fall too far into the pit of self-pity, a strangely familiar string of chirps and whistles caught her attention. She followed the sounds until she spotted a little droid with a blue dome, rocking back and forth as it tried to free itself from the vines of nearby plants. With no effort, Leia smiled and ran over, pulling the vines off before hugging the astromech droid. "Artoo! I'm so glad to see you."

Comms
A few days after finding R2D2 and cleaning him from the debris and making sure he wasn't damaged, Leia decided to bring him down to Comms. First, she wanted to show him off to the people she worked with. Maybe Skye or Darcy would find him interesting (and not take him apart!). And secondly, she was pretty sure that her father could tell her what the parts of Artoo's memory banks she couldn't access were for. Since he'd had possession of the droid as part of the Tantive IV.

Anywhere else
Feel free to spot Leia and R2D2 anywhere on the ship, since the little droid is now attached to the hip with her when she's not sleeping.

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Chell was working the gardens when she heard....something? So she's going over to investigate. Oh hey it's her friend and....a robot?

"Leia?"

Leia looked back at the sound of her friend's voice, still hugging the much-missed R2 unit. "Chell, hi." She let her arms drop as she went over to the other woman and pulled her over to face the droid. "This is R2D2, an astromech droid from my world. He...belongs to my brother, Luke, back home."

She turned her attention back the the excited machine. "Artoo, this is my friend Chell."

The unit responds with a few blips and whistles as his top spun a few times.

"I think he said hello."

Chell walks over. And nods in greeting to the droid after she greets Leia.

"Hello R2D2." She glances over at Leia. "Is he speaking another language?"

Leia blinked at the other woman's question before looking down at the little droid.

"He understands Common and some alien languages, but he mostly speaks binary? That's what you hear." Artoo gives a long, sad whistle. "He's used for interfacing with other machinery. Mostly fighter planes and computer terminals."

"...I know binary." Somehow. It was a skill she actually practiced here, even if she didn't remember learning it.

"Haven't heard it spoken before though. Most of the A.I I dealt with spoke English....some Spanish that one time...oh and passive aggressive sarcasm. I think that's its own language."

"Well, back home there's a protocol droid that usually translates for those of us who don't speak it. C3P0...understands over six million forms of communication, as he's reminded us many times." She shakes her head fondly. It's an impressive number, even if she wishes the golden-hued droid would be quiet sometimes.

"However, somehow, Luke understands him without help. It must be a part of being an X-wing pilot, I suppose."

Chell's last statement gets a wry smile out of her though. "Oh, I assure you, it is. I've used it a time or ten against various people."

"That's impressive. I can only speak two...I think." Memory is weird like that. She looks over at the small droid.

"Do you mind if I try to learn to understand spoken binary from you?"

Being polite is something she tries to be. Which makes her pause at the sarcasm comment. Sometimes she wonders about you Leia. But you haven't been cruel to her yet.

"Have you? Well I hope they had it coming."

"I speak around ten or so, and I've learned Sindarian from Lúthien while here. But Threepio's amount is astronomical. He's been a help over the last few years, but sometimes the only way to get him to not talk is to turn him off."

Which is Han's favorite thing to do when Threepio is going on and on. Not...that Leia blames him sometimes.

Artoo beeps twice before whistling and moving towards her in a non-threatening manner. Yes.

"Well, considering they were the people I was leading a rebellion against and a captain of a smuggling vessel, I want to say yes."

"Really? He doesn't mind?"

Chell is used to the idea of A.I that don't have to listen to humans. Wheatley would have been alright to shut off but oh man if someone had turned GLaDOS off to shut her up, the moment she was on again that person would be dead.

She smiles though at Artoo. She's pretty sure she understood that. "Thanks. It'll be nice to talk to a robot that isn't trying to kill me for once. Besides the Different Turret I mean."

She's just confusing. Meanwhile about the passive aggressive sarcasm. Chell still smiles.

"Sounds like a good cause. I just refuse to speak to anyone that's rude to me. I find it really annoys them...besides why give them the satisfaction."

"I've never really considered whether or not he minds. He's a protocol droid. He has a function to serve and he does." She looks at the other woman with a thoughtful frown. "I don't think he particularly likes it, but when we're in the middle of a battle situation and he won't stop talking, the only thing we can do is turn him off."

There have been so many times when he's almost distracted Han and could've gotten them killed, more than she has even.

Artoo gives a long whistle and just waits for what's going to happen. She can't be horrible because Leia's not trying to shoot her and she doesn't sound dangerous either. So, he waits.

"Sadly, I don't have that option. One must sometimes respond to one's enemy. If only to tell them to kiss your Wookiee."

Thanks, Han. No, really.

She shrugs slightly. "I'm in the weird position where my only memories of well, anyone are of A.I....and one insane scientist's voice recordings... Even if they were mostly terrible I don't really have any other frame of reference so I tend to treat everyone I meet like I would an A.I."

Which is why she tends to treat everyone the same. Kids, robots, adults. You're not trying to kill her or insulting her? You're good.

"The silence worked for me there, didn't work so well for me here. Though it took me a year to give that up. What's a Wookiee though?"

She remembers a conversations she and Chell had about a wheat field. It seems that her friend's life back home was much more complicated than she previously thought. Heedless of what she looks like, Leia sits down on a tree stump that she half-thinks is fabricated to be a seat in this part of the Gardens and waves a hand absently for Chell to take another nearby.

"I suppose that that's not a bad policy, but back in my galaxy not everyone treats actual lifeforms properly, let alone droids. I'd like to learn more about where you're from, if you don't mind telling me." She's willing to tell you more as well.

"Being here and silent wouldn't work very well, no. But I'm impressed that you made it a year without talking to anyone."

She laughs at the question though. "A Wookiee is a six-to-seven-foot alien covered in fur all over with horrid tempers and great strength. They, like the other non-human lifeforms in the Empire, are looked down upon and have been known to be used as slaves." Disdain for that last part is obvious in her voice.

"Well I mostly only refused to speak out loud. I did text and wrote things down for people. I still have the notebook I used back then actually. A lot of people thought I couldn't speak, mostly because I let them believe that." She'll sit down near Leia.

"That's terrible....as for where I'm from. I don't mind telling you. It's a bit confusing and I don't even know all the details but I don't have any problem talking about it."

She pauses looking down at her white tank-top with the Aperture Science logo. Considering her, it might be weird that she wears it but she has her own ....also weird reasons.

"Well to start off. My first memory is waking up in a pod, no goo and laying down, in a small glass room with a voice welcoming me to Aperture Science and telling me I was there to test things for them." She shrugged. "I didn't have any other clue as to where I was so I just followed the voices instructions. I started to test a device, made my way through test chambers solving puzzles all the while getting more and more suspicious about the voices motivations because it looked like a lot of the tests were set up to kill me if I failed....which they totally were."

Good ol' Aperture.

"Eventually I finished all the test chambers, even the "mistake" one where turrets shot at me ...and then the voice tried to throw me into a fire. So I escaped. Discovered the voice was an A.I called GLaDOS and that she was trying to kill me. Let me tell you neurotoxin is not fun to run through. ...I ended up killing her by ripping her personality cores off and throwing them in a fire but was knocked out in the explosion and dragged back into the facility where I was put back in stasis for .....I actually have no idea how long. Years, centuries maybe."

She doesn't seem as phased by that as she should be.

"I didn't know until I was woken up however long after by another A.I called Wheatley. We tried to escape the facility. He accidentally woke up GLaDOS who apparently is harder to kill then I thought. She put me in tests again, all the while saying how she was going to kill me. Wheatley broke me out, we defeated GLaDOS put him in control of the facility and..."

She actually pauses here for a moment. "And then he turned on me, put GLaDOS in a potato battery and threw us down an elevator shaft.... I ended up having to team up with her to stop him from destroying the facility. Long...weird story short we defeated him by...." Chell pauses again because ....er "Well we put other cores on him to get a core transfer but to be honest what ended up happening was ....opening up a portal on the moon and we got sucked through. He should still be in space now. ...it's a bit insane sounding when I say it like that."

Like your entire life isn't. She looks away.

"GLaDOS saved me from that....and then....she let me go free. I didn't really think she'd hold up her end of the deal but she did. I was in a wheat field when I got out...the first time I'd ever really seen the surface, that I can remember at least.... And then I got dragged here."

Another shrug because this is the least important part to her.

"What the rest of my world is like I have no idea. My entire memory before this place is probably a few days long give or take stasis decades."

It takes her a few moments to think of a response. "That wasn't exactly what I was expecting to hear but it explains the strange droid during that one jump."

That gets her to chuckle. "Yeah that was GLaDOS. Or at least my memory of her, whatever that boggart thing made. She's the more passive aggressive 'your entire life has been a mathematical error' one. Wheatley was more ....er I think his best insult was 'fatty fatty no parents'."

Actually his best 'insult' was when he was ranting about how much he absolutely hated her and had never EVER even cared about her at all from the start and she was just a tool to him. That had hurt though, so she doesn't bring it up.

"I'm not sure what the boggarts really tried to do, but many people ended up injured because of that accident."

Of course, Chell had attacked a boggart-Sith with a shovel.

"This Wheatley sounds like you're much better off here than back home."

"Well he's in space now...forever unless the ship brings him back." She pauses for a moment then shakes her head.

"No. It probably sounds crazy but I want to go back. I was free back there. I have no idea what was out there or how I'd survive when I did...but I got out. I survived everything they threw at me and more. That wheat field was freedom more then this ship and everything on it. I'm still trapped. There might not be someone telling me what to do all the time or insulting me, but I'm still not able to leave. I've had maybe one hour of freedom in my entire life and I refuse to give it up."

"Hm, no, it doesn't sound crazy to me. Achieving true freedom, even for a second, is amazing. I'm only sorry that it didn't last for you."

She pats the R2 unit next to her and he responds with a few beeps and trills.

"But, as far as prisons go, I guess this could be worse, right?"

"Oh good. I'm never sure what sounds normal or not. Conversations are a bit hard when you have no memory of ever having one."

Which is why if you observed Chell you could notice that she tended to take cues from the person she was talking to. More upbeat with more upbeat people, more direct with more direct people...etc.

"Oh it could be much worse. At least whoever built the thing had some idea of safety in mind."

The princess just laughs. "After what you've just told me, I can imagine so. But you're doing fine in my opinion."

Although, letting Leia judge normal might not be the way to go. In the grand scheme of things.

"Safety...I think the original purpose was for terraforming other worlds, right? This was for living on. It's only natural there were safety catches built in."

Not that they work.

"You'd think that. But all it takes is for one person in charge to decide safety is for wimps and you get asbestos walls. The facility was like that."

Honestly it's a miracle she didn't drop dead here from just being in that place.

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[Open] This Was Your Choice

Gardens

Gardens

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2/2 tl;dr portal the abridged version

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