[Open] This Was Your Choice

[borntorebel]

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.

Comments

[borntorebel]

She takes a moment to process that, taking what she knows about all in this strange, overextended family into account as she does so. Her lips purse up in thought before she finally shakes her head ruefully and responds to her father.

"That makes an odd sort of sense. And it explains how Luke is so good with mechanical things as well."

[bailedontheempire]

"Anakin had many talents. Artoo and Threepio got passed back and forth between him and Padme during the Clone Wars." They probably should have realized something was going on between those two. And he'd suspected. But they didn't speak of it.

Perhaps things would have been different, with fewer secrets.

[borntorebel]

"I'm sure he did. It would've been difficult for him to keep up with you and Padmé if he'd been one-dimensional."

She frowns at the mention of passing them back and forth.

"It's strange, but most of the time Luke kept Artoo with him and...Han and I ended up with Threepio. Occasionally, however, one or the other had both droids."

She's still not sure if she wants to talk to her father about the re-arrival of the former smuggler. It's easier to talk about the familiar droids, less complicated by a parsec.

[bailedontheempire]

"He is orignally made for assisting pilots." And Luke was certainly a pilot, that much had become clear rather quickly. A lot about Luke was familiar, really. "Even if he constantly comes up with new talents. I'm not quite sure why he decided to build a droid fluent in 'over six million forms of communication' on Tatooine, but he managed it."

[borntorebel]

"Yes, but he does so much more than that. He and Threepio make the strangest duo, but it works somehow." For droids.

"As for why, I can't say, but there are space ports on Tatooine. Perhaps he grew up there. Having a droid that can communicate with so many different species would've been a blessing." She can't help but shake her head a little fondly. "However, I almost miss him telling me exactly how many forms of communication he is fluent in all the time, even if he did use his powers for 'good', as it were."

[bailedontheempire]

"It would have been wrong to separate the two of them." Even if they'd had to wipe the protocol droid's memory. There was something about the pair that compelled him to keep them together.

"I think it was something about helping his mother. He's a rather chatty droid." Sometimes he had to admit he wasn't entirely paying attention to what the droid was saying.

[borntorebel]

"Well, I'm sure that they appreciated it. I know they've been invaluable to us during the last five years."

She laughs at her father's statement. "There were many times where we had to shut him down. Especially if there was a point where we needed to be quiet. I don't think he understood the concept."

[bailedontheempire]

"He probably doesn't. That seems to be a core aspect that goes beyond his memorybanks." Threepio probably didn't have the most conventional programming. A boy on Tatooine would have no way of knowing the standards of industry.

[borntorebel]

"Personally, I think he's just very chatty. But we'd've been in a lot of trouble over the last four years without him and Artoo to help us out."

[bailedontheempire]

"They seem to have a way of finding themselves in the middle of everything." Which is the whole reason there are locked sectors in Artoo's memory. And they'd wiped Threepio. Those droids had seen it all.

[borntorebel]

She looks down at the little droid who beeps at her comically. "Then that explains why so many of Artoo's memory banks are blocked. I took at look at him after I found him. It's the first time I've actually had the opportunity."

[bailedontheempire]

Well, if she's going to bring them up specifically. "We had to make sure no one could access anything that could link you or Luke to your birth parents. It was vital that everyone continue to believe that Padme's child died with her. And that the child's father's identity remain nothing more than a rumour." Which meant encoding quite a bit of information, in the end. He'd suspected just from what he'd seen. Artoo could confirm it with undeniable evidence.

[borntorebel]

"While I don't doubt that that's part of the reason, it wouldn't account for how much of his memory is blocked."

She might not be Luke, but she can check a droid. Especially one that's friendly to her.

"There's another file there that I can't access, but Artoo is fairly stubborn about giving up things that aren't coded directly for the person trying to retrieve it." She smiles wryly. "It's part of what's made him so valuable over the years."

[bailedontheempire]

"He's very trustworthy in that way." He would have let him be, had there not been worries about what could be found by force.

"We thought it wisest to encode anything that linked them. Or that revealed the truth of what had become of Anakin." It's a lot. And things no one should ever see.