Work Text:
"Come here," Anakin said to C3PO. "I'll fix you."
C3PO limped over. "Oh, thank you, sir!" he said. "R2 welded me back together, but I'm afraid it was a very rough job." The astromech droid R2D2 followed, rattling off a stream of offended curses.
Anakin ran his fingers over the ship's tool selection. Droid repair tools. He'd intended to work on his new replacement hand, but there wasn't anything like the fine tools he would need for that.
Not that he didn't like his current replacement hand. It was a claw, a skeletal thing, crude and rude. It showed the world what he had lost. It said what he as a Jedi was not allowed to--that he had hurt, that he felt pain, that he had lost part of himself.
Anakin pushed 3PO down on the workbench and examined his neck. "These welds aren't bad, especially for the conditions," he told R2.
"Thanks, boss. R2's learned some things in his years," R2 said.
Anakin insinuated a separator into the neck joint. "How old are you?" He twisted and 3PO's head popped free. 3PO's body went limp, but his eyes remained lit, showing that he was fine. The body only held movement control, auxiliary processing circuits and backup memory; everything essential was located in the head unit.
"Some 160 turns, droid and circuit." R2's dome swiveled slowly as he focused one sensor after another on Anakin. "Going to put slow-minds in that fake arm?"
Slow-minds--oh. Intelligent circuitry. "I'll have to, if I want sensation," Anakin said. He examined the connectors of 3PO's neck. Some had been damaged when his head was separated from his neck in the factory, so he popped them out and looked for replacements.
"Gonna be a little droidish then."
Anakin slammed the broken connector down on the bench. "I am a person no matter what I wear on my body--just like you are property no matter what you put on yours!"
R2 rolled back, beeping. "Yes, Padawan sir. So sorry, Padawan sir."
"Sir, if I might interject..." 3PO began. Anakin reached inside his neck and turned him off. R2 beeped unhappily.
"I won't be a Padawan much longer," Anakin told R2. "I fought a Sith. I deserve a shot at the trials. Master Obi-Wan was made a Knight without any trials at all after fighting Darth Maul."
"Sure thing, boss," R2 said, cringing back on his drive legs.
Anakin pressed his lips together and stared into 3PO's head. He pressed his mouth shut and didn't say the words--didn't say that he had already ensured that he would take the trials once they returned to Coruscant. He had planted the idea in Master Obi-Wan's head and watched it take root and blossom.
His master used the mind tricks freely, with subtleties he hadn't taught to Anakin. He did a lot of things that he hadn't taught to Anakin. Anakin picked them up anyway, just by watching. "I'm the most powerful Jedi the Order has ever seen," Anakin muttered at 3PO's head.
"That's what everyone says, boss." R2 was retreating slowly into the space beneath the workbench.
"I guess you listen." Anakin picked up a new connecter and set it into place in 3PO's neck.
"Part of the job. Gotta listen."
"What else have you heard?"
"Also part of the job. Can't repeat. Against programming, boss."
"Fine. Good job, little droid." Anakin snapped another connector into place and welded it with a crackle of Force.
Force lightning. That was another trick he shouldn't be able to do--something even Master Windu couldn't do--but he'd learned it watching Yoda fight the Sith.
He could do anything.
It made him magnanimous. "You must be damaged also, R2. Let me take a look."
"Oh no, boss. R2's fine, boss. Stayed out of the action."
"You did not. I saw you there in the ring." Anakin set 3PO's head down and looked underneath the bench. "I can see the scorch marks on your coverings!"
"R2's fine!"
"Come HERE!" Anakin held out his hand and called R2D2 with the Force, pulling him across the floor with a screech of metal and an electronic scream from the droid. The Force funneled through all the organic parts of Anakin, pooling in his fingers and connecting him to R2 as he pulled the covering panels off R2's inner workings with his mind alone.
He could feel the electrons of R2's mechanical thoughts as they traveled over the circuits of his mind. Different in texture and taste from organic thoughts, but similar in pattern--all he had to do was push there and there and R2 went limp and unprotesting under his hand.
Limp and unprotesting as Obi-Wan when Anakin told him he would take the trials, or Amidala when Anakin suggested that they elope.
The mind trick was only supposed to work on the weak-minded. Anakin supposed that meant anyone with a weaker mind than himself.
He supposed the Council would tell him he was misusing his powers--but it was right that he take the trials after fighting a Sith. It was right that he and Amidala should marry, when they loved each other. It was right that he inspect a droid when it was damaged. It wasn't his fault that other people were so stubborn and so stupid!
Anakin ghosted his hand over R2's exposed circuitry, looking for blocked flows and missing parts. He didn't find anything; the droid was fine, as he'd said. The scorch marks would wash off.
"Looks like you're okay." Anakin picked up the coverings and placed them back onto R2.
"Thank you, Master Anakin," R2 said dully.
Anakin finished covering the droid and patted his dome, returning his thoughts to their original pattern. R2 shot back under the bench so hard that he hit the wall with an audible clang.
Anakin turned 3PO back on. "Er? Oh, good morning, Master Anakin!" 3PO chirped.
"It's nighttime," Anakin said.
"My goodness, so it is. I must reset my internal clock to Coruscant Standard time." C3PO's eye-lights flickered as Anakin set his head back on his body and welded it in place. "Shall I bid you good-night, Master Anakin?"
"Goodnight, C3PO, R2D2."
"Goodnight, Master Anakin," R2 said quietly.
Anakin left the workshop. He could still feel the electronic minds of C3PO and R2D2 as he walked down the hall, just as he could feel the crackly little minds of the maintenance droids around him, the great slow mind of the ship, and the sleeping organic minds of the stormtroopers, of Amidala, of Masters Obi-Wan and Windu. He felt them all, all the time.
He was the most powerful and most knowledgeable Jedi that the Order had ever seen. Obi-Wan was holding him back--but things would be different when he was a Knight. Things would be so different that they'd be on their knees apologizing to him for ever doubting him--
--and they did doubt him, they doubted him every second of every day--
--they'd be so sorry.
Behind him, 3PO and R2 joined circuits. Anakin stopped and let himself feel the sensation, which was something quite new to him; it seemed that R2 and 3PO had hooked their emotion circuits together and were letting the electrons flow freely between them. The resulting circuit tasted a little like 3PO and a little like R2 but mostly of something new and other.
Strange.
Obviously he needed to study droids more. Maybe he would spend the morning putting those two through their paces, to see what other secrets they had. Maybe he would get some good ideas for his new arm.
Anakin slipped into his quarters with thoughts of schematics dancing in his head. Master Obi-Wan stirred and nearly woke, but Anakin sent him back to sleep with a brush of his mind. No need to wake. Nothing to see.
THE END.
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